What You Can Learn From the Navy's Transition to Green Energy
Moving your organization to greener energy has a number of advantages -- there's the ecological angle, to be sure, but you probably wouldn't consider it if there wasn't also an economic benefit. Even so, these kinds of changes can be difficult and risky. If you're looking for a model to show what success looks like on the green energy transition front, look no further than the US Navy.
As the Harvard Business Review recently showed, the Navy is in the midst of a series of initiatives designed to move the military away from foreign oil. Here are some key lessons (and check out the original article for a few others):
Link your green initiative to your core business goals. Going green won't really happen if you can't rationalize it in terms of your business's fundamental goals and strategy. For the Navy, for example, the military wants to reduce reliance on foreign oil as a way to increase security and assure its fighting forces have the ability to operate independently of foreign interests.
Highlight the savings of going green. For the Navy, for example, the rising cost of fuel has cost 1.5 billion dollars since 2009. Depending upon your green initiatives, this sort of argument should be easy to make.
Show how green can help employees do their jobs. Here's a cool example right from a Navy pilot project: the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines are deploying portable solar collectors to power electronic devices. That's 600 pounds worth of batteries they don't have to lug around on deployments.
Counter the nay-saysers. You'll hear plenty of arguments when you try to roll out a green energy plan, but think of the Navy: They've switched fuel sources many times in the last 200 years, from wind to coal to oil to nuclear. Every one of those was controversial in its time, and each time the nay-sayers were proven wrong.
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