The United States Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer and therefore the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. The research project of Boston University (Massachusetts, USA), Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War, analyzes in detail the use of military fuel in American wars and its influence on the greenhouse effect.

Between 2001 and 2017, Pentagon CO2 greenhouse emissions have been at least 1,212 million metric tons, equivalent to annual emissions of more than 255 million motor vehicles. Thus, the Department of Defense of EE.UU. has delivered an annual average of 67 million tonnes of CO2 from combustion, exclusively from oil.

The US army's emissions are estimated at 766 million metric tons, only in military operations during this period, at about 63% of the total military contamination between 2001 and 2017. In particular, "foreign contingency operations", closely related to the war, in the main war zones of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria, have been accounted for by over 400 million tonnes of CO2e, equivalent to the annual emissions of about 85 million cars. The rest corresponds to its facilities, as the Defense Department has over 560,000 buildings in 500 military facilities, both in the US and abroad, which account for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, pollution by chemical weapons, explosions and other collateral damage from the war should be added.

Oil-loaded weapons

In 2017, US military forces bought about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted 25,000 kilotons of carbon dioxide with these fuels. This makes the Defense Department the largest fossil fuel consumer in the U.S. government, affecting between 77 and 80 percent of the federal government's total energy consumption. Like business supply chains, they use a comprehensive global network of containers, trucks and cargo aircraft to deliver pumps, vehicles, hydrocarbons and other materials.

In this sense, greenhouse gas emissions are rarely accounted for by all these military logistic infrastructures, especially media and political attention to the amount of energy and fuels consumed by the civilian population. However, studies of this kind have shown that US military forces are one of the most important pollutants in history, as they consume more liquid fuel and emit more greenhouse gases than most countries in the world.

Indeed, the greenhouse gas emissions of the Pentagon are being higher than those of many advanced capitalist powers, for example Portugal, Sweden or Denmark. If the Pentagon were a country, only with its fuel consumption, it would be among the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, ranked 55th, between Peru and Portugal. That is, they emit more CO2 than 139 countries in the world.