More from DSB on DOD Energy Management: "No One's in Charge"

In the report section on managing fuel demand, the Defense Science Board task force found:

"There is no enterprise wide strategy for managing DoD’s energy usage. No one office is in charge; there are few objectives or metrics, and no one is accountable."

In my calls around DOD and DOE, I have found not person or office who claims to step up to thiss task. And when someone thinks they know an org that might have some role in DOD-wide energy management, my follow-on call reveals they were mistaken. The Air Force seems to be out in front on this, and yet they don't come close to what's going on in the commercial sector with company's like WalMart (will discuss in upcoming post).

Here's one more DSB excerpt that paints a pretty bleak current-state picture:

"Decisions that affect DoD’s demand for energy cut across multiple Undersecretaries, all the Services, the Joint Staff, the Combatant Commands (COCOMs) and Defense Agencies. Facility energy managers, specialty functions (e.g., medical, laboratory, industrial), fleet vehicles, non-developmental deployed systems, procurement policy governing commercial equipment purchase, and combat and support systems all drive DoD energy use, but are disconnected from each other organizationally, functionally and culturally."

All of which means the scope of the challenge in enormous, and the time to get started fixing this situation is now.