DOD Drops Annual Energy Management Report for FY2011: Richter Scale Reacts

DOD celebrated the new fiscal year by publishing the FY 2011 Annual Energy Management Report.   Happy New FY2013!  The report took a year to write and is a steal at only $485K (to write; you can download it for free).  That comes to a little over a $1000 a page and comes with a “by installation” list of how much space they have and how many billions of BTUs were consumed.  It also contains a "go, no go" chart for every installation and key renewable sources.   This report is double the size of last year, produced at less cost and has enough information to choke a horse.  This will take a couple of posts to cover.

Bottom line is that DOD is not making the goals, but is trending well as reflected below.

Table 1-1: FY 2011 DoD Progress Toward Facility Energy and Water Goals

This massive tome has detailed information on energy conservation, smart grid, renewable energy, potable water use intensity and petroleum consumption for non-tactical vehicles.  I will address these in subsequent blogs.  The single most telling graphic is figure 3-4: DoD Energy Intensity EISA 2007 Goal Attainment shown below.

If you think of the dangling bars as the low hanging fruit, it is clear that they have all been plucked.  The cheap, easy, quick ROI efforts have been executed.  This means that the next round of energy conservation measures will require greater investment in techniques such as deep retrofit of buildings.  Either the Services will have to come up with the cash or make greater use of energy savings performance contracts and utility energy services contracts.  

Interestingly, the Service with the greatest reduction in energy intensity, the Air Force, did not award an ESPC or UESC project in FY2011.  This was a function of a policy that imposed an unreasonable bureaucratic burden for bases and has since been changed.  The tendency to grab the low hanging fruit is a function of the “requirement” for very short ROI timelines.  While all eyes are trained on the Army MATOC drama, serious folks will focus on the “fifth fuel” and find a balance between onerous policies, unrealistic ROI expectations and true energy security.  More to follow.  Dan Nolan