The Highest Costs of Oil

I found this article about Army energy when some helpful folks at the Pentagon recommended I seek out the "Green Hawks". Immediately I found James Wolsey, CIA chief under Bill Clinton, and I remembered an earlier article describing how Wolsey and several other conservative government senior leaders had taken to driving hybrids. Why? Not because they had turned into Birkenstock-wearing peace mongers, but rather because they decided foreign oil was hurting the country. Big time. And they were going to start doing something about it.

This is the quote that really got me, though, and it's not from Wolsey. Actually, it's a paraphrase. Dan Nolan, who runs energy-related projects for the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force, said it was not until the cost of fuel was measured in American blood that the commanders started to understand the real cost of that fuel. Nolan then continued:

“Our transports have never been as vulnerable and exposed as they are in Iraq. More oil is not the solution, it is the problem.”

Read the article to catch some of the great adjustments and adaptions Nolan and company have made. Some of these are Iraq specific. Others indicate a new approach to powering field units that will now be part of Army doctrine in every theater.

2 Types of Energy Dependence for DOD

It's a marginal analogy, but as the US could improve its fuels-energy security through increased independence from (often hostile) foreign oil suppliers, DOD installations could achieve greater electrical-energy security by reducing their near total dependence on the (decidedly fragile) US electrical grid.

The 2005 DOD Energy Manager's Handbook, PDF linked here, is an epic work of 250 pages, and it is the master energy measurement and management guide, albeit on an installation/base level, that the DSB said is sorely lack at the DOD enterprise level.

I haven't made my way through it entirely, and it's hard to imagine a beleaguered mission support group commander or his chief civil engineer having the bandwidth to assimilate it either. But if they're selective, it's all here: organizing for energy management, starting a program, monitoring and metering, analyzing projects, energy efficiency, conservation of water and electricity, and on and on. All good stuff.

So unless I missed these sections, I have only 2 critiques: (1) that renewables only merit a 11 page discussion and it's a light treatment at best. Maybe that seemed right in 2005, but it sure seems wrong in 2008. And (2) that dependency on the fragile grid isn't discussed in more detail, and that moves to add more local generation via on-site renewables and/or on-site clean(er) coal or gas (or other) power aren't discussed, let alone incentivized in some way. This was written four years ago however, so I'll be checking to see if a revision is in the works, as well as whether an enterprise level equivalent is on the way.

Fuel Price Yo-Yo & DOD Implications

I'm not the first to put it like this. There's an oil price yo-yo going on right now: price goes up, use goes down. Use goes down, price goes down. Price goes down, use goes up, etc. It could be like this for quite a while. However, some people are aiming to give this yo-yo a jerk.

Former SAP VP Shai Agassi has a plan to get the world's cars off oil. I wrote about him here in January when gas was hitting $3 a gallon, and Wired just did a cover story on him here with gas in the US pulling back below $4.

Well, there are a heck of a lot of folks working on this problem and he's just one guy, relatively young, and with very little energy or transportation experience. So he's probably not going to do much, right? But what if he's even partially successful?

Fewer combustion engine cars will mean lower oil demand. Look what's happened to US demand and gas prices in the last few weeks. If entire countries get off oil, demand will plummet and prices will drop. Perhaps this means the Air Force and the air industry will get a a longer runway to develop alternative fuels and approaches as jet fuel remains more affordable, longer?

As a friend if mine said, though, the yo-yo effect doesn't go on forever. At some point further along the Peak Oil curve, use goes down and prices still go up. Well before then it will be good if the Air Force has transitioned fully to the synthetic fuels its aggressively pursing today. F-15s just hit mach 2 on synth fuels !!!

Seeing Peak Oil 51 Years Out

Sometimes a writer just nails it. This time columnist Rod Dreher wrote a great column in last Friday's Dallas Morning News , which reached way back and concluded:

A famed U.S. military leader has warned that the fossil-fuel supply on which American civilization depends utterly will run out someday in the 21st century and that our nation cannot afford to place our hope in "the sentimental belief that the things we fear will never really happen."

"I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age," said Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy.

In 1957. We've wasted a half-century of precious time, another non-renewable resource. We probably don't have another one to spare.

I've got nothing to add, except maybe we're beginning to wake up. Maybe just in time. Maybe not. I like that a military man fifty years ago could see clearly what many still cannot see today. Dreher's full column is here.

DOD Geothermal Update

Here's an excellent and highly informative (if only slightly outdated) Powerpoint presentation on DOD Geothermals. First, it's an excellent primer on Geothermal energy, which the author most often refers to as Ground Source Heat Pumps (GTHPs). And it goes into substantial detail outlining current and future deployments, cost factors and savings, building use types, etc. Highly recommended.

No mention of the EGS systems discussed in previous post on Geothermals, nor does it appear that energy security is a driver. More likely it's pure dollar savings and to show compliance with Green Fed initiatives published earlier like the National Energy Act of 2005 which sets facility energy savings targets.

Geothermal Power for DOD Grid Skipping

Normally I keep my blogging worlds separate, but the minute I published a recent post on geothermal energy for the Discovery-Powrtalk site, I knew it was a promising application for DOD and I'd want to mention here at the DOD Energy Blog.

To recap 2008 DOD power challenges most simply, one can say there are two major problems, each that brings substantial mission risk: (1) the enormous amount of fossil fuel required to operate mobility systems like planes, tactical vehicles, ships, etc., and (2) the precariously vulnerable position most bases and installations are in due to their near-total dependency on the grid for their electricity requirements. The brittleness of the grid is well documented, and its susceptibility to natural and man-made outages (think: sabotage) is well documented.

This post is about a possible solution to grid dependency, by giving each base its own local source of continuous power by tapping into an energy source that's below the base. This decentralized approach to power production becomes possible when a more proactive design for extracting geothermal energy is employed, vs. tapping geothermal sites only along fault lines. While there's still some work to be done building out the potential of what the DOE calls Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), this appears to have real merit, and can work in tandem with other on-base or off-base alternative energy platforms like solar and wind.

Note: some traditional geothermal sites are already deployed in DOD. For an example, see NWC China Lake which has enough capacity to power the entire base. But the advent of EGS designs may make it possible to power many more (if not most) bases and free them from concerns about the national grid.

DOD Energy Tech Update: Boeing's Blended Wing Body (BWB) Design

One of the 3 new technologies touted by the 2008 Defense Science Board (DSB) report as key to reducing the Air Force's (and therefore DOD's) dependence on oil is a new approach to aircraft design. Like their commercial jet siblings, military transport planes and bombers have employed the tried and true "tubes with wings" design for more than half a century. But although much R&D remains for Boeing and NASA among others, the advent of the B-2 flying wing bomber signals change is coming.

What's fueling the desire for change? Well, the high cost of jet fuel of course. The Air Force spent tens of billions of dollars on fuel last year, and every time a barrel of oil goes up $10, AF fuel costs rise over $600 million. In addition to pushing for more UAVs and new synthetic fuels, lately, more than ever, they've considered how to do the job without flying as many hours.

Most studies show 20 - 30% fuel savings are possible, and that equates to a huge amount of money DOD could put towards other critical requirements. The DSB report says BWB:

... offers the possibility of 2x gains in range and payload, and of 5-10x in system level fuel efficiency. If the technology can be successfully applied to both tankers and bombers, the potential exists for far fewer sorties needed to accomplish a given mission. The enhanced range of both bombers and tankers would offer the possibility of far fewer aircraft devoted to a single mission, freeing aircraft to conduct other missions or to focus more firepower on a given target.

So clearly, it's about fuel and money savings, but the range improvements have substantial mission implications as well. For a sampling of material on this topic, here are a few additional links:

• Boeing Press Release X-48 BWB First Flight

• NASA BWB Factsheet 1997

And although you may receive notice via the web that we are very close to seeing these craft come to fruition, this link from a fact-checking site confirms that there is a large amount of work left to be done before these planes are ready for prime time. Consensus seems to be 2015 or 2020, so although I wish it were otherwise, that likely means 2025.

X-48 Photo courtesy of Boeing, Inc.