Holiday Energy Security Reading List for 2008

Howdy all. I haven't even had my first sip of eggnog as I've found myself knee deep (or more accurately, up to my neck) in research for a forthcoming white paper on fully aligning the Pentagon with the incoming administration on energy security. Here are a few additional docs I've stumbled upon in the process ... all from 2008 and all of which are worth a read if you can spare a few minutes:

• "Remodeling the US Government for Energy Security" by Sharon Burke and Christine Parthemore of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) (PDF here)
• Another CNAS piece: "Peak Oil: A Survey of Security Concerns" by Neil King Jr (PDF here)
  
• "The Fuel Gauge of National Security" by Navy Commander Jeffrey Eggers in the Armed Force Journal
• By James Russell and Daniel Moran: "The Militarization of Energy Security"

Good luck with this assignment. I'll see you on the other side of New Years Day.   

Merry Christmas Air Force

My guess is it's going to take a few billion R&D dollars pumped into Lockheed and Boeing before their first Santa-less flight, but these guys may be the renewable solution the Air Force has been seeking. Not for fighters of course, but maybe for transport. 

The DOD Energy Blogger is going to take a few days off to recharge, and will be back, raring to go, with a new post on the first Monday after Christmas. Happy Holidays All !!!

Reindeer Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Better Batteries Brewing at Argonne

Energy security takes many forms. In this case, a disparate group of small US researchers and would-be manufacturing co's are banding together to build a better battery. The site they've chosen is the Argonne National Lab in Illinois, a huge DOE facility famous for its role in the Manhattan Project. This excerpt from last week's press release says it all:

Lithium ion batteries are anticipated to replace gasoline as the principal source of energy in future cars and military vehicles. Today, United States automobile manufacturers and defense contractors depend upon foreign suppliers — increasingly concentrated in Asia — for lithium ion battery cells.

I wish these guys a lot of luck for several reasons. The full release is here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The World According to Oil

Here's another post coming out of the recent NDU Admiral Moorer Military Energy Conference. This is a different way of looking at the world, wouln't you say? And it's worthwhile noting that while 85% of reserves were available to the major International Oil Companies (IOCs like ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, etc.) as recently as the 1970's, widespread nationalization of oil assets since that time now means the IOCs are left to fight over less than 10% of the world's oil.

All that to say, next time gas prices go up, you can blame the big oil co's you're familiar with, but they will not be the primary cause of the pain. Not by a long shot. In fact, other than Saudi Aramco, they are the only orgs with the technology to get increasingly hard-to-reach oil out of the ground. Without them having access, a lot of that oil is going to remain right where it is.

Map Courtesy of US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett

Oil's Volativity Knife Cuts Both Ways

After thrashing the big oil-consuming economies on the march, and final leap, to nearly $150 this summer, oil's drop below $60 ... $50 ... $40 in late 2008 is scaring the dickens out of the largest oil-selling nations. This includes the OPEC cartel countries and other less-than-friendly places like Russia, Iran and Venezuela, who approved mega projects and payrolls under the assumption that expensive oil was here to stay. Now they're looking into the abyss as the global economic downturn settles in. 

Here's one account of the impact on "let's use energy as a weapon" Russia. Now the gun is pointing right at the heart of its fragile economy, and it's putting the Putin government under increasing pressure. Beyond fossil fuels it has few other wares to sell, excepting tanks and vodka. And, at home anyway, vodka sales are tanking.

JCTD + PSFT = Energy Efficiency Home Runs

JCTD = Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. PSTF = Power Surity Task Force. Follow this link to one of the best energy efficiency presentations I've seen lately. Deals with tents at forward operating bases (FOBs) as well as CONUS structures. One of the slides breaks it out like this:

Old School Approach

• Four 300Kw generators for ten un-insulated tents
  
• Total of 1.2MW, or an average of 120Kw per tent
  
• Was not enough, so two more 300Kw generators brought in for a total of 1.8MW, or an average of 180 Kw per tent
  

PSFT Approach

• Foam-insulated tent with permanent HVAC requires a 30Kw generator
  
• 75% - 83% reduction in the generator size
  
• Straight-line projection (approx 75% - 83% ) fuel savings

By retired Army Colonel Dan Nolan, founder of Sabot 6, it's about action, not talk. Action that's recently been taken, is happening right now, and will be happening shortly,that will save the DOD time, money, and most importantly, the lives of its most valuable resource of all: the troops.

Photo: USA Today

Oil News from the Advanced Naval Propulsion Symposium 2008

Morning update: on further reflection, what is said below for the Navy would of course hold true for the other services. Aircraft and heavy ground vehicle engineers, when asked to comment on what future fuels will propel their vehicles for the next 1/2 century, are in the exact same position. Looking out from 2008, there is simply no viable substitute for oil on the horizon.

As reported in today's DefenseNews, one summary quote from this conference on this one says it all:

The surface U.S. Navy will remain dependent on fossil fuels for at least the next 40 to 50 years.

That's what the engineers said. And barring enormous, unexpected innovations in ship propulsion, it's probably a conservative estimate. But still, it's kind of spooky. Today's $40 oil may make it seem like a benign forecast, but the ripple effects of low oil prices make it clear that the next economic cycle will witness global economies competing for far less oil than was available when prices spiked this summer. The implications for future prices are sobering.

That means a responsible Navy, knowing it's going to need oil for another half a century, would either begin hoarding money for future purchases at much higher prices, or hoarding low priced oil in a Naval equivalent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But as neither of these will likely come to pass, the Navy should work as hard as it can to prove the symposium's prediction wrong, no matter how difficult that challenge may appear today.

Photo: US Navy