An Important Argument to Watch for DOD's Energy Future

In the energy sector, the price of a barrel of oil isn't the only thing that's highly volatile. The future is too.

Here's a LINK to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal where energy gurus Daniel Yergin and Vinod Khosla debate how quickly cleantech will begin to substantially supplant fossil fuels in the US.

This is Yergin responding to a question about the future, starting with a look back to the very recent past:

... [T]he world was going to run out of oil. It was peak oil. And we were going to be importing so much natural gas that we would be paying $100 billion a year to import natural gas. That was five years ago. The picture changed. The picture will change in five years.

and,

[Regarding national security], we've talked a lot about natural gas today. But what is also striking is what's happening in U.S. oil, with what's called tight oil and the development of that. You look at Canadian oil sands. You look at what's happening offshore of Brazil. And you see this kind of re-balancing of world oil going on, where probably 10 years from now the Western Hemisphere will be getting a lot less oil from the Eastern Hemisphere to begin with.

In case you couldn't tell, DOD Energy Bloggers like Dan and myself have a passion for cleantech and a more sustainable energy future for the US and the US military. But more than that, we put the interests and security of the country and the armed forces well ahead of our goals for new energy sources and energy efficiency.

I think you can hear in Yergin's response a sense that the world has just shifted, and that the US has moved quickly from a net energy importer to a potential energy exporter and that this condition may hold for the near and mid-term future.

Clearly, DOD's got to keep itself fully up-to-speed on the current version of the energy future and I believe it is.  This re-balancing thing ... there's security in that. Andy Bochman

QDR 2010 Directly Addresses DOD's Operational and Facilities Energy Issues

I admit it: back in June of 2009 I had my doubts. But the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is finally out, and energy got its due - approximately one page out of one hundred twenty eight. Not bad, when you consider previous QDRs never considered the topic. Starting on page 84 of the report, I've captured and reprinted the 4 energy specific paragraphs here and will break it down, with the points I consider most important / helpful highlighted in yellow.

First, I like that they take a stab at defining energy security, and when they do it's kept short and sweet:

Energy security for the Department means having assured access to reliable supplies of energy and the ability to protect and deliver sufficient energy to meet operational needs.

There's a lot they leave out that others try to cram in. I say: good job. Re: the definition - just want to make sure we don't spend so much time and energy on the protect and deliver parts that we significantly impair our ability to prosecute war ... or whatever else it is our troops are told to accomplish. The QDR addresses that concern in the next sentence:

Energy efficiency can serve as a force multiplier, because it increases the range and endurance of forces in the field and can reduce the number of combat forces diverted to protect energy supply lines, which are vulnerable to both asymmetric and conventional attacks and disruptions.

... and points out additional benefits to fielding a leaner, meaner force. So how's this goodness going to come about? By baking better energy thinking in right up front the way it's already been told to do by congress, and the way two Defense Science Boards and the GAO have already recommended:

DoD must incorporate geostrategic and operational energy considerations into force planning, requirements development, and acquisition processes. To address these challenges, DoD will fully implement the statutory requirement for the energy efficiency Key Performance Parameter and fully burdened cost of fuel set forth in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act.

Who's going to make this happen? Why the DOD Energy Boss, of course. The QDR language makes it sound like a fait accompli:

The Department will also investigate alternative concepts for improving operational energy use, including the creation of an innovation fund administered by the new Director of Operational Energy to enable components to compete for funding on projects that advance integrated energy solutions.

Sounds good, but I've got the feeling they're being a little too optimistic on this one. See here.

I like everything in this next two paragraphs, but I'm going to let them ride without comment and just a few highlights:

The Department is increasing its use of renewable energy supplies and reducing energy demand to improve operational effectiveness, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in support of U.S. climate change initiatives, and protect the Department from energy price fluctuations. The Military Departments have invested in noncarbon power sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass energy at domestic installations and in vehicles powered by alternative fuels, including hybrid power, electricity, hydrogen, and compressed national gas. Solving military challenges—through such innovations as more efficient generators, better batteries, lighter materials, and tactically deployed energy sources—has the potential to yield spin-off technologies that benefit the civilian community as well. DoD will partner with academia, other U.S. agencies, and international partners to research, develop, test, and evaluate new sustainable energy technologies.

Indeed, the following examples demonstrate the broad range of Service energy innovations. By 2016, the Air Force will be postured to cost-competitively acquire 50 percent of its domestic aviation fuel via an alternative fuel blend that is greener than conventional petroleum fuel. Further, Air Force testing and standard-setting in this arena paves the way for the much larger commercial aviation sector to follow. The Army is in the midst of a significant transformation of its fleet of 70,000 non-tactical vehicles (NTVs), including the current deployment of more than 500 hybrids and the acquisition of 4,000 low-speed electric vehicles at domestic installations to help cut fossil fuel usage. The Army is also exploring ways to exploit the opportunities for renewable power generation to support operational needs: for instance, the Rucksack Enhanced Portable Power System (REPPS). The Navy commissioned the USS Makin Island, its first electric-drive surface combatant, and tested an F/A-18 engine on camelina-based biofuel in 2009—two key steps toward the vision of deploying a “green” carrier strike group using biofuel and nuclear power by 2016. The Marine Corps has created an Expeditionary Energy Office to address operational energy risk, and its Energy Assessment Team has identified ways to achieve efficiencies in today’s highly energy-intensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to reduce logistics and related force protection requirements.

Finally, the last paragraph brings it all home with the intent to address the brittle grid problem.

To address energy security while simultaneously enhancing mission assurance at domestic facilities, the Department is focusing on making them more resilient. U.S. forces at home and abroad rely on support from installations in the United States. DoD will conduct a coordinated energy assessment, prioritize critical assets, and promote investments in energy efficiency to ensure that critical installations are adequately prepared for prolonged outages caused by natural disasters, accidents, or attacks. At the same time, the Department will also take steps to balance energy production and transmission with the requirement to preserve the test and training ranges and the operating areas that are needed to maintain readiness.

They covered all the bases (no pun intended) as far as I'm concerned. There's another two-hundred or more pages of detail I would have like to have seen included on energy, but if they had, given all the other challenges facing the department at this time, it wouldn't be a QDR.

I'll pursue the usual path from this point on: reminding the Department that this is what it's told itself it needs to do on energy matters, and nudging it to move faster when it looks like other challenges, or more likely, mind-numbing bureaucratic inertia, tribal squabbling and/or status quo thinking get in the way of desperately needed progress.

Photo Credit: abnskyshark / Andrew Michael Smith @ Flickr

German Army to New German Wind Turbines: "Halt!"

A rock to the left and a hard place to the right: that's where the Germany finds itself on this issue. Like the rest of Europe, Germany needs to do everything it can to reduce its energy dependency on Russia, see here, here, here and here.

To that end, Germany has deployed more wind power than any other country on Earth and has plans to bring much more on line shortly.

But there's a catch of course. A debate is on over how much or how little fields full of large spinning composite blades impair radar's ability to do its job. Numerous links for this, here's one for you.

I'm not the Bundeswehr (thank goodness), but I know which way I'd go on this one. Post Cold War, I'd tune my radar policy and technology to adapt to a turbine filled world. GasProm's (Putin's) energy blackmail is a much more proximate threat to Germany's well being than a terrorist tank battalion stealthily slaloming through the windmills.

Photo of F-16 Radar: DefenseIndustryDaily.com

Convoy-Free Electricity Ready for Prime Time?

I'm not saying this company's solutions are ready to put old-fashioned field generators out of business. But I am suggesting that, for some applications, its mobile "Titan" and "Mojo," in individual and tandem configurations, begin to offer commanders a path away from the current, convoy-dependent status quo. Actually, with these solutions, unless the equipment is airlifted, one convoy is required to deliver the systems to station. But the beauty is, once it's on the job, it requires zero diesel or J-P8 to operate.

Had the chance to speak with an executive at mobile energy provider, White Door, and learned about the company's offerings and what these guys are up to. Founded 7 years ago to make self powered sensor platforms, mobile energy generation on a larger scale is now their goal ... and their offerings show they're beginning to reach it. Not only do these integrated wind, solar, battery and fuel cell systems provide reliable, nearly silent, low-heat signature power, they have a new unit that generates as much as 30 KW.

One potential weakness that would immediately give DOD planners pause would be the systems' dependency on intermittent energy sources. Well, it appears that White Door has tackled that problem. The executive said they purposely "over-engineer" each systems' energy storage, providing 5+ days of back-up capacity should the wind cease to blow and the sun cease to shine for that long. There's also an option for a fuel cell back-up should the 5-day capacity still cause concern.

The Marines are field testing these units right now. More info is available here.

A Mighty Wind: High Altitude Wind Power

One look at Sky Windpower's site will tell you the company and its potential products are still more potential than kinetic. However, that doesn't mean they're not worth a look as DOD ponders options for solving the brittle grid challenge to CONUS facilities. Two Standford researches have just finished a study that shows some of the greatest concentrations of high altitude wind power can be found near some of the world's largest centers of power demand, including the eastern coast of USA. This article provides more detail on the promise and the potential pitfalls of this visually captivating concept.

American Superconductor to help US Tap Untapped Wind Resources

Ever been on a ship on the ocean (not everyone has, you know). But if you have, you've seen how unrelenting offshore winds can be. The May issue of National Defense Magazine has an article that focuses on this large, undeveloped US energy resource. Even without new technology, there's the potential to provide a major fraction of US energy needs with offshore wind farms.

However, American Superconductor Corp's High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) wire has the potential to enable turbines in the 10 MW class (3 MW are typically the largest found today) that also reduce the total weight by about one-third. This could be a big win for the industry, no pun intended. But before we get too excited, there's one persistent problem to keep in mind. The article cautions:

One of the greatest obstacles is the nation’s antiquated electric grid. An Energy Department study reports that approximately 300,000 megawatts-worth of wind projects are awaiting grid connection because of inadequate transmission capacity.

So, don't forget when you hear about progress with smart grid technology and standards, it's not just the savings we'll reap from resting power plants due to better energy management, it's also the ready renewable resources a smarter and better grid will enable to come online.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Event Announcement: Army Energy Security Forum

You may have been encouraged to learn just how proactive the Army is being with Energy Security from this post a couple of days ago. If you want to build on that and learn in person what the Army is up to in energy, across the board, I recommend you get to the registration site pronto. It's cheap for regular folks ($150) but open to government folks by invite only.

Details

Date: Nov 17 (one day session)

Location: Landsdowne Resort, Landsdowne VA 
Working Groups on:

• Solar
  
• Wind
  
• Geothermal
  
• Biomass
  
• Nuclear
  
• Conventional Fuels
  
• Investment and Contracting
  
• Regulations and Laws and Policies
  
• Grids (includes microgrids, mini grids, etc.)
  
• Improving Vehicle Fuel Efficiency through Management and Technology
  
• New Technologies for Energy Efficiency/Demand Reduction
  

I'd like to be there, but will be getting ready for the 4th Annual Conference on Clean Energy in Boston. But for those of you who can make it to Landsdowne: Go and get smart.

SkyBuilt Mobile Power, Base Grid Dependency and the Brittle Grid

If you've read this blog a few times during its relatively short existence, you may have noticed I keep coming back to the Feb 2008, Defense Science Board Task Force report on Energy and the DOD. One of the two main problems the task force calls out had to do with energy security related to the enormous amount of fuel DOD needs to operate. The other has to do with how totally dependent DOD bases are on getting electricity from the grid. According to DOD and DOE senior leaders I've had a chance to talk with recently, solving both of these problems is considered absolutely critical.

Yet while work to address fuel dependency gets lots of press, working to free bases of their over reliance on the brittle (i.e. unreliable) grid, if it's happening, is less visible. Last week while discussing the STAR-TIDES program that includes mobile and often renewable sources of power, Dr. Linton Wells, Distinguished Research Fellow and Force Transformation Chair at NDU,  said In-Q-Tel-backed SkyBuilt could possibly play a helpful role. Check out their site and see whether you think their technologies could scale to the levels needed to keep an operational base operational in a time of natural disaster or terrorism.

Photo courtesy of SkyBuilt Power

DOD Renewables Deployment Update

IEEE provides a nice round-up of current and near-future DOD renewables deployments.  At 11.9% today, DOD is working overtime to reach its goal of 25% renewable power by 2025. Here's a few of them for you (I've listed capacities when provided):

• 270 MWs of geothermal @ China Lake, California (now) 
  
• 14 MWs of solar @ Nellis AFB, Nevada (now)
  
• 3.8 MWs of wind @ Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (now)
  
• 30 MWs of geothermal @ Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada (coming)
• Geothermal @ Hawthorne Army Depot, Nevada (coming)
• Wind @ Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas (coming)
• 8+ MWs of solar, biomass, geothermal @ McGuire AFB, New Jersey (coming)
  
• Solar and wind @ Fort Huachuca, Arizona (now)
• Solar @ Fort Drum, New York (now)

Lots of activity, lots of opportunity. In the face of tremendous budget pressures, renewables projects have to pay for themselves, and quickly. Fortunately, for most of these, when coupled with renewables incentives in certain states, that's exactly what's happening.

STAR-TIDE's Mobile, Sustainable Power Solutions

Inspired in part by RMI's Amory Lovins, this is worth learning about, so please bear with me. Dr. Linton Wells, NDU Transformational Chair and Distinguished Fellow, and former Undersecretary of Defense for NII, briefed a small group of bloggers on Wednesday about an ambitious (and ambitiously named) program called STAR-TIDES. I'll spell it out for you. TIDES = Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. And TIDES is just one small part of a larger intiative called STAR, which = Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research. Besides NDU, other orgs involved on the US side include OSD and JFCOM. And yes there are other sides, because this program isn't just international, it's also cross service, cross agency (e.g., DOD, DHS) and cross cultural.

The energy aspect comes into play in its capacity to deploy in a variety of often-sustainable (e.g., solar, wind) mobile power configurations (small, medium, large) into stressed environments to help out folks in need. I'll be posting on this again, but for more info now please see the program's web site here, and if you want something more concrete, visit Fort McNair today or the Pentagon courtyard next week, where demonstration units on display. Key mobile power participants include Solar Stik and SkyBuilt Power.

Photo courtesy of Solar Stik

Shipping Savings

While the Navy tries its best to design, fund and procure ships to modernize the fleet, the high costs of fuel are undercutting its efforts. Here are two developments that, while doing little to enhance lethality or maneuverability, may help it substantially reduce costs during peacetime operations.

First comes Japanese work on adding solar generation to a 60K ton cargo ship which is estimated to reduce diesel consumption by 6%. Then there's a new wind energy solution that's far afield from T Boone's Texas turbine dreams. A really big kite mounted on a container ship just saved the owners 20% of their fuel costs. Individually we're talking many millions of dollars of savings per year. Together, wind and solar might save enough energy to allow for the purchase of a few new ships that otherwise would not have been attainable.

On a lighter note, I liked this comment from a reader on the site covering the kite technology breakthrough:

Oh, my! Next thing you know they'll install really tall poles on the ships with these crossbeam things and big sheets of canvas ... I know: Let's call them "sails"!!!

Photo courtesy of Beluga SkySails