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Military largest U.S. energy consumer Study by retired officers highlights impacts of climate change, energy choices on military; nation’s aging electric grid a big issue Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Energy is a crucial issue for the U.S. military and a recent study by retired senior military officers concluded that fossil fuel dependence and a fragile national electric grid are threats to U.S. military, economic and climate security.
The study, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security,” is by the CNA Military Advisory Board and is available online: www.cna.org/nationalsecurity/energy/. CNA, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Va., began as the Center for Naval Analysis in the 1940s; its Web site says it pioneered operations analysis during World War II and has been researching and analyzing “the complex scientific, operational and policy challenges that are facing the public sector and public decision makers” for more than half a century.
One of the members of the CNA Military Advisory Board, retired Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, presented the report’s conclusions to Commonwealth North in Anchorage Oct. 6.
Climate change adds stress In an earlier report, issued in 2007, the CNA Military Advisory Board concluded that climate change would act as an additional stressor on the world’s most troubled regions and least capable governments, McGinn said.
That’s of concern because America’s military can end up in those regions.
The second study, begun in early 2008 and issued in May of this year, focused on energy, McGinn said.
The authors, 12 retired admirals and generals, said in an introduction to the report that they look at America’s energy posture “from a singular perspective. We gauge our energy choices solely by their impact on America’s national security.”
Security risks The 2007 report found that “climate change, national security and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges,” the board said in its 2009 report, which builds on the 2007 finding.
Risks created by America’s energy policies include:
• Dependence on oil weakens the nation’s international leverage, “undermines foreign policy objectives and entangles America with unstable or hostile regimes.”
• Inefficient use of oil by the military, and overreliance on oil, “undermines combat effectiveness and exacts a huge price tag — in dollars and lives.”
• Dependence on fossil fuels “undermines economic stability, which is critical to national security.”
• The domestic electric grid is fragile which makes military installations and their critical infrastructure “unnecessarily vulnerable to incident, whether deliberate or accidental.”
Defense largest consumer The Department of Defense is the nation’s largest user of energy, and by addressing its own energy security needs, the department “can stimulate the market for new energy technologies and vehicle efficiencies.”
Historically the department has been a technology innovator and that role as “a technological innovator and incubator should be harnessed to benefit the nation as a whole.”
The report lists six priorities for energy security:
• Integrating energy security and climate change into national security and military planning processes;
• Designing and deploying systems “to reduce the burden that inefficient energy places on our troops as they engage overseas”;
• Knowledge by the department of its carbon bootprint;
• Transformation of energy use at Defense installations through “aggressive pursuit of energy efficiency, smart grid technology and electrification” of the department’s vehicle fleet;
• Expanded adoption of distributed and renewable energy generation at department installations; and
• Transformation of the departments “long-term operational energy posture through investments in low-carbon liquid fuels that satisfy military performance requirements.”
The public role But national security is not just the role of the military, the report said.
It’s also the role of American civilians — and American civilians have “shown the capacity and willingness to participate in meaningful efforts to help our country in time of need,” the report said, citing civilian contributions in World War II, which “shortened the war and saved lives.”
The report called on Americans to help meet emerging security challenges today by making the country more energy efficient: using less electricity in homes and offices to reduce stress on a “fragile electric grid” while also reducing carbon emissions.
The report said the sacrifices American civilians made during World War II were for “reasons that are obvious in hindsight: they understood the stakes, and they were asked. With this report, we have tried to make known the current stakes by clearly articulating the need to establish energy security and plan for the effects of climate change.”
There is still debate over climate change: “We’ve had these arguments ourselves,” the report’s authors said. “But there are moments in a nation’s history when the confluence of events suggests that the time is ripe for action.”
Fuel burdens military Supply lines delivering fuel and other supplies can stretch over great distances; can require permission for overland transport from neighboring countries; and, the report said, make attractive targets for enemy forces.
It takes a “tremendous show of force” to protect convoys.
“Today, armored vehicles, helicopters, and fixed-wing fighter aircraft protect the movement of fuel and other supplies. This is an extraordinary commitment of combat resources, and it offers an instructive glimpse of the true costs of energy inefficiency and reliance on oil.”
Logistics operations are nothing new, the report said, but the fuel intensity of combat missions today adds to the costs and the risks.
“As in-theater demand increases, more combat troops and assets must divert to protect fuel convoys rather than directly engage enemy combatants.”
That reduces combat effectiveness, but the report said that because troops need fuel to fight, there is no alternative.
A study of the 2003 I Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq found that only 10 percent of ground fuel was used for “heavy vehicles that deliver lethal force,” while 90 percent was consumed by vehicles delivering and protecting fuel and forces.
One of the most significant consumers of fuel at forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Iraq is electric generators, a function of what the report called the electrification of combat.
Forward operating bases include communications infrastructure, living quarters, administrative areas, eating facilities and industrial activities required by combat systems, all powered by electricity from towed-in generators which use the same fuel used by combat systems, and coming from the same vulnerable supply chain.
The generators also power the batteries, more than 26 pounds, carried by each infantry soldier on a 72-hour mission in Afghanistan. The report said the batteries are 20 to 25 percent of the weight of the packs carried by the troops, weight which hinders operational capability and causes muscular-skeletal injuries.
“Soldiers and marines may not be tethered directly to fuel lines, but they are weighed down by electrical and battery systems that are dangerously inefficient.”
Gain from efficiency An Army study done in 2006 in Iraq “concluded that energy efficiency measures would produce the deepest, fastest and most cost-effective reductions in electricity, and hence fuel, demand,” reducing risks and saving lives.
The cost of fuel for military use includes significant delivery costs: $42 per gallon to deliver fuel to an aircraft in-flight and from $15 to hundreds of dollar per gallon to deliver fuel to the battlefield, the report said.
Retired Air Force General Ronald E. Keys said in the report that peacetime military installations can gain efficiencies from off-the-shelf products such as better lighting, slow speed and hybrid vehicles and metering for buildings.
While some of those efficiencies can be adopted for expeditionary use, Keys said, tactical systems are more expensive and are around for 30 years or more, “and you can only do so much with the turbines and diesels you have.”
“Even if you had the technology in hand today, it will take decades to replace the legacy force. The key is that you have to plan for it and pay for it upfront,” he said.
Electric grid vulnerable Domestic military installations — responsible for critical systems that must be operational 24 hours a day, year-round — are almost completely dependent on the national electrical grid, the report said.
And that grid is susceptible to extreme weather and attacks on the power system, physical as well as from hackers.
A military study done after the extensive 2003 blackout in the Northeast, Midwest and Ontario concluded the electric grid is “fragile and vulnerable … placing critical military and homeland defense missions at unacceptable risk of extended outage.”
That study found the military’s backup power inadequately sized for its missions.
An extended power outage could jeopardize missions abroad because:
• The military’s logistics operates on a just-in-time delivery system based in the U.S., a system which would not function without power;
• Combat zone data are often analyzed in the U.S. and if the data centers lose power military commanders in the field may not have current data to plan their next moves; and
• Electrical power loss would affect refineries, ports, repair depots and other commercial or military centers supporting troop readiness.
The authors of the report noted that President Obama, Congress and major utilities are discussing an upgrade of the national electrical grid.
“We add our voice to this discussion with a singular perspective: We see that our national security is directly linked to the security and reliability of our system of energy production and delivery.”
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