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Aggressive new efforts are underway to end the U.S. military’s reliance on oil by catalyzing clean energy technology innovation and adoption. That is exactly the right approach to enhance the strategic and tactical capabilities of the armed forces, buttress national security, and help repower the economy, according to a recent report published by an elite group of more than a dozen retired generals and flag officers hailing from all branches of the U.S. military.
“Continued over-reliance on fossil fuels will increase the risks to America’s future economic prosperity and will thereby diminish the military’s ability to meet the security challenges of the rapidly changing global strategic environment,” according to “Powering America’s Economy: Energy Innovation at the Crossroads of National Security Challenges,” a July report published by the CNA Military Advisory Board.
Earlier this month I interviewed Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Retired), a decorated 35-year Navy veteran now working as the President of the CNA Institute of Public Policy Research. We discussed oil dependency, associated threats to our nation’s security, economic wellbeing, and the lives of our servicemen and women, and the potential for DoD to accelerate the development and adoption of clean energy.
Below is the full Q&A with Vice Admiral Gunn, which accompanies the exclusive Energy Collective column, “Can the Military Lead the Clean Energy Charge,” which can be read here.
Q: Vice Admiral Gunn, thank you for speaking with me and sharing your views with theEnergyCollective.com.
This new CNA report calls for the U.S. Department of Defense and armed services to take on a proactive leadership role in the nation's efforts to transition away from fossil fuels towards a set of clean and efficient energy alternatives. Why does CNA believe clean energy innovation should be a priority for our nation's armed forces?
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (ret.), President of the CNA Institute for Public Policy Research: “The Military Advisory Board of CNA met and considered over the last several months the security issues of and the nation’s opportunities in pursuing new technologies in sustainable, domestic energy. We have concluded that we must capitalize on Defense Department work that is already underway, and create new opportunities for government and industry to cooperate. Our report, “Powering America’s Economy: Energy Innovation at the Crossroad of National Security Challenges” summarizes our thoughts.
The nation’s fossil fuel dependence affects every one of our institutions; it has an especially negative, and direct, impact on our military.
The Defense Science Board examined the Defense Department’s energy challenges in 2008 and concluded that DoD’s energy inefficiency and reliance on oil created many serious challenges to military effectiveness, including cost.
As is true for the rest of the country, there are significant economic repercussions of heavy oil dependence in DoD. Given the size of DoD and its rate of energy consumption, the effects are especially acute.
In 2008, approximately $20 billion of DoD’s budget was spent on energy, of which $3.8 billion purchased electricity for installations. Every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs the Department $1.3 billion.
That money comes at a direct and serious cost to other war fighting readiness priorities. The battlefield logistics burden due largely to the delivery of fuel supplies reduces combat effectiveness and creates acute tactical vulnerabilities.
Q: If I may ask, why DoD? What does the Department bring to the nation's energy innovation quest that other federal agencies or the private sector lack?
The Department of Defense is the largest single energy consumer in the nation and one of the largest landholders. DoD offers effective demonstration evaluation and testing platforms for clean energy technologies partially because DoD-administered lands cover every region and climate zone and DoD installations are microcosms of American cities and towns. DoD wields enormous buying power, and influences the directions taken by industry when setting defense acquisition specifications. No other agency or private sector entity operates at this scale.
DoD also has the advantage of a unique culture. The Department can harness the leadership characteristics inherent in the military culture and leverage its organizational discipline to cultivate strategic relationships with the private sector and within the federal interagency network.
Finally, DoD imparts a special urgency to its energy requirements stemming directly from today’s real world military engagements. These engagements also provide the opportunity to test and evaluate energy technologies in austere environments and under battlefield conditions. (Battery testing is an excellent example.)
Q: As the CNA report reminds readers, DOD has a long history in driving revolutionary new technologies. From radios and microchips to jet engines, GPS, and the Internet, DOD has time and time again catalyzed private sector innovation and entrepreneurialism by acting as both the initial funder and the first demanding customer of new innovations and technologies.
What parallels do you see between these historic examples of DOD-driven technology innovation and today's efforts to a spur clean energy revolution? What will be different this time?
These historical examples of innovation are similar to today’s efforts in that all are driven by urgent purpose. The historical desire to maintain technological superiority over the Soviet Union as illustrated by the “space race” must be recognized as matched by today’s need to achieve energy security. Many of the innovative technologies of the past were spun out of the Space Program or resulted from large directed research programs such as the Manhattan Project.
However, today we of CNA’s Military Advisory Board hope to foster the achievement of two goals.
First, we must achieve greater cooperation and alignment among the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) (including the national laboratories), the private sector, and DoD.
And second, we must cultivate greater participation by small business entrepreneurs.
We envision that a new, Operational Energy Innovation Center recommended in the report will better connect DoD with small business innovators, helping to pull their inventions through the “innovation chain.” The Operational Energy Innovation Fund that we propose will further enable private sector involvement.
Q: Are there key programs within DOD that you see as playing a critical role in energy innovation?
Yes. First, Congress has established a new position, the Director of Operational Energy Policy and Programs. The director will work with the official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) responsible for installation (base, station, facility) energy to establish and coordinate new energy innovation programs across the services.
We found that Air Force and Navy biofuels development programs are likely to play a key role in innovation. Of DoD’s research and development investments made in energy since 2008, the largest single expenditure (accounting for more than $67 million) has been in pursuit of a liquid fuel to replace the petroleum-based jet fuel used by the military services. The Navy and Air Force have both demonstrated jets that use new blends of biofuels. It is possible that DoD will generate a demand signal fairly soon allowing these fuels to become viable on a wider commercial scale. This is a possible area of further exploration for the CNA Military Advisory Board.
The Secretary of the Navy’s directive to deploy the “Great Green Fleet” soon, an aircraft carrier strike group powered entirely by nuclear and biofuels, will provide great impetus for new programs.
In a sidebar to the “Powering America’s Economy” report, [Brigadier General Gerald E.] Galloway [USA, Ret.] mentions a possible special role for DoD installations as test beds for small modular nuclear reactors.
The last of the five recommendations of our CNA MAB report identifies two key programs, Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) and the Energy Conservation Investment Program (ECIP) deserving of an overhaul to improve energy efficiency and support conservation while funding the acquisition of technologies. Under their current charters, these programs support the purchase of older, well-established energy technologies. The programs should be redesigned to help provide an initial market for new clean energy technologies. For example in the ESPC program, DOD should mitigate the financial risk to energy-providers who experiment with cutting edge energy technologies by guaranteeing a minimum return on investment commensurate with what would be returned by mature and aging technologies.
Q: Are there limits to DOD's ability to engage in energy innovation as the Department and its programs are currently set up?
Yes, the Department’s research activities are complex and can allow redundant work, with attendant cost and wasted effort. Without citing specific examples we did find cases where one part of the research community was unaware of similar research in others.
In our report, we advise a more structured approach toward sharing of energy information within the DoD research and development enterprise. (For example, this could be achieved through a comprehensive on-line database of projects.)
We hope that the closer alignment and tighter cooperation with DOE recommend by our report and reflected in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed on 24 July will also assist in this effort.
Energy saving also needs to be better rewarded. In the area of installation management, DoD should incentivize the purchase of new clean energy products by refining the terms of Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) and the Energy Conservation Investment Program (ECIP). [See response to last question]
Q: Would you propose the creation of any new energy innovation-oriented programs or agencies within DoD?
It is generally better to work within existing frameworks than to accept the turmoil associated with creating new agencies. However, we recommended the establishment of an Operational Energy Innovation Center that would require a very modest amount of new funding, if any.
Q: Describe what you see as the optimal relationship between DoD and the Department of Energy or other federal agencies involved in energy research (Department of Commerce, NSF, USDA, etc.).
The MOU signed July 24th between DoD and DoE offers a good framework for synchronizing R&D. This type of formal agreement will likely lead to more (and better) organized collaboration than have the ad hoc relationships among individual managers that has characterized previous technology and R&D cooperation.
Q: It is often asserted in climate and energy debates that, "We have all the technologies we need" to get off of fossil fuels and solve climate change, "all we lack is political will."
In contrast, this report is focused on the ways in which DoD can act to spur energy research and innovation and act as an early customer of emerging technologies that may offer higher risks or higher costs than the private sector is normally willing to bear, not just scaling up today's "on the shelf" energy technologies.
Does that mean that you and others in the armed services (either currently or retired) see energy innovation and new and improved clean energy technologies as critical to achieving national energy security and national security objectives?
Yes. Let me restate the first finding of our “Powering America’s Economy” report:
America’s energy choices are inextricably linked to national and economic security.
The nation’s heavy use of fossil energy leaves America unacceptably vulnerable to hostile nations and is detrimental to American foreign policy. Economically, the nation’s heavy oil dependence diverts hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy each year and leaves American businesses and governmental agencies vulnerable to unpredictable price volatility. In the case of oil, unless the nation significantly decreases its dependence, declining supplies combined with increasing global demand will have severe impacts on the American economy and our ability to remain militarily strong.
Q: Like all government agencies, DOD is under pressure to reduce budgets and spending as concerns over the federal debt rise and both the President and Congress increasingly prioritize deficit reduction efforts. Yet this report calls on DOD to enter into a new role as a catalyst of energy innovation, funding important research, demonstrating, evaluation, testing, procurement and early adoption of cutting-edge energy technologies. This raises a set of questions:
DoD should only enable the development of energy technologies that are critical to its key mission of defending the nation. Achieving this goal is more a question of better aligning existing priorities with other agencies and the private sector than seeking new funding, especially during wartime. Rather than diverting resources from war-fighting priorities, promoting clean energy technologies such as lighter batteries and finding energy efficient solutions that can reduce the number of fuel convoys will help win today’s wars.
Q: If you had one message for Congressional policymakers or the Administration right now regarding clean energy innovation, what would it be?
The United States government should take bold and aggressive action to support clean energy technology innovation through clear and predictable market signals for investment, development, and scale-up of clean energy technologies and more effective alignment of federal research organizations and priorities.
Q: Anything you'd like to add?
CNA and its Military Advisory Board are privileged to serve by contributing to the discussion of some of our nation’s most pressing problems. The MAB has carried out three studies that highlight, first the national security implications of our changing climate, second our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign suppliers, and now on the special position occupied by our defense establishment in capitalizing on the opportunities inherent in pursuing new technologies in renewable energy. We hope that by offering our considered advice, based on more that 500 years of collective military experience, we can help mobilize Americans’ creativity, energy, and industry to address some of the most urgent national security issues of our time.
Click Here to read the accompanying column, “Can the Military Lead the Clean Energy Charge,” exclusively at theEnergyCollective.com
