Skilluminati Research

The Unlikely Green Revolution of the US Military

Posted Nov 14, 2008 3 comments

The best argument for "green" anything has never been morality -- it's just better business. When environmentalist genius Amory Lovins started his consulting group, the Rocky Mountain Institute, he probably never figured his clients would include Wal-Mart, Monsanto and Lockheed Martin. Massive scale leads to massive costs, though, and corporations are learning that their bottom line improves as their waste gets eliminated.

When it comes to massive scale, nobody beats the United States Military. Maintaining over 700 bases with 577,000 buildings worldwide and waging two simultaneous wars consumes over a trillion dollars per year. Despite a reputation for corruption and $900 toilet seats, the US Military is actually a very efficient machine. Through subsidiaries like DARPA and the Army Engineers Corp, they're also no strangers to experimental and fringe technology. If something works, they'll be interested -- and it's increasingly clear that gas power is not working out:

The rising cost of fuel has the Pentagon pressuring the four branches of the armed services to cut their energy bills wherever they can. It's easy to see why—every US $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs the Air Force, for example, an extra $600 million. The Army, Navy, and Marines, too, are tearing through their budgets. In response, energy managers at bases across the country are reevaluating how they light, insulate, heat, and cool their buildings. The most ambitious of these managers have begun aggressively adopting renewable-energy technologies. Together they have emerged as a distributed network of clean-energy advocates...

This movement is even more impressive because it's decentralized. As consultant Thomas Morehouse bluntly states: "There is no energy policy. There is no coordinated Defense Department program for renewable-energy deployment and no single office in the Pentagon that tracks it."

The proposals outlined are remarkable: massive computer-controlled solar plants at Nellis AFB, "tactical biorefineries" that convert food waste into fuel and energy, wind power investment throughout the US, and one of the world's largest geothermal stations in the Chocolate Mountains of California. The military's timeline is more ambitious than anything the civilian government would attempt, too: several of the bases profiled in the article plan on being completely self-sufficient by 2015. More importantly, it's working. McGuire AFB in New Jersey has cut their electricity usage by 14% in a single year. As these small breakthroughs get high-profile attention, expect to see a snowball effect as bases around the world try to emulate the domestic trailblazers.

As Don Juhasz, chief of energy and utilities for the U.S. Army, puts it, "There are enough of us deep within the DOD who see that, long term, if we're going to be here 50 years from now, we need to be leaders and drive the country towards the future we want. We need to set the example."

Source: IEEE Spectrum, one of the best science magazines today.

Filed in: Future Tech

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