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Who's super serious about renewable energy and repelling climate change? The US military, of all people.
New ideas for 2011.
The Tyee offers its readers 10 brave new ideas, big and not so big, aimed at making life better this year and beyond.
[Editor's Note: Here begins The Tyee's latest New Ideas for the New Year, our popular annual series highlighting creative ideas for improving our lives and communities. We'll publish a new one starting today until Dec. 31.]
One of these days, Ottawa's oil patch salesmen might want to sit down with the U.S. military and have a real "man-up" talk.
By any standard, the guys and gals in uniform now make Greenpeace look like the Boy Scouts.
In fact admirals, generals and colonels have seen the enemy, and it's oil. They don't care if the stuff is bloody or dirty; they just want to get off pricey crude, asap.
They also believe that climate change, another byproduct of the Oil Age, poses a serious security threat to civilization, as we know it. Not surprisingly, people call these tough hombres, "the Green Hawks."
Around the same time Canada's political elites started to dunk their donuts in bitumen, the U.S. military experienced an energy epiphany in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blood will do that.
Oil as 'tactical liability'
It all started when insurgents targeted the military's long, cumbersome fuel supply lines with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). When the 400-mile-long highway from the port of Kuwait to Baghdad became a shooting gallery, diesel fuel became a liability in a country floating on oil.
In some months, as many as 40 to 50 Marines died guarding convoys ferrying fuel and water to forward bases. Most perished in blown-up Humvees.
In response, Maj.-Gen Richard Zilmer, the commander of 30,000 marines in western Iraq, issued a startling "priority one" request in 2006. Recognizing that oil had become a tactical liability, he called for a "self sustainable energy solution."
Zilmer argued that green power could reduce "the number of convoys while providing an additional capability to outlying bases ...with photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines."
The request stunned a lot of officers. "When did our Marines become Birkenstock wearing tree huggers," thought Col. Dan Nolan at the Pentagon's Rapid Equipping Force. But when the engineer realized it was all about saving lives and reducing the size of the military's energy tail, he devised some novel solutions.
Green gear
For starters, the military insulated tents with foam to reduce the demand for diesel generators to run air conditioners. (The military earned back the $95-million investment in fuel savings in just six months.) The army also brought in solar panels. Not only did the green forward operating bases save lives but the reforms halved fossil fuel demand, too.
(Nolan recently retired and now works for Sabot 6, an energy efficiency group, and contributes to a sharp blog on energy use in the military.)
As the green revolution took hold among the officer corps, the Department of Defense (DOD) began to review its startling oil vulnerabilities with a 2008 document called More Fight Less Fuel, a rewrite of 2001 Defense Science Board's largely ignored, More Capable Warfighting Through Reduced Fuel Burden.
The More Fight report concluded that the military's dependence on fossil fuel was now 16 times more intensive than during World War II and amounted to a security threat itself.
Concluded the bold report: "Aggressively developing and applying energy-saving technologies to military applications would potentially do more to solve the most pressing long-term challenges facing DOD and our national security than any other signal investment area."
In 2007 the U.S. military, the largest oil buying institution in the world, consumed 363,000 barrels of oil a day.
That's more than a quarter of oil sands production, 90 per cent more than Ireland's annual consumption, or 20 times Iceland's annual consumption.
An armored Humvee gets four miles to the gallon while an Abrams tank gets two miles.
A B-52 bomber burns enough fuel in an hour to sustain an American household for two years.
Sources: Department of Defense; Reuters; Amory Lovins and Amanda Little (Power Trip).
As the world's largest institutional consumer of oil, the U.S. military burns its way through more than one per cent of U.S. oil demand or 132.5 million barrels a year. A decade ago it was a $4-billion addiction. Today the military's fuel bill has become an $18-billion drain on resources. Every time oil goes up a dollar, the military forks over another $130 million to keep its vehicles on the road.
Given that peak oil means the end of affordable petroleum, most military leaders have embraced a new refrain: "Unleash us from the tether of oil." An army that burns less hydrocarbons, simply gains more endurance and resilience.
Green guerilla thinking now permeates a lot of military reading. One 2007 paper by the Army Environmental Policy Institute, for example, laid out the need for renewables with Sierra Club enthusiasm: "Use of renewable energy systems will enhance mobility, maneuverability, survivability, sustainability and stealth and yet decrease detection, storage, transportation needs and waste."
'To be sparing is to forestall'
The report went on to quote Lao-Tse, the great Chinese philosopher: "In managing affairs there is no better advice than to be sparing. To be sparing is to forestall. To forestall is to be prepared and strengthened. To be prepared and strengthened is to be ever successful. To be ever successful is to have infinite capacity."
Such wisdom has spread like insulated foam tents in Afghanistan. A 2010 study by the Centre for New American Security pointedly recommended that the U.S. military should "set an overarching energy goal of managing a smooth transition beyond petroleum over the next thirty years." Thirty years.
The report calls for innovation, discipline, conservation as well as planning for uncertain futures, all activities generally ignored by the Canadian government.
Every branch of the U.S. military now boasts green hawks. Take Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice for example. He doesn't think the energy status quo or the petroleum age is worth the cost in terms of national debt and soldier's lives anymore.
Preparing for peak oil by 2015
That's why he promotes wind turbines at Guantanamo Bay and solar panels that put juice on the grid in Iraq. Rice also thinks that peak oil will occur by 2015 and that the U.S. government is not prepared for future oil shocks. Nor does he regard bitumen as anything more than an interim fuel source with extreme liabilities.
In Afghanistan, the commander of the U.S. Marine Corp, General James Conway openly deplores the fact that a gallon of fuel purchased for a dollar can become as rich as $400 by the time it reaches soldiers in the field due to insurgent attacks and logistical nightmares. As a consequence, the Marines are now deploying solar gear in bloody Helmand province.
Not surprisingly, Conway proposes to reduce the corps' oil addiction by 40 per cent within 10 years.
Robert Magnus, the former assistant commandant of the marine corps, speaks just as radically as Conway. "I would be in favor of a market mechanism to reduce the use of fossil fuels, provided that the revenue specifically targets further efficiencies and revolutionary energy programs," he recently wrote in a paper for the Centre for Naval Analyses.
A hybrid navy?
Perhaps the most impressive green radical is none other than Ray Mabus, secretary of the navy. Last August he gave a green speech in San Francisco that make many of Canada's environment ministers sound like Alberta oil lobbyists.
With 290 ships, 3,700 aircraft and nearly one million sailors and marines at his command, Mabus declared that "America and the Navy rely too much on fossil fuels." Within a decade he wants the Navy to get half of its energy from green sources.
He's not bullshitting either. The naval base at China Lake already puts geothermal power on the grid and the F-18 Hornet can now fly on biofuel made from camelina, an inedible member of the mustard family. "We named it the Green Hornet," said Mabus.
The navy has also launched its first hybrid ship, made in Mississippi. On its maiden voyage it saved $2 million in fuel costs thanks to an electric drive.
Mabus believes that the navy, which has made four energy transitions (wind, coal, oil and nuclear) must now lead the United States by producing green energy or conserving fuel. Unlike the Canadian Senate or Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mabus also thinks such actions "will also immeasurably aid this planet, which we call home."
Operation Free
The Quadrennial Defense Review by the U.S. Department of Defense never used to mention energy but that's changed now. In 2010 it even emphasized the strategic importance of investing in alternatives to hydrocarbons: "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."
Veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also joined the green hawks with a group called Operation Free. The group believes that it's their patriotic duty "to do everything we can to keep our nation safe and secure: clean energy is one of those efforts."
Operation Free recently ranked the security implications of several different fuels including natural gas, ethanol, oil and electricity. Based on oil price volatility and the insecurity of supply lines, the veterans voted oil the least secure of all fuels.
The hawks have slowly rustled some feathers, too. The U.S. military has increased its budget for alternative energy research from $400 million in 2006 to $1.2 billion in 2009. It's still a drop in the bucket but the Pentagon has a knack for technological innovation. The U.S. military, after all, gave us the Internet.
Green definition of leadership
More importantly, the green hawks indicate a profound shift in energy thinking. While cheap oil made the U.S. strong, the hawks understand that unconventional and ever pricier oil can only make America weaker.
They also realize that cheap oil has left a crippling cultural legacy: softened by seemingly abundant supplies, consumers now undervalue the true cost of energy and face few incentives to change their behaviors.
Relying on just one fuel for 90 per cent of all transportation needs strikes most hawks as pure folly. Moreover, cheap oil made the U.S. empire fat, lazy, concentrated and centralized. Renewables present an opportunity to renew the American experience with lean, resilient and decentralized thinking.
So the U.S. military may well become the most powerful green lobby group on the continent. As Dan Nolan noted in a recent blog, "Economically, DOD represents thirty million acres (about the size of Pennsylvania), two billion square feet of facilities and an annual facilities energy bill of $3.8 billion. When DOD decides to place a value on energy security, when it decides to get serious about energy security on installations, it will move markets and business will respond."
Several years ago the New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman noted that it was dangerous to ignore the impact of military on U.S. life. The institution still remains a proud bellwether even in a declining empire. "When the U.S. Army desegregated, the country really desegregated," wrote Freidman, and "when the Army goes green, the country could really go green."
Is the Canadian government paying attention? ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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doggone
2 years ago
"Green Beret 11" The Sequel
Thanks Andrew.
This is the most hopeful article I have read in too many days.
I do hope that the "Killing Machine" will not become more efficient - just less wasteful.
Ya gotta start somewhere
lues
2 years ago
internet marketing
[SPAM DELETED.]
Okanagan Orchardist
2 years ago
Interesting.....
It seems ironic that the military, whose job it is to kill the enemy (men, women and children), is attempting to become more energy efficient so that they can kill men, women and children while using less petroleum so that they can be considered "green" while doing so.
John W. Whitmore
2 years ago
A Few. The Proud
Everyone loves to hate the US military forces. I am not one of them.
This was an excellent article. And shows both the strength and the weakness of the US of A.
The USA military is the best in the world. They do complain to their political masters. But they follow what those same masters order them to do. Whether they like it or not. The US military follows their orders. They do not set them. I personally believe the Joint Cheifs feel every loss. But keep their mouths shut in public. And fight like hell in private to keep their soldiers safe. Their job is to protect their country. And they will. Give them a clear and present danger and they will do their job. Give them a murky, lobbied threat for political reasons and the Joint Chiefs get pissed. But still go where they are told.
In the USA, the military follows their political masters. And their political masters suck. The USA military considers Climate change to be a major driver of future operations that they may be called on to 'solve'. And they do not want to be there. From their own archives, a history of dead soldiers, they know what oil means. They won critical battles simply because they had it and their opponent did not. They consider energy to be absoulutely critical. They also know that it is far cheaper in blood and treasure to prevent stupid wars than to fight them. They just want to stay home. Unfortanetly they see more stupid wars in their future.
Canada needs to get off its ass and do something about climate change. Be a leader for a change. Instead of a cowardly bunch of 'elect me at all costs and I am not going to do anything unless the american paid for political class does anything' folk. Yes its going to hurt. But is it not worse to ask the US military to go fix the problems of the future? The US military would rather not. They would love to stay home. But they will go wherever they are told.
Urbanismo
2 years ago
Oh happy breed . . .
Well, Tyee has sunk to a new low.
[DELETED FOR BEING A JERK TO A YOUNG TYEE WRITER. -MODERATOR.]
As for the military, any military, going green but especially the US military, well, you must be smoking and drinking every banned substance on the books. You'd better watch out, though, with their gas at US$400/gal they may come looking for deals. Too much of this and they may come after you . . .
BTW have you been in the military?
No! Then you have obviously joined that happy band of deluded brothers, Susuki, Rees, Condon, et. al., All they have to do is smile and all our worries float away.
The military green? Yeah, camouflage green. All the better to slaughter more [RACIST CHARACTERIZATION REMOVED. -MODERATOR.] for Tyee, queen and empire!
realisticman
2 years ago
Earth Saved!
As per usual, at the last minute the US Cavalry rides to the rescue.
RT
2 years ago
The Green Machine
So let me get this straight. The military/industrial complex which is sucking up resources at an unprescedented rate is gonna save the planet by going " green".
I wet myself laughing....
Van Isle
2 years ago
Try reading "Petro-dollar
Try reading "Petro-dollar warfare" by William Clark and that'll tell you about the whole US Military and why they have over 700 military bases around the world. 21 seperate military bases on Okinawa alone. The US military is set up to protect the oil industry and the supply routes.
demotto
2 years ago
The best way
The best way for the military of all countries to go green is to bring all the personal home and park their equipment. Too much fun murdering innocent people for that to happen.
Van Isle
2 years ago
The US military annual
The US military annual budget is over $600 billion, more than the rest of the world's military budgets, combined. President hopefull Ron Paul was aware of it and one of his policies was to shut down all the foreign US Military bases, bring the troops home, and dismantle the military/industral complex.
MJK
2 years ago
USS Prius
Good article... Thomas Friedman covered it similarly in the NYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19friedman.html?src=me&ref=homepage
mopled
2 years ago
Perhaps they will burn canola oil instead of petroleum
as they modify the weather by their ongoing geo-engineering program.
Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7561
jnewcomb
2 years ago
copying friedman's article?
Nikforuk's article seems to be an example of journalists drinking from the same bathwater, in this case, his story seems uncannily similar to Friedman's "The U.S.S. Prius" that appeard in the NY Times just 2 days ago. However, while I can understand Friedman missing a BC connexion, its unforgivable that Nikiforuk neglects to even mention the long, deep role that Victoria's Carmanah Technologies company has played in selling millions worth of solar lighting to US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Hawaii, AND they are Buy American compliant! (http://www.carmanah.com/)
gotchan
2 years ago
Incentive
"The Green Machine
So let me get this straight. The military/industrial complex which is sucking up resources at an unprecedented rate is gonna save the planet by going " green".
I wet myself laughing...."
Big users have more incentive to develop alternatives than do big producers. A huge military complex (less its common industrial partner) that sees budgets, casualties, and operational difficulties inflated by a dependence on oil and all the additional vulnerabilities that dependence brings has much more incentive to devise alternatives than a government that receives large amounts of oil lobby money. Solutions devised by and for the military will trickle out and be repurposed by the civil sector a la the internet. It's not a laughing matter.
Fish-counter
2 years ago
I'm going in - with the insulation - general!
Sounds good to me. If the army can save lives with foam insulated tents, that kind of sets a new standard.
Next they should turn down the volume in their death-metal torture cells. That is a terrible waste of energy.
The could also research more efficient water-boarding, to save on H2O. They must have spent millions in Guantanamo water-boarding Omar Khadr.
Turning down the voltage on their electroshocking machines and finding ways to fire fewer bullets would work too.
Lastly, piling up all those men's bodies on top of one another to make a human pyramid; that is creative but it if wastes time.
NotAvailableInStores
2 years ago
"he's not bullshitting either"
Andy doth scribbled: "With 290 ships, 3,700 aircraft and...
"He's not bullshitting either."
Actually, he is. Unless there is a radical retrofit or complete redesign of the principle means of propulsion -- jet engines et al -- it is naive _at best_ to believe in the forecast.
Is it possible, Andrew, you have fallen for the 'psyops' fog of disinformation?
RT
2 years ago
Re:incentive
Oh, yeah, right. The trickle down theory. Pull the other one.
realisticman
2 years ago
This is interesting
http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm
David Beers
2 years ago
Andrew was ahead of Friedman
Just want to make clear that Andrew Nikiforuk handed in this story two weeks ago and I held onto it as the perfect kick off for our ideas for 2011 series. So, no, he could not have been keying of Thomas Friedman's NYT piece.
margot
2 years ago
camelina, for fighter jets, inedible
FEEDING CAMELINA SATIVA TO MEAT TURKEYS
28 May 2009 ... Camelina meal (CM) is the by-product of camelina oil extraction and has a crude protein content similar to canola meal. ...
www.westvet.com/Camelina%20to%20meat%20turkeys%20D%20frame.htm - Cached - SimilarCamelina Meal
Camelina meal is an excellent source of Omega-3 in livestock and poultry feeds. It is believed that the inclusion of Omega-3 fatty acids in animal feeds ...
camelinameal.blogspot.com/ - CachedAll About Feed - News: FDA approves Camelina meal for cattle feed
10 Nov 2009 ... The FDA approved the inclusion of omega 3-rich Camelina meal in cattle feed. Under the guidelines, the FDA says that up 10 percent of ...
www.allaboutfeed.net/.../fda-approves-camelina-meal-for-cattle-feed-id3797.html
KayTee
2 years ago
Positive feedback loop
1) US military invests in developing green technology to reduce its dependence on oil
2) military-developed green tech is adopted by the civilian sector which reduces the overall American demand for oil...
3) which reduces the need for the US government to send its military into foreign countries to secure and control vital energy supplies
Mathieu Y
2 years ago
Hopeful no matter the body count
Just as pornography drives our media sector to new innovations, the military has driven our infrastructure and technology to new heights in the 20th century. And when the military says something works, most people will believe it.
So yes, it will take the death of civilians for us to reasonably consider green alternatives. The term "green" (however useless and malleable it is) has never been synonymous with "unbloody," despite what vegetarians may have to say, between uttering obnoxious death threats to animal abusers of course.
I look forward to seeing how the other militaries adapt to this policy in their effort to stay competitive. And then hopefully businesses will adapt too, so that people stop blaming us hapless consumers for the world's energy woes.
YCSTS
2 years ago
The ONLY VIABLE Significant new Green Energy is Nuclear Energy
Way too much hype for an at best minor niche application. Solar Power, mainly, would be of some advantage in remote military bases, that are in areas of high Solar Insolation. This is because of the high cost of transport of expensive fuel oil, throught difficult and vulnerable transport routes. Solar can reduce those costs.
By far the best method for power for remote military bases is Small Modular Nuclear reactors.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/darpa-wants-5-10-megawatt-portable.html
See how a Nuclear Powered Russian Icebreaker travels at 15 knots for one day through 6 ft of ice on ONE POUND of Uranium. Canada & the USA's diesel powered Icebreakers (they got stuck trying to reach the North pole) cannot do a fraction of that consuming 100 tons of filthy Bunker C every day:
http://tinyurl.com/2doo92y
I'm amazed that Andrew Nikiforuk has bought into the Biofuel SCAM. Biofuels are about the most environmentally destructive form of energy on the planet, and make the Tar Sands look like a Minor Blight on the landscape. As-a-matter-of-fact, anytime the USA complains about Tar Sands fuel, Alberta should just counter by discussing USA Corn Ethanol - a completely WHACKY, environmental CATASTROPHE that consumes up to 2300 litres of water per litre of ethanol and has an EROEI of between 0.2 to 1.2. A TOTAL LOSER!
Andrew learn about biofuel here:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=1
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/bioscienceEditorial200611.doc
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/patzek/MythsAndTruths.pdf
Nellie Jones
2 years ago
Green Hawks
From where I sit, just south of the Macon Dixon line, the Green Hawks are good news. I think that Friedman's observation regarding the influence of the military on US life is true. The military doesn't have to deal with the massive disinformation campaigns so successful on both sides of the border either. If the military says its true people will believe it.
Imagine an institution with the impact of Canada's national health plan and you have an idea of what the military means down here.
Nellie Jones
2 years ago
camelina oil, esp. for Margot
I read that camelina oil is extracted from mustard seeds. Mustard is an invasive weed in the mid-Atlantic. Imagine fuel made from invasives...what great incentive to clear our land.
KevinC
2 years ago
Filthy Russia no nukes role model
Dear resident nuke lobbyists,
In no way should anything that Russia does be construed or represented as a positive selling point for nukes! "100 tons of filthy Bunker C" looks like harmless peanuts in comparison with the Russian nuclear mess:
http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/naval/waste/wasteovr.htm
I'd really like to know how any of these miraculous new reactors that we keep hearing about are going to take care of waste that's already on the bottom of the ocean. And are we Canadians so naive as to think that everyone with a waste problem on their hands, Russian or otherwise, is going to play nicey-dicey and never -- oops -- throw it overboard again in the future?
NightTrain23
2 years ago
For all the clichés, US military strategic thinking ain't so bad
Excellent article! If we dissassociate the "mindless killing machine" aspect of the military and give them credit for trying to do the job that's given to them as well as possible, it's very smart of them to identify a major weakness in their fighting and funding capacity - namely a reliance on fossil fuels. And in trying to do something about it, can in fact be the leader for the rest of America and others. Military needs often spur technological change - which says something sad about humanity in general rather than the military itself, but at least *someone* out there with some serious pull is taking the looming crisis of declining oil seriously. I doubt the US military has forgotten that Nazi Germany didn't run out of technological expertise or fighting spirit; they ran out of gas.
Now then, what I would have liked in this article would have been some elaboration not just on the supply/military capacity angle, but some more insight on how the military anticipates that in reacting to climate change events (ie: massive climate refugee problem, instability, famine) they will be called upon to fight/defend US interests that, face it, they'd rather be home and not having to deal with.