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News Article
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Energy rodeo: Fort Bliss wants to lead Army in energy security
By Robert Gray
The words Hummer, zero emissions and 100 miles per gallon don’t often end up in the same sentence, but it is just the sort of thing the U.S. Army is looking for to save lives and reduce its massive energy bill.
The Hummer was one of nearly 60 avant-garde technologies showed off by companies at a two-day symposium held on Fort Bliss last week.
It wasn’t a Tony Stark, aka “Iron Man,” style Army expo; instead of high-powered guns, rockets and missiles, companies pitched ready-to-use, energy-sipping technologies.
But the goal is the same – utilize the latest technology to give the Army a tactical advantage in the battlefield.
“For the Department of Defense, energy is a critical weapon of war. We need energy the same way we need ammunition and people. If any of the three are absent we cannot fundamentally do our job. We’re dead in the water,” said Drexel Kleber, director of strategic operations for the Pentagon’s Power Surety Task Force.
Fort Bliss aims to take the lead, and officials announced during the symposium that their goal is to produce enough electricity to power the installation through wind, sun and geothermal sources by 2025.
At what the Army called the Renewable Energy Rodeo and Symposium, companies like Lockheed Martin, 3M, Chevron and General Electric demonstrated wind turbines that can be mounted on light poles. There were intelligent microgrids and new technologies to harvest geothermal energy and energy from garbage.
Local companies Solar Smart Living and Border Solar demonstrated solar panel systems and electric-car charging ports.
Huge energy bills
For the Army, reducing energy use is not just a green agenda; it’s about saving soldiers’ lives and reducing the Pentagon’s massive energy bill.
Speakers described long lines of fuel convoys and oil pipelines stretching into the desert in Iraq and Afghanistan, needed to supply Army bases.
“The value of not putting a soldier on the road for gasoline is priceless,” said Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, Fort Bliss commanding general.
The operations in Kuwait and Iraq use about 430-million gallons of fuel per year. Just a 1-percent reduction in that translates to 6,500 fewer troops in harm’s way, according to Thomas Mathes, development director of the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, or TARDEC. They’re the people who make Army vehicles.
A $10 increase in the price of crude oil raises the Pentagon’s spending by $1.3 billion, he said.
As for Fort Bliss, it pays an annual energy bill of about $19 million, but that’s expected to spike to more than $80 million by 2025, according to data collected by the post.
For the first time, the Defense Department included energy security in its overarching review of military strategy and priorities.
According to the Quadrennial Defense Review released in February, “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.”
Private partners
The energy consumption and the soldiers put at risk by the military’s tether of fuel are driving the Army to look for help from private companies to develop and implement renewable energy technologies.
“The Army is looking for partnerships so that there is a cost share and at the same time, by putting these technologies on Army bases, it helps their position in the market,” said Grace Bochenek, TARDEC director.
That is good news for the recruitment efforts of REDCo, El Paso’s Regional Economic Development Corp., said its president Bob Cook.
“We can build an industry recruitment effort around this. And we will,” he said.
Usually, REDCo would hire a consultant and develop a strategy for attracting companies before reaching out to an industry.
But this time, Cook said, the renewable energy sector made the first move.
“There are so many companies looking here that we now need a strategy to determine how we work with these companies,” he said.
REDCo is working with 43 renewable energy companies that are considering El Paso, Cook said. About half are solar companies.
While the Army is using and testing renewable energy technologies at bases across the country, Army officials say they view the base here as a prime location to implement and test energy-saving technologies.
“The Army has land and the demand. Fort Bliss serves as the example. If all our installations had the same leadership that understands this, we would make progress, but we have limited funding right now,” said Shawn Walsh, energy policy director for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment.
Fort Bliss has lots of land – it is about the size of Rhode Island – more than 300 days of sun a year, wind and geothermal resources. Its soldier population is also tripling in size and $4.4 billion is being spent to support that expansion.
Fort Bliss leadership refers to the post as the Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy, but it is not an official Army designation.
“We need to have them define it and then see if we can get the Army leadership to say that Fort Bliss is,” Walsh said.
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