[SustainableTompkins] In the Iraqi war zone, US Army calls for 'green' power

[GayNicholson at aol.com]

 (http://www.csmonitor.com/) 
 
 
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
    from the September 07, 2006 edition -  
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0907/p01s04-usmi.html  
In the Iraqi war zone, US Army calls for 'green'  power 
By _Mark  Clayton_ 
(http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=CDE1F2EBA0C3ECE1F9F4EFEE)  | Staff writer of The Christian Science  Monitor 
 
 
Memo  to Pentagon brass from the top United States commander in western  Iraq:
 Renewable energy - solar and wind-power generators - urgently  needed to 
help win the fight. Send soon.  
Calling for more energy in the middle of oil-rich Iraq might  sound odd to 
some. But not to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer,  whose deputies on July 
25 sent the Pentagon a "Priority 1" request  for "a self-sustainable energy 
solution" including "solar panels and  wind turbines." 
The memo may be the first time a frontline commander has called  for 
renewable-energy backup in battle. Indeed, it underscores the  urgency: Without 
renewable power, US forces "will remain  unnecessarily exposed" and will "continue 
to accrue preventable ...  serious and grave casualties," the memo says. 
Apparently, the brass is heeding that call. The US Army's Rapid  Equipping 
Force (REF), which speeds frontline requests, is "expected  soon" to begin 
welcoming proposals from companies to build and ship  to Iraq 183 frontline 
renewable-energy power stations, an REF  spokesman confirms. The stations would use a 
mix of solar and wind  power to augment diesel generators at US outposts, the 
spokesman  says. 
Despite desert temperatures, the hot "thermal signature" of a  diesel 
generator can call enemy attention to US outposts, experts  say. With convoys still 
vulnerable to ambush, the fewer missions  needed to resupply outposts with JP-8 
fuel to run power generators -  among the Army's biggest fuel guzzlers - the 
better, the memo  says. 
"By reducing the need for [petroleum] at our outlying bases, we  can decrease 
the frequency of logistics convoys on the road, thereby  reducing the danger 
to our marines, soldiers, and sailors," reads  the unclassified memo posted on 
the website InsideDefense.com, a  defense industry publication that first 
reported its existence last  month. 
Use of renewable energy, such as solar power, is not new to the  US military, 
one of the largest consumers of renewable energy,  especially at off-grid 
outposts in North America. Four 275-foot-tall  wind turbines were unveiled last 
year at the Naval Station at  Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, meeting about a quarter 
of the base's  electrical needs and saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of  
fuel. 
Still, Major General Zilmer's request highlights what appears to  be a small 
but growing focus on adding renewable sources of energy  to the fuel mix for 
combat operations as part of Department of  Defense planning. 
Special operations forces concluded that using foldout solar  panels to 
recharge batteries was better than carrying more  disposable batteries into combat, 
a 2004 study for the Army found.  Last year, Konarka Technologies Inc. in 
Lowell, Mass., received a  $1.6 million Army contract to supply flexible printed 
solar panels  to reduce the number of batteries soldiers carry. 
A bigger picture of the need for renewables was sketched out in a  key 2004 
Pentagon study titled "Winning the Oil Endgame," by the  Rocky Mountain 
Institute, an energy think tank in Snowmass, Colo. It  found a number of areas where 
efficiency would boost combat  effectiveness, including: 
• More than 50 percent of fuel used by the Army on the  battlefield is 
consumed by combat support units, not frontline  troops. 
• Until recently, the Army spent about $200 million a year  annually on fuel, 
but paid $3.2 billion each year on 20,000 active  and 40,000 reserve 
personnel to transport it. 
That was before $70-per-barrel oil. This spring, the Defense  Energy Support 
Center reported the US military used about 128  million barrels of fuel last 
year, costing about $8 billion,  compared with about 145 million barrels in 
2004 that cost $7  billion. 
"At the tip of the spear is where the need to avoid the cost of  fuel 
logistics is most acute," says Amory Lovins, cofounder of the  Rocky Mountain 
Institute, who led the 2004 study. "If you don't need  divisions of people hauling 
fuel, you can realign your force  structure to be more effective as well as less 
vulnerable." 
Zilmer's call for renewable power is also buttressed by Pentagon  studies 
from June 2005 dating back to the 1990s that show the costs  and advantages of 
solar-panel systems in place of or as supplements  to diesel generators burning 
JP-8, the standard battlefield  fuel. 
Still, such lessons are learned slowly, says Hugh Jones, a former  analyst 
with the Center for Army Analysis, now a consultant on  energy issues to the US 
Army. Analyzing feedback from the frontlines  after Operation Desert Storm in 
Kuwait 1990, he produced a raft of  studies on uses for solar power in combat. 
But during the 1990s when fuel was cheap, he found little  interest in the 
idea. 
"There aren't a lot of people who have expertise in this area of  renewable 
power in combat operations," Mr. Jones says. "There are a  lot of people in the 
service who smell like diesel fuel, but not  many who have been in the field 
using solar power and  hybrid-optimized solutions." 
Even so, he's noticed "there's much more interest today." The  high cost of 
fuel, and troop casualties in the Iraq war, may be  changing that traditional 
outlook. 
One guy who thinks he can solve the general's problem is Dave  Muchow, 
president of SkyBuilt Power Inc. in Arlington, Va. Aided by  funding from In-Q-Tel, 
a venture-capital firm for the Central  Intelligence Agency - SkyBuilt makes a 
hybrid solar-panel and  wind-generator power system that fits in a standard 
shipping  container. It can be dropped onto a mountaintop or into the desert.  
Its solar panels and wind turbine deploy in minutes. And where  there's water, 
a "micro-hydro" unit can be dropped into a stream for  an added boost. 
Such 007-style systems are not cheap. Today, SkyBuilt's "mobile  power 
system" can cost up to $100,000, compared with just $10,000  for a 10-kilowatt 
diesel generator. 
But costs of such hybrid packages begin to look more reasonable  when the 
cost is considered of delivering a gallon of fuel to a  generator gulping it 
24/7. The true cost of fuel delivered to the  battlefield - well prior to the 
recent oil price hike - was $13 to  $300 a gallon, depending on its delivery 
location, a Defense Science  Board report in May 2001 estimated. 
An analysis in Zilmer's memo puts the "true cost" for fuel for a  10-kilowatt 
diesel generator at $36,000 a year - about four times  the amount needed to 
purchase the fuel itself initially. The rest of  the cost is due mainly to 
transportation. On that basis, a SkyBuilt  system could cut costs by 75 percent 
and pay for itself for three to  five years, the memo estimates. 
But another cost is time. Even though the Army's REF is moving on  it, there 
is still no firm date for a request for proposal to be  made public, the REF 
spokesman acknowledges. Zilmer's memo, however,  warns that without renewable 
power to replace fuel, victory could be  forfeited. 
"Without this solution, personnel loss rates are likely to  continue at their 
current rate," the memo says. "Continued casualty  accumulation exhibits 
potential to jeopardize mission success." 
_Full HTML  version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and  
related links_ (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0907/p01s04-usmi.html)