 Welcome everyone. We are delighted that we are able to have a whole panel talking about defense and energy for this year's Expo and Policy Forum because we know that energy is critically linked to security, it's linked to costs of operations, it's linked to safety, it's linked to environment. So we have a terrific panel for you today and I should also let you know that this was spearheaded by the office of Senator Jack Reed who will be joining us at the end. He is not only on Senate Armed Services but he is also the Democratic Co-Chair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. So let's get started and to start us off on this exciting panel this afternoon is General Wesley Clark whom I think we have all known and heard about and respected for many, many years. General Clark. Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and you've got a lot of people up here with a lot of really important things to say so I want to keep my opening remarks here as brief as possible. First, of course I am retired, I'm in the energy business. I'm in oil, gas, wind, solar, biofuels, gas to liquids, coal to liquids, you name it, I've looked at it and I'm in boards. I've been associated with maybe 80, 90 companies since I've been retired from the armed forces. So I'm seeing this not as an academician or a policy person but as a business practitioner. But I want to just make three points here this morning. First of all, we really are dealing with the stuff of national security here. Energy policy is national security policy. We first really understood this in the United States when we became an oil importing power in 1971. I came down here, I was an army captain in 1973, I did the first studies in the Pentagon on the implications of our being an energy importing country. And it took four years to get an article published in military review afterwards that had this bold statement that it might someday be necessary to deploy U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf. Can you imagine? It was published in 1978. We're now $2 trillion, 7,000 KIA, no telling how many wounded and no end in sight. Three wars. National security policy has to deal with energy policy. If you didn't believe that was bad enough, then you add climate change on it. We know what the effects of climate change are and they are severe enough that that has to be factored in as a national security issue. And if that didn't concern you enough, then we're going to look at the electricity grid now because over the last decade or so we've become increasingly aware of the vulnerabilities of our power supply to cyber. So we're dealing with national security stuff in this forum. Secondly, the armed forces, I think, have a great deal to contribute to this and they're going to speak for themselves. But I just want to compliment the Navy on what it's done and Secretary Mavis on what he's done for his, for the fuels policy, the army for the great work in trying to make the bases and camps posts here in the United States energy independent. The Air Force was one of the first, I think, to put the renewable fuels in jet fuel and fly around on it. The Marines have done all of that and more. So we've got some very active service components. I would have only one request from the armed forces and that is, would you please have the GSA motor pools use their spending power to buy more renewable fuels? They should be demanding E-85 vehicles and E-15 for those that aren't flexed fuel and that should be easy to accomplish. Final point I want to make is that we've become so thrilled by the progress in wind and solar and the fact that they can reach grid parity now in pricing and by our fracking industry, which I happen to be involved in also, that we've sort of lost sight of renewable fuels and here's the truth. We're not going to be energy independent in liquid fuels unless we take advantage of biofuels. The biofuels are out there waiting to be put in to the US fuel system. Their entry is assured by the renewable fuel standard but when you talk about biofuels you're going against the most important and influential industry in the world, the oil industry. So there's a big fight about the renewable fuel standard. Every year it's on the hill this year. So Congress's, the EPA is going to announce its renewable volume obligations sometime early next week and we're pressing that they follow the law. They've got to get that renewable volume up beyond the E-10 level. For us to meet what we're trying to do under the renewable fuel standard, it says by 2022 we'll have 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel in the nation's fuel supply of 142 billion gallons. So that means just mathematically you've got to be somewhere around E-26, E-27. So we've got to have some support on that. So I don't want to take up any more time on ethanol but it is the quickest route to reducing our dependence on imported oil and that's the quickest route to saving soldiers and Marines lives on the ground in the Middle East. Thank you. Thank you General Clark. We're now going to turn to the Secretary's office at the Department of Defense and we're going to hear from Amanda Simpson who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy as well as Lisa Young who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installation Energy. So Lisa and Amanda. Thank you Carol and thank you General for your remarks. It is true that we run on energy. Everything that the Department of Defense does requires energy. Without energy the planes don't fly, the ships don't sail, the tanks and trucks don't roll and as we increase the capabilities of our military if we have to go further, go faster, carry more payload, more survivability, more lethality, every time we do that it comes at a price and that price is energy. In dollars we spend in the Department of Defense about 18 billion dollars a year just paying our energy bill. It's equivalent of about 90 million barrels of fuel. I believe the largest single consumer of energy on the planet. But our dependence upon energy becomes a liability and exposes us to a vulnerability that must be addressed and planned for. So as you mentioned I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy and for the staffers in the room that is defined as under 10 USC 2924 as the energy required for training, moving and sustaining the military forces and weapons platforms for military operations. So the way the Department considers operational energy, it's all the energy used in the military operations, in direct support of military operations and in training that supports unit readiness for military operations and that includes all the energy used at our contingency, forward and remote operating bases. So it's primarily the liquid fuel that's used in those aircraft, ships and vehicles and it amounts to over 70 percent of the total energy consumed by the Department of Defense. Now of that 70 percent, over 60 percent of that is purchased overseas because we buy fuel where we use fuel. Otherwise we'd end up being a worldwide fuel transporter and that's not our job. That's not what we want to be doing. Now between operational energy and installational energy there's a huge overlap because most of the training is conducted at or staged from or in conjunction with our permanent CONUS operations. We now have a lot of home station mission command where operations overseas are being run by those at the installations here in the US. So there's often a fine line between what is a contingency base and what is an enduring base when you go, oh, CONUS. And so Lisa and I work very closely together because we have nested interests. So I was going to bring a copy of the new Department of Defense operational energy strategy, but I had a hectic morning and ran out of the office without it, but you can download it at energy.defense.gov. The strategy incorporates the lessons learned over, well, the past 15 years that we've been at war as well as changes in the operational environment and revised defense priorities, which include the rebalance toward the Pacific, the A2AD or anti-access area denial environments, distributed operations, irregular adversaries and emerging peer competitors. The new strategy looks to increase our capabilities, address and migrate risk as well as improve those current operations. So we are looking at what I call the FAR term. What can we do to have the force of the future understand the reliance and liability on energy? We're looking at what is the next thing we expect to do. So we're reviewing operational plans, all of our strategies across the department. And then, of course, we're looking at the today. What are we doing? What can we do better? How can we reduce our reliance on the energy so we can focus more on what we need to do, and that is be warfighters and support our troops? Turn the page here. And so the bottom line to us is the cost of energy is much, much more than just the price of fuel. Operationally, energy is the life blood of the military strength. And we never want to be in a position where we can't conduct operations or curtail or limit operational capability due to a lack of energy. We never want to tell a soldier, a sailor, an airman, a marine, or a guardsman that you can't do your mission because we don't have the energy available for you. So we must recognize, analyze, and plan so that we make wise, energy-informed decisions today that may affect our ability to conduct those operations tomorrow. So I'm going to hand it over to my cohort, Lisa. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. As Amanda indicated, I'm actually the Deputy Secretary for Installation to Energy. Installation energy is the energy used to power our 500 fixed permanent installations, which houses 277,000 buildings and 2.2 billion square feet of space. And while operation energy is primarily viewed as fuel, installation energy is mostly electricity and natural gas. Our DOD installations are critical platforms that enable our ability to fight and win wars and accounting for nearly 30% of our DOD's total energy use. And these installations are our warfighters live, they work, they train to meet future challenges and ensure the security of our mission, our nation's. Simply put, DOD installations support and ensure our military readiness. So energy resilience for these reasons is a very high priority for the department. And by definition, our definition of energy resilience is the ability to prepare for and recover from energy disruptions that impact mission assurance on our military installations. And it's critical for installation commanders to understand the vulnerabilities and risk of power disruptions and the impact these can have to mission assurance. And to ensure energy resilience of our installations by office recently completed an update to our installation energy policy, which helps to raise awareness and prioritize important energy resilience requirements. And this update includes guidance to align energy requirements for critical missions, to coordinate utility and emergency response organizations during power outages, to encourage integrated and holistic energy solutions beyond typical standby generators and to support continued performance of supporting installation infrastructure. Page. The policy ensures the appropriate sizing of energy generation systems as well as maintaining, fueling and testing of these systems. And the guidance also points out that energy resilience solutions are not limited to just standby or emergency generators. They conclude integrated, distributed or renewable energy sources, diversified or alternative fuel supplies and can involve consolidation or centralization of generators at alternative locations. My office also commissioned a study with MIT Lincoln Labs to investigate the potential of energy resilience solutions to develop business case framework for investment decisions. And the study found that there are opportunities for cost effective solutions on our military installations. And we're working with the services to come up with guidance to establish a business case framework to support investment decisions for future requirements. And that's the results of those studies, actual results that study will actually be issued in August. Military services have many initiatives underway to improve energy resilience for installations. And I'm just going to highlight a few. You might hear more when the services talk about this in a minute. For the Army at Fort Drum, private developer came in they funded and constructed and they own and operate a 60 megawatt biogas generation facility located on Fort Drum property. The Fort Drum purchase is 100% of its electricity requirement from that plant. 28 megawatts of the 60 megawatts and the plan owner completed a system interconnect to two installation substations. So the combination of the onsite generation and the transmission line interconnect enables the installation to maintain mission in the event of a grid power outage. Similarly at Fort Detrick, Maryland, private developer came in and they funded constructed and operate a 15 megawatt solar plant installed on Army land and it provides power for the exclusive use of Fort Detrick for 26 years. And the solar PV plant will also be able to connect to a microgrid in the future again, allowing it to maintain mission in the event of a power outage. For the Navy and Marine Corps at Port Winamy, California, Navy is building a microgrid test facility at the Mobile Utilities Support Equipment Yard in Port Winamy. And the facility will enable the Navy to conduct specific and controlled testing of microgrid concepts and components prior to field deployment. At Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, the Marine Corps is pursuing the design construction of a microgrid using energy conservation and investment program funding from my office. The microgrid solution will allow operators at mission critical facilities on the flight line to continue uninterrupted if the utility grid, the power grid is compromised or damaged. And it will utilize existing resources such as landfill gas, solar PV, and energy storage systems for standard operations. And for the Air Force, the Air Force stood up at its Office of Energy Insurance in February of 2016. Centralized program office is dedicated to implementing large-scale renewable and alternative energy projects for Air Force installations. The office will also develop comprehensive energy assurance plans for critical capabilities on Air Force installations, integrating tools or authorities and identify optimal execution pathways for these projects. And they hope to have ten large scale energy assurance projects and service or in development by the end of next fiscal year. Air Force also has a resilient energy demonstration initiative to develop a framework for implementing resilient energy systems across the Air Force Enterprise. And through this initiative, the Air Force will have two resilient energy demonstration projects on Air Force installations and operation by the end of 2020, the first of which will be at Beale Air Force Base. To close, the department is making great strides in improving energy resilience of our military bases. We've also made good progress in improving the energy efficiency of our Air Force installations and in development of cost effective, reliable, renewable energy sources. And both efforts are to enable us to achieving resilience. To date, DOD has reduced energy use intensity by almost 20%, reduced our fleet petroleum consumption by almost 35%, and reduced water use intensity by 22%. Since 2009, the department has lowered its installation energy consumption by nearly 100%, 100%, 10%, which we 100%, 10%, which has allowed us to avoid $1.2 in new energy costs. And we've approximate 262 new renewable energy projects that came online in F515, which represents about 58 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity for a total of 702 megawatts across the department, which has us on track to meet our renewable energy goals to deploy three gigawatts of renewable energy and produce or procure 25% of the electricity we consume from renewable resources by 2025. That concludes my remarks, and I'd like to thank again for this opportunity to speak to you all today. Well, thank you very much. Amanda and Lisa, it really, really is exciting and impressive what is going on. And so now we're going to hear from each of the services, and I'm always amazed at all of the very, very cool things that are going on. So we'll turn first to Mark Harrell, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety, and Infrastructure with the U.S. Air Force. Good, thanks. So I'm going to start off today by not talking about energy, because at the end of the day I'm not in the energy business. I'm in the defense business. And specifically, your Air Force is here to dominate in air, space, and cyberspace. We do that through five core missions, air and space superiority, rapid global mobility, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, global strike, and command and control. Now, that frames how we look at energy. And specifically within the Air Force, we've developed a 30-year strategic plan that looks at how we're going to do that dominating mission for you. And our senior leaders have put together some very specific things that we need to consider. And I think you'll see when we get to energy, there are some parallels there. So from a strategic defense standpoint, we consider rapid technological breakthroughs, geopolitical instability, the wide range of operating environments where we need to go, the vulnerability of the global commons that we share, and whatever access we have to natural resources. All of that we frame in a term we call strategic agility, our ability to adapt and move in each one of those core missions and in each one of those considerations. So let's move a little bit to energy and talk from an energy standpoint. So in order to bring overwhelming combat power to bear in air, space, and cyberspace, in each one of those core missions, the Air Force needs three things. They need superbly trained airmen, they need the latest and best technological equipment, and they need a platform. And that platform piece makes us a little bit different from the other services because that platform, most of you will think of as a runway, and that certainly is one. But it's also a space launch facility. It's also a C2 facility. It's also the place where we operate remotely piloted vehicles. We have a large number of platforms and without all three of those, we can't do our mission and guess what? All of them depend on energy. And in fact in the Air Force every year we require 62 trillion BTUs of energy in addition to the 2.1 billion gallons of fuel that we have to burn every year at a cost of about nine billion dollars in order to accomplish our mission. So if that's what we're thinking about, so from the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force who's responsible for installations, energy and environment, my boss, how do we think of this? What's our strategic agility? Well we've translated that into three core areas that we're worried about. One is ready installations because obviously that platform is key to us. The second is reliable environmental infrastructure, so that's the natural resources that we need. And the third is resilient energy. And that third piece is a dramatic change for the Air Force. And so you'll hear us talk about something called mission assurance through energy assurance. And what does that mean? That means we've changed our focus in the Air Force from demand reduction and cost savings to ensuring that we have the energy we need to accomplish all of our missions all of the time in defense of the nation. So more specifically, why do we care about this? Why is this? So from an energy standpoint what we say is energy powers the fight. It allows us to fly farther. It allows us to stay on station longer. It allows us to transport more cargo. It allows us to operate our space assets, our cyber assets, all of the things that we need to do and accomplish our mission both completely and effectively and efficiently. In a cyber dominated world we have a we where we may or may not have assured access to fuel and energy. We still have risks and specifically we look at four areas of risk. First is as we develop our policy is the geopolitical risk. So what are we concerned about in the Air Force? We're concerned about what are the geopolitical ramifications of countries for example denying us access to oil, denying us access to the global commons of water and air. We also look at financial risks. What are the decisions that we're making in the Air Force? Can we afford these sustainably from a financial standpoint or are we moving down a road that we're not going to be able to afford in the long term? Thirdly are environmental risks where we look at the impact that we have on people and resources as we move around the world and as we make demands on those environmental resources. Probably the one that's most of interest to us is the mission risk. And the mission risk is the access to those to those resources those energy resources we need to accomplish our mission. So the focus that has changed in the Air Force is moved to a more holistic approach that says instead of just being focused on demand reduction and cost savings our holistic approach says we are interested in energy resilience which means how many layers of defense do I have and capabilities do I have to assure that energy will move forward followed by cost effectiveness not cost savings followed by cleanliness with a preference for renewable. So as you see the Air Force move forward we recognize that renewable energy has inherent defense value. What's that defense value? It doesn't require an external fuel stores. We recognize that we have problems with storage, problems with intermittency but our focus is in that area if we can't get that we'll go for clean. Where we can get the sweet spot of all three of those things clean resilient and cost effective we'll go for it where we can't we'll look at least at two of those three to make it happen. What are we going to do to make that happen? We will focus in the areas of reduced demand increased supply and the improved resiliency that you heard about from the OEA for things like distributed generation enhanced micro grips that are cyber secure. Finally the how of this we're going to use technology and innovation to leverage our energy tools while we still and still at the basic level in our airmen a knowledge and understanding of the criticality of energy and a focus on that. At the end of the day for us the smart use of energy means that all of our mission threads everything that we have to do whether they're in air space or cyberspace will be accomplished as effectively and efficiently as we possibly can. Thanks. Okay we'll now turn to the US Army to Michael McKee who is the director of energy initiatives. Good morning thank you and it's nice to be here with you. Nice to see such a turn on as well thank you General Clark thank you Ms. Simpson for for being here my colleagues as well. I want to talk to you something it's a little closer to the ground let's say in terms of how we would address the issue of energy security. I'm with the Office of Energy Initiatives a targeted organization that was set up to leverage private sector interest in renewable energy projects and how we can turn those to the advantage of the US Army to achieve an improved security posture and resiliency posture as you've heard referenced by my colleagues here today. So thank you by the way to the members of the various caucuses the defense caucus national security energy renewable energy for providing the Army and the DOD the authorities and the funding we need to carry out these important programs. The Army operates in a challenging and contested environment I think you're completely aware of that but you also need to appreciate the the large effort that goes into preparing our troops to be ready to operate in that environment there's operating that environment and there's preparing to operate in that environment the operations are extremely difficult and require huge vast sources of energy to be taken to the battle theater I think you're aware of that and it's a great cost to to human lives and your your neighbors and your brothers and sisters down the street so that's extremely important I'm going to talk about the part where we prepare those brothers and sisters those neighbors down the street to be ready to go forward into the battle space because in order to prepare our troops to do this type of operation they need access to training areas they need land they need airspace they need assured access to energy water other resources that are not always readily available they need to be prepared to operate in an environment where those may be austere that meanwhile back here we need to give them all those resources they need to prepare themselves to be ready to go forward to ensure that continued access to those resources the army developed the energy and energy security and sustainability strategy released it last year May 2015 to address this and as you'll hear in a continuing theme it's first and foremost not about energy it's first and foremost not about sustainability it's first and foremost about mission it's what we need to do to support the mission what can we do to deliver more secure forms of energy more resilient energy delivery systems to ensure we have that access to those resources the objective of the strategy is to enhance army's readiness its capabilities and its performance and to do this by better informing our resource decisions optimizing our use of these resources and ensuring we have and built a resilient and innovative delivery system for that energy the army has in fact the host of energy related programs activities related to operational energy facility energy energy efficiency and conservation technology transfer R&D and so forth but I'm going to talk about renewable energy in particular large-scale renewable energy projects my office the office of energy initiatives OEI was specifically set up to leverage private sector interest in this area and turn it to the advantage the army as I referenced before this strategy by the way you can find on our website www.oei.army.mil I encourage you to go look at that site and look around and learn about what we do and some of the projects in more detail I'm going to touch upon those here today so we were established to concentrate a group of people with engineering financial environmental procurement and project development experience bring them to headquarters but an environment where they could focus and where they could take an enterprise-wide view rather than asking each army installation to do these tasks on their own without these kinds of resources to get these this group of people together to help identify where there's an alignment of these interests that we can bring to bear to generate a viable project resource availability interests regulatory structure for energy interest economic conditions land availability the mission commanders interest at a base developers interest financiers interest utilities interest seek where all these things can align or could be aligned where we can also de-risk them to create a better more attractive investment opportunity that brings investment interest and brings their money to build these projects why do we want to do that we want to get these projects built on or near army land these projects have to come in for our principles at or below the current price of power that is what we would normally pay for power without these projects has to be budget neutral that is we're not bringing money into this deal it has to typically be done with other people's money frankly and provide some sort of enhancement to the basis energy security posture that I mentioned before sometimes you get a little less of that sometimes you get more of that but the idea is to bring some added dimension of energy security posture to the base and then incorporate a renewable energy component solar wind biomass biofuel hydropower geothermal so what is security and resiliency it was alluded to earlier but I want to make a quick little detour here reliability security resiliency in the past the paradigm for power production the US was focused on safety and reliability that was generally in terms of uptime was how you would view that do you have power is it always there for you security brings in a new connotation lately where it's possible now it's been imagined and it's been commented upon by the national security enterprise that there is the possibility for a determined attacker scenarios that could do great harm to our power delivery systems the security that we've relied upon the past for things like keeping deer out of a substation or keeping the drunk driver from you know hitting a substation those are a branch falling on on a distribution line that type of security is being reimagined as we speak to a more pressing imperative to look at security differently then there's resiliency which I refer to as recovery so the ability to not only have uptime but also have security around our power distribution generation system and then have the resiliency to recover if need be is what we're interested in so how do we do this renewables can bring to us some pieces of this first of all you have to realize that there are in fact backup diesel generator sets at a critical facilities in the US Army as the other services have so we already have that dimension out there we need more than that because we're so relying upon the grid around us and these determined attacker scenarios may present some some impacts that could be not just hours are not just days but perhaps weeks perhaps longer so we have to have something more than just backup diesel generator sets if we want to ensure that we have assured access to power they bring renewables can bring typically no fuel supply concerns for solar and when for example you've got the resource if you cited your project correctly there's no resupply issues the sun's going to come out tomorrow I guarantee it there's distributed generation in renewable energy projects that brings a reduced reliance on one source of power get these facilities on or near army installations the solar installations these wind installations these geothermal get them on or near army installations means we have a much shorter supply chain much more proximate location these facilities right brings added security in the right conditions we are also seeing it so happens cost avoidance in these projects as well in the 15 or so projects that we've got in our current portfolio for large-scale renewable energy projects we've seen a total of about two hundred and fifty million dollars in cost avoidance over the life of these projects a twenty five to thirty year term and so that's a great benefit as well let me give you a quick sense of one of these projects that's a little bit off the beaten path so you've got solar you've got wind you've got geothermal in Hawaii it's go field barracks which you may have heard of we have a project there that was brought to us by the Hawaiian electric company where they wanted to get a new generating asset that generates power above the tsunami strike zone if you're on the island of Hawaii a Wahoo you will find the power generation systems around the coastal areas it's because that's where they brought the fuel in to feed those power plants we're putting one up here with Hawaiian electric at go field barracks will be a biofuel capable multi-fuel capable generating asset if the grid goes down this asset can be powered up as a black start capability and it can drive power to scope field barracks to Wheeler air field and Kenya field station in Hawaii can power three army installations with this biofuel capable plant and in partnership with Hawaiian electric so there's a way that you can bring renewable energy projects to improve the energy security posture of an installation and also support the grid that feeds you power in normal operations that's a great example of how we can bring renewable energy projects to the benefit of the army for energy security and resiliency thank you so now we will go to Brian Magnusson who is a Colonel with the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office for the marine US Marine Corps so thank you very much again I'm Brian Magnusson I lead the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office and we're focused seems like it's been nice that we've kind of been going down and down into the tactical piece and that's exactly where the office is focused is that the tactical edge where the risk to the warfighter the risk to the mission and the costs cost in lives costing the cost of failure of the mission is the greatest for the Marine Corps so that's where we're focused on specifically so we can enhance and extend the operational reach of the Marine Air Ground Task Force so we can go further on the same amount of energy do more with the same amount of energy and put the enemy in the horns of a dilemma to do that I'm looking forward to being able to articulate to the Marines so we understand where our energy is and how we're using it because I think what you all understand as you walk around with your smartphones etc the evolution that we've been through in terms of how important energy is to you and the things that you do in your day-to-day lives to maintain the energy in your your smartphone or your pet tablet like you have here and that translates to the Marines as well in in terms of giving them the information so they understand how they're using their energy whether it's in their battery or whether it's in their vehicle that they're driving around on the battlefield and if I can do both of those then I can make the Marine Corps much more agile in battle and we can win the nation's battles we started this journey about seven years ago looking at operational energy and when we started the office we had to figure out where our gaps were at and so we took a look at that and we're focused in Afghanistan at the time so we're focused on Marines losing lives in Afghanistan so we focused on the near battle of getting technology out to the Marines in Afghanistan solar panels so that we could take our Marine Corps units off the grid so we didn't have to expose Marines to the risk of convoys for the sole purpose of bringing energy to their combat out posts as we've moved forward we've taken we've obviously come out of Afghanistan as a Marine Corps and we've taken the lessons we learned through Afghanistan and we've gone out to meter and monitor our performance in some of our measurable exercises such that we can take that data and present it to the Marine Commanders and the individual Marines so they understand with quantifiable data as opposed to somebody standing there telling them I think this is how you perform so we've taken that and we've been able to integrate that information to provide Marines with an understanding of how the user energy on a small scale we've taken it we put it into modeling such that we can model in accordance with OST strategy the risks associated with some of our operational plans because we don't every as we as it works right now we don't really plan at the highest levels for the most effective use of our energy understanding who else is accounting for it and where the risks are inherent so part of that strategy and part of what the Marine Corps getting at is being able to understand and quantify that energy risk to the larger battles as well as to the smaller piece and that's important through the data collection and finally we were able to take that data the combination of those two and put it into an energy war game that we use to articulate to our Marine Corps leadership the risks associated with that and the risks associated with the energy that we use and also to be able to identify the gaps that we need to go forward so having done that we've looked at four areas that we're focused on first and foremost is first is energy in the amphibious operations are between the Navy and the Marine Corps we have enough energy in the amphibious operations area to conduct our operations but what we don't have is enough connectors are fuel trucks to drive from the sea to the shore if you will to transload to the Marine vehicles to get it to the pointy edge of the spear so as we talked about in an anti-access air denial environment or a more disaggregated environment the Marine Corps envisions operating in we're going to be more spread out and we need to be able to do something more like Amazon's precision logistics if you will to get the fuel where it's needed when it's needed and not waste time in the transload between multiple points. Additionally we're looking at the vehicles whether it's the current vehicles we have in ways to make them much more energy efficient through commercial off the shelf technology or tactics techniques and procedures what we've seen on both of those arenas on the TTP side when we talk to Marines about how they use their energy they give them ideas and ways to use it better to increase the operational reach they make decisions that are that increase it operation reach when we give them technology like a Prius type meter that says this is what your instantaneous gas mileage is they make a conscious change and they increase their operational reach so through a couple of those examples in the vehicle piece that's where we're focused additionally on individual power piece if you have been into the demonstration area you'll see a Marine captain that works for me that's wearing what we call the joint infantry company prototype it's a program that we've trained with the army in order to capture the amount of energy that is resident out on the battlefield for the individual Marine we have basically doubled the amount of batteries and kit that which we've five times the amount of batteries that a Marine is required to carry and we've doubled the amount of kit upwards of a hundred pounds that they carry in the combat and that's a significant load on the individual Marine or soldier so if we can lighten that load in any way at all to include the reduction of batteries while still giving them the capability that's a huge win so that they can be more agile because the reality is just like your smartphones etc we're going to put more technology on Marines it's much more capable we're going to have unmanned air vehicles that can fly around a corner that live off your wrist and they need to be able to be powered and then finally water is a big issue and concern of mine because it's 50% of logistics on the battlefield it's required by the Marines and it requires a lot of energy to move throughout the battlefield so as we look forward into the future we're trying to find ways to be much more innovative in the way we use our water, generate our water so that we can provide it to our Marines as part of the agility that we're looking for and I think I'll stop there okay thank you very very much and now we will turn to the US Navy to hear from Joseph Bryant who is the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy thanks very much and thanks for putting on this forum it's great again we're a group that assembles periodically and I think we've heard we've heard much of the same from each other over the course of a number of events this year so it's always a pleasure to sit up here I'm glad you got a chance to hear from Mags it's really important that I mean we have a lot of important things to say as policy makers about energy obviously it drives what our departments do but it's really important that you hear what soldiers, sailors and Marines have to say about what they're doing with energy and why it matters to the mission so I'm glad Mags got to talk about what the Marines are doing what I encourage you to do is go out the Department of the Navy which if you don't know consistent Navy and Marine Corps we have a table in the exhibit room you'll get a chance to go there and see what we're doing what Marines and Navy are doing the sailors are doing to improve energy efficiency and use renewable energy on the battlefield and so I encourage you to go over there talk to them learn about what they're doing ask them why it matters to the mission then figure out what you can do to help because these programs need support and we need understanding to get support so if you're on the hill and you have an opportunity to support these programs and learn about them and talk to your bosses about them please do it because these things really matter they matter to the mission and so take a step back about six and a half years ago in a speech the Naval Energy Forum Secretary Mavis set some pretty aggressive energy goals he said the Department Navy will get 50% of our energy from alternative sources by 2020 50% of our shore energy from alternative sources by 2020 reduce fuel consumption in our non-tactical vehicles by 50% and we'd sail the Great Green Fleet in 2016 and the question asked the Secretary Mavis on the hill and elsewhere at that time and many times senses why does the Navy care so much about energy and that question came up and it came up frequently and the answer is I think you've heard it here is because it matters to the mission it's really all about the mission and it's not just me or Secretary Mavis saying that so I think as I said it's important to listen to it's sailors and marines have to say about why it matters to them it's also important to listen to our military leadership our uniform leadership and so I just want to share with you a couple of things that folks have said so quote here's one anybody who's operated at Sierra Shore knows that energy is absolutely critical to doing our job without fuel aircraft don't fly ships don't steam the lights go out none of us can do our job that's Emerald John Richardson the CNO chief naval operations deputy command on the Marine Corps for installation of logistics Lieutenant General Mike Dana called energy efficiency quote a combat multiplier Emerald Scott Swift commander U.S. Pacific Fleet said energy is quote our greatest enabler and can also be our greatest vulnerability our ability to keep ships and aircraft on station and in the fight is directly tied to decisions we make every day that affect how much energy we use and how often we have to refuel so that's a pretty clear message not just from me and from us civilian leadership but it's also coming from our uniform leadership it matters what we do matters so let's talk specifics about the Department of the Navy what are we doing well you'll see you can go out as I said in the we have a table out in the on the exhibit space where you can see the solar panels that Marines now deploy with to power radios, communications, equipment and other gear you'll see innovations like energy harvesting backpacks and knee braces you'll see UAVs that provide persistent surveillance over target with no fuel that's the goal Marines are also working to increase the fuel efficiency of their medium duty tactical vehicles which is the workforce of the tactical fleet about 25% and all these as Mag said are to extend the operational reach of the force to extend the operational reach of the force and the importance of that we can't overstate according to one study a Marine was killed or wounded in Afghanistan for every 50 fuel and water truck convoys on the road so what they're doing and what they're showing you in that room is helping to take fuel trucks off the road and that's really, really important so in the fleet we're installing LED lights cutting ship electrical demand reducing maintenance and importantly improving the quality of lighting for sailors so they can do their jobs right we're giving more information to ships about how their propulsion systems operating about navigation about weather and you can see one of the systems in at the table it makes a huge difference not just to not just to energy consumption and to efficient operation of a ship but also to the sailor's just ability to do their jobs more easily and more efficiently so that matters we've also installed hybrid electric drives on the Macon Island and the America which are two amphibious ships and saving fuel and increasing time on station according to the the main propulsion assistant on the Macon Island the use of HED on that ship allowed them to stay on station doing their mission three times longer without refueling three times longer that's a big deal this summer we'll be putting the first hybrid electric drive on a destroyer and there's a short video that we put together out in the out in the display that explains to you why that matters to the Department of Navy what the what a guided missile destroyer's job is what an HED is and why it matters that we're doing this on our platforms so the bottom line is the technology operational procedures we're putting in place are helping us squeeze more mission out of every gallon of fuel you know I want to talk for a second I general mention mention fuel and I want to talk for just a minute about fuel diversity the private sector is moving very rapidly to incorporate alternative fuels into their supply chain companies like United Airlines Virgin, UPS, FedEx all investing in alternative fuels and our operational flexibility depends on a maintaining interoperability with the commercial sector and be able to get as much fuel from as many places as possible we don't want to have fighters sitting on tarmac somewhere in the world unable to tap into a tank of United Airlines fuel just because we thought it was a bad idea for us to test and see if it worked on our platforms that'd be a bad idea and be a bad situation so last year the Defense Logistics Agency awarded a contract for 77 million gallons of alternative fuel blend for use on Navy ships largest purchase of alternative fuels in history and really interesting to feed stock for that fuel waste beef fat from Kansas Nebraska, Utah, Texas Washington, Illinois and Colorado think about that beef fat to Navy fuel that's pretty cool oh and I should mention it's at a cost competitive price that's what the rollout requires was it a cost competitive price so in the interest of time I'm getting the shake down in the back I'll stop by saying we could also say a lot about our installations we have nearly we have a more than a gigawatt of renewable energy either under procurement or in the pipeline for procurement really critical to enabling our installations to stay up and the lights to stay on even when the grid goes down doing massive amount of energy efficiency more than a billion dollars either in already under contractor in the pipeline doing a lot to improve the reliability of our grids on our basis happy to take questions on that or talk about it more but what I'll end by saying is go out and talk to the sailors and Marines talk to mags talk to folks who have been in the fight and ask them why this stuff matters because it does and then talk to your bosses if you have one who works in this building or in the Congress and figure out how you can help thanks thank you very very much so I think you probably have a lot of questions that we'd like to ask you but I believe that Senator Reed has arrived and so if he could come in and we'll have him join us and speak and if there is any time left we'll we'll do some Q&A and Senator Reed thank you very much I want to thank General Clark especially and all these people realize that I am in podium deflate because they're military people it means the podium is as big as I am so welcome everybody and I want to thank again let me thank Wes Clark not only for being here today for his comments but also for his extraordinary leadership and contribution to the country and his friendship over many years thanks Wes I also want to thank Scott Skylar from the Sustainable Energy Coalition as well as Carol Werner and Emery Laporte from the Environmental Energy Study Institute for helping us organize this effort thanks so much Carol and your colleagues you've done a tremendous job this is a very very thoughtful discussion this morning and I want to thank the panelists because you've blended great expertise and practical experience and insights that are hugely valuable to our efforts and I hope that this is just one of many conversations about the military's emphasis on the efficient use of energy and how lessons from military experience can be translated into civilian practice and commercial practice and frankly energy efficiency energy conservation is critical to our warfighting mission and this has been the case throughout history you go through any major campaign and I think one of the famous phrases was I believe the Napoleon Army moves on its stomach I think that was him but you go to any campaign I was struck we did a little research the Red Ball Express which was the famous effort in Europe in World War II to supply Patton's Thermal Army so the tanks could keep moving the decisive thrust that finally defeated the German forces they were moving 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day to our tanks and only took them 300,000 gallons of gasoline to get the fuel there so efficiency of delivery is not some concept just for aesthetics and commercial and private activities it's an essential part of military operations and that's why DOD has contrated so much on this effort it's an operational necessity it's not just a nice thing to do and as the panelists indicated when DOD is talking about energy efficiency it's not to be green it's to be an effective fighting force for example in recent conflicts over 52% of our casualties during operation and during freedom in Afghanistan came from logistic convoys moving along ground lines of control we lost people trying to get supplies to other forces in Iraqi freedom over 20% of casualties came from protecting convoys and 70 to 80% of the weight of those convoys was fuel and water some units at forward operating bases particularly in Afghanistan needed aerial resupply every three days and again fuel and water made up 70% of the cargo so the basics the fuel to run the generators to run the vehicles the water just to survive is difficult to get there and is a price and it's just not a monetary price it's a price of forces engaged and forces suffering casualties now once we've done some work particularly on the FOBs for operating bases in Afghanistan we were able to start reducing the dependency on these land convoys et cetera and these aircraft resupply and the result was that we needed obviously less in terms of resupply less force protection to protect the convoys and we could use these assets and I'm looking at the experts here more effectively for other operations engaging enemy forces protecting our forces other critical installations now there's another aspect to this I talked about fuel and water bulk cargoes but there's something else that has happened and Wes is a contemporary he's a class of 1965 from West Point I'm class of 71 so this is ancient history but when we were kicking around an infantryman was carrying a lot on his back and then they were all men now we have the female infantry officers but what's happened is that troops are carrying many more electronics today than they did back in the good old days when Captain Clark and Captain Reeve were running around the most sophisticated piece of equipment we had was a starlight scope it was about that long we had one for a company you could see at night with it today everything is electronic practically in fact a unit today in the army has 16 times more energy consuming devices on them than back in the good old days and so that means for a 72 hour patrol an army infantry typically carry at least 14 pounds of replacement batteries and we would have PRC 25 radios with maybe two or three extra batteries pretty bulky for that RTL radio operator but they'd share them around but it wasn't a big deal now just to keep the electronics operating the bulk of weight that you have to carry in an infantry unit is incredible and so the military's been working on that they've tried to decrease and they have the weight by about 70% and they're trying to reduce the weight of the typical rucksack that our troop carries by about 33% so if we can do very sophisticated things in making batteries smaller making them more effective, more powerful that is a tremendous impact all the way down to the individual soldier and in fact they're doing some research where they're trying to make rucksacks and knee braces energy generating and I'm not a scientist so I don't know how they're gonna do this but I wish them well now we talked also, we talked about in the context of military operations water and it is a critical issue as I mentioned about 60% of these logistical convoys are moving water around you can't live without water it takes a lot to pump process water we usually rely upon bottled water in combat areas cause it's more flexible to move around and DOD spends about $400 million a year on bottled water along again if we can find ways to generate safely and effectively water that is critical to operational units and there's another aspect of water too that I think at least has to be mentioned that is, and we talked to defense scholars climate change is rapidly becoming a key national security issue and one of the demonstrable impacts is water first of all the oceans are rising so countries like Bangladesh if they lose two or three feet of or increase tidal waters by two or three feet that's not just inconvenient that's a crisis but also in areas of drought there has been some speculation that one of the factors contributing to the disarray initially in Syria was a serious three year drought causing agricultural populations to move into the cities causing them to be because they lost everything basically to be much more willing to be an opposition force and so this issue is critical and it's not just overseas when we see these environmental effects in the United States we're gonna have to be prepared and that means not only DOD but particularly our National Guard when there are water emergencies flooding or drought we're gonna have to be positioned as a military particularly through our National Guard to respond and that response will come not only in providing water or protecting people from water but also again having the organic capacity to operate on our own water and not depending upon supplies that may be compromised or might not be existence so the bottom line is that operational energy efficiency drives operational effectiveness and saves lives in the military that's why it's so critical so this is a bipartisan effort I wanna again thank everyone for being here and on behalf of the Renewable Energy and Efficiency Council and caucus along with Mike Crapo we had this let me extend my best wishes and gratitude and again let me thank the panelists for their great insights and discussions and with that thank you very very much. Thank you very very much Senator Reed and he is now going to be speaking briefly in the caucus room we have just a few minutes if there were a couple questions for our panel we have time for that or if there were any other points that any of you wanted to make that you were. I wanna ask a question. Absolutely. I'd like to ask this. Absolutely. The best department representative. What's the greatest obstacle that you see facing us in our quest to improve energy efficiency and operational effectiveness? What do you most help with? Good question thank you. That's a great question and I'm gonna tell you something that'll shock a lot of people and I think it's ignorance. I believe that the lessons that we learned through the Red Ball Express and Patton moving across Europe in 1945 have been forgotten. We did so well in Vietnam and Korea and all the engagements so when we got to our engagements in the Middle East we had forgotten how important it was to protect our supply line. We had become able or reliant upon our fores our logistics folks to supply all the fuel and everything that we needed to the point that we got greedy and got soft and didn't realize what was going on and so we're trying to reteach those lessons today and so one of the big efforts that my office is doing is reaching into the training and education. Somewhat like what Max was talking about is making sure that at all levels of our Shailor Soldiers Airman Marine Guard and understand the impacts on energy from what they're planning to do. I mean it's everything from right how do you mash the pedal down on your vehicle to how are you deploying your forces and how can you thus need to resupply them? So it's a lot of education. I think once people hear it, they get it and we're certainly starting at the upper leadership and it's resonating and then. What can Congress do to help? We're up here on the hill and look can we go through just in a sentence everybody's going to Congress. What do you want from the Congress? Does that matter? You want to start from your end, go ahead. I was going to say increased permission to be flexible and adaptable and manage our own affairs. The renewable energy space in particular but also many of the energy program areas are being reimagined and refigured. It's not the old paradigm. It's new. You mean you can't take budget from one category to another? Thank you, sir. That type of example for you. The authority to have flexibility with our budget, with our resources and to manage them and apply them to the areas that we best understand at the time. The budget process takes a long time to line up in advance. Situation is changing dramatically all the time. The cost of energy has gone crazy in terms of its price drops and natural gas and the availability of solar and wind and other resources to apply to it. The flexibility needs to be there in order to keep up with the market changes that are occurring because that's where this is getting largely reimagined is in the marketplace. Thank you, sir. Anybody else? Yeah, well I think that when we get language from Congress telling us what we can or cannot do, that is an imposition on the department that is not helpful. We look at what we must do and what we need to do. And when we're told we can't do something that is critical to maintaining the readiness of our forces to plan for the future, for instance, the impacts of climate change, current NDAA from the house as we cannot imagine or look at what those impacts can be in the future. And I think you've heard several examples from Senator Reid and from others. Those have impacts on the geopolitical scene, on our facilities, on how we are planning to, our equipment, what type of environments they have to operate in. If we can't do that, we're basically taking risk in areas that we should not be exposing our forces to. So it's things like that that quite frankly are politically driven that are not keeping the welfare of our military and our nation in mind and that really hurts us quite a bit. I think there's a few things. So maybe a little biased, I've been in the department of the Navy a lot shorter period of time than I worked on the Hill. So a couple things, one, the programs obviously need support, they need money, right? And budgets are tight, particularly on the facility side, it's really hard. We are third party financing our way into a lot of these energy improvements, right? And we're not using appropriated funds to do it. That's a good thing, but programs need money. So that's number one. Two, I think people need to understand that what we're doing on energy while I talk about renewables and efficiency sometimes has, I'll say it this way. I think we're only trying to keep up with what's happening in the broader private sector around us and people need to recognize that things have changed. The country is, jobs are being created in renewables and efficiency. The smart businesses are planning to be more efficient and use distributed generation to drive their costs down and to do the right thing. So I think that we have to place ourselves in context of what's happening in the broader economy and the drivers of that and to recognize we're not on the bleeding edge here with what we're doing. We're trying to keep up and we ought to be because it makes sense for us, both for operational reasons, which you heard, but also for fiscal reasons. I think another thing is to hold this accountable. When we get asked questions about how did the, you have a key performance parameter in your major acquisition programs, how did that go? How are you measuring the logistics tail that's gonna be created by this platform that you're investing a lot of money in? And what are you doing to improve the operational capability of that platform and to reduce the logistics tail and to reduce the amount of sustainment dollars we're gonna have to put into it in the future. And those questions drive, one thing I've learned about the department since I've been there, if you get questions, we will answer them. And in answering them, we will look and see what we're doing and we will look at weaknesses and that'll spur change. And so I'd encourage you ask questions and hold people accountable because some of the things are just, people are busy and you respond to what you're asked to respond to. And so those are just a few things that aren't that hard to do. The money thing's obviously tough. It's tough, we're in a tough budget climate. But the other things are things that folks can do. Time, but so a minute and a minute, how's that? So what I'll do is I'll echo what Ms. Simpson said, which is constraints and restraints that we didn't ask for aren't helpful to the extent that you can partner with us to help us build legislation that's helpful for defense initiatives. That would be good. The second thing I would say is nationwide but internal to the department of defense as well, sense of urgency starts at the top. And we don't have a sense of urgency about our energy situation. I mean, the group in this room probably does, but across the nation that sense of urgency doesn't exist. We've become complacent to understand that our grid is always going to be there. Power will always be there and we really don't need to worry about it very much and all these people are not too worried. So we're gonna need a sense of urgency. It's gotta start at the top because it's not gonna start at the bottom. So let me throw out perhaps a stretch goal. Like we're not in the Marine Corps, we're not good at innovation. We're good at killing people and breaking their toys. But I work with every individual office at this table and within the government. So I work with NREL National Renewable Energy Lab, DOE, et cetera to try and be better operationally in the energy arena. But when I go out to industry and ask them for all their great ideas, there's a lot of great industry idea. But when you throw the joint capabilities integration system on top of that, the Defense Acquisition Program, it is mind-numbing to the small business guy who or woman who doesn't understand how to work through that morass. So that's a stretch goal, but that's probably my largest challenge because I think there's a lot of nuggets out there that they just can't go through that, all those hoops. Just one thing. In addition to everything everybody else says, fewer reporting requirements. We often get burdened with lots of congressional reports that take a lot of time and also effort. So it would be great if we let us do our jobs and not have to report out so much. And just stay on mission, right? That's right, that's right. Well, I want to say thank you very, very much. You are all terrific. And thank you very much, General Clark, for asking that very, very important question. So make sure that you go and see the booths inside the expo room. School stuff. And we'll start our next panel momentarily. Thank you. Thank you.