Center for a New American Security

In the great tradition of the natural security bloggers comparing important documents to their previous iterations, we’d like to spend the next few days highlighting how the 2010 Joint Operating Environment (JOE; pdf warning) recently released by Joint Forces Command, compares with the previous, 2008 version (also pdf). I’ll walk through energy today; Blogger Dan will do the food section tomorrow and Will will take on climate change for Thursday. For anyone unfamiliar, according to its own words, the JOE “in no way constitutes U.S. government policy and must necessarily be speculative in nature, it seeks to provide the Joint Force an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concepts to guide our future force development.” Noted.

JOE 2008 (p 16):

To meet even the conservative growth rates posited above, global energy production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand would be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every seven years…Fossil fuels will still make up 80% of the energy mix in the 2030s, with oil and gas comprising upwards of 60%. The central problem for the coming decade will not be a lack of petroleum reserves, but rather a shortage of drilling platforms, engineers and refining capacity.

JOE 2010 (p. 24):

To meet even the conservative growth rates posited in the economics section, global energy production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand is estimated to be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every seven years… Fossil fuels will still make up 80% of the energy mix in the 2030s, with oil and gas comprising upwards of 60%. The central problem for the coming decade will not be a lack of petroleum reserves, but rather a shortage of drilling platforms, engineers and refining capacity.

The similarities don’t stop there. Jumping between the two documents, many if not most of the sentences in the energy sections did not change at all over the past two years of reassessing the future security environment. A few examples follow.

JOE 2008 (p 16) vs. 2010 (p. 26) on OPEC:

(2008): To meet climbing global requirements , OPEC will have to increase its output from 30 MBD to at least 50 MBD. Significantly, no OPEC nation, except perhaps Saudi Arabia, is investing sufficient sums in new technologies and recovery methods to achieve such growth. Some, like Venezuela and Russia, are actually exhausting their fields to cash in on the bonanza created by rapidly rising oil prices.

(2010): To meet climbing global requirements, OPEC will have to increase its output from 30 MBD to at least 50 MBD. Significantly, no OPEC nation, except perhaps Saudi Arabia, is investing sufficient sums in new technologies and recovery methods to achieve such growth. Some, like Venezuela and Russia, are actually exhausting their fields to cash in on the bonanza created by rapidly rising oil prices.

JOE 2008 (p 16) vs. 2010 (p. 26) on biofuels:

(2008): Production could increase to approximately 3 MBD– equivalent, but starting from a small base, biofuels are unlikely to contribute more than 1% of global energy requirements by the 2030s. Moreover, even that modest achievement could curtail the supply of foodstuffs to the world’s growing population, which would add other national security challenge to an already full menu.

(2010): Production could increase to approximately 3 MBD– equivalent, but starting from a small base, biofuels are unlikely to contribute more than 1% of global energy requirements by the 2030s. Moreover, even that modest achievement could curtail the supply of foodstuffs to the world’s growing population, which would add another National Security challenge to an already full menu.

JOE 2008 (p 16) vs. JOE 2010 (p. 26) on renewables:

(2008): Wind and solar combined are unlikely to account for more than 1% of global energy by 2030. That assumes the energy from such sources will more than triple, which alone would require major investments.

(2010): Wind and Solar combined are unlikely to account for more than 1% of global energy by 2030. That figure assumes the energy from such sources will more than triple, which alone would require major investments.

On Friday morning of last week, a record 19% of Texas’s energy was supplied by wind power alone. Sure, it was off-peak, and world energy demand will still rise as renewable energy use does. But I can keenly recall many within the past 5 years claiming that progress even of the scale that we see today was not feasible in the foreseeable future. I consider the energy estimates in the JOE too conservative, but understand why its authors would go the route of basically setting the status quo as the energy planning assumptions. It’s going to be difficult to change how we produce and consume energy. But given their own verdict (below) on these projections, I believe a little nudge in the way of expecting more technology change on the energy front over the next 20 years might be helpful:

JOE 2008 (p 17) JOE 2010 (p. 26):

(2008): The implications for future conflict are ominous. If the major developed and developing states do not undertake a massive expansion of production and refining capabilities, a severe energy crunch is inevitable.

(2010): The implications for future conflict are ominous, if energy supplies cannot keep up with demand and should states see the need to militarily secure dwindling energy resources.