Center for a New American Security

With about 20 hours of flying time over the last 10 days, hopping between Washington and Europe for a climate change simulation that we ran in Hamburg last week, I managed to get some reading done. The Economist generally makes for good airplane reading, so I read through the last two issues. In both issues, the science and technology sections of the magazine published interesting stories on “Energy conservation” that are worth reading in full.

In the August 21^st issue, the story “Watts up” identified an important hurdle to a successful energy revolution, leading with this: “People habitually underestimate their energy consumption.” The Economist was reporting the results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found “that although people do grasp basic energy trends, they are decidedly hazy on the details.” According to the story, in a survey of 505 American volunteers:

Each was asked to estimate the energy consumption of nine household devices (such as stereos and air conditioners) as well as the energy savings incurred by six green activities (like swapping incandescent bulbs for fluorescent ones). The researchers then compared the volunteers’ estimates with the actual energy requirements or savings in question…   

On average, participants underestimated both energy use and energy savings by a factor of 2.8—mostly because they undervalued the requirements of large machines like heaters and clothes dryers. As a result, they failed to recognise the huge energy savings that can come from improving the efficiency of such appliances. Miscalculations like these hinder conservation efforts.

This post was originally published yesterday by the Climate Compass blog at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change where Dr. Jay Gulledge is Senior Scientist and Director of the Science and Impacts Program at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Last fall I posted a blog about the unusual number and severity of extreme weather events that have been striking around the globe for the past several years. That entry focused on the alternating severe drought and heavy flooding in Atlanta in 2007-2009 as an example of the roller coaster ride that climate change is likely to be. As every dutiful scientist does, I stopped short of blaming those individual weather events on global warming, but I am also careful to point out that it is scientifically unsound to claim that the confluence of extreme weather events in recent years is not associated with global warming; I’ll return to this question later.

Tempestuous 2010

The weather of 2010 continues the chaos of recent years. In the past six months, the American Red Cross says it “has responded to nearly 30 larger disasters in 21 [U.S.] states and territories. Floods, tornadoes and severe weather have destroyed homes and uprooted lives …” Severe flooding struck New England in March, Nashville in May, and Arkansas and Oklahoma in June.

Nearly the entire northern hemisphere is experiencing a massive heat wave this summer. Back in February, heavy snowfall in D.C. prompted some politicians to decry global warming, but those voices are now silent in the searing heat that has gripped much of the world this summer. The first half of 2010 has been the warmest January-July period in the global temperature record, stretching back to 1880. I would be the first to question the significance of this single-year observation, but it fits perfectly into a multiple-decade pattern in which each year between 2000 and 2009 was warmer than the average temperature of the 1990s, and every year in the 1990s was warmer than the average temperature for the 1980s.

A few months ago Will wrote about climate skepticism and the relationship between scientists and the public, explaining that individual consumers of information often view scientific information about climate change through a lens of personal interests.  This raises the question: what does it take to change peoples’ minds – people who have a vested personal or political interest in burying their heads in the sand?  Perhaps it takes seeing the effects of climate change with their own eyes.

Yesterday, Joss Garmen wrote on ClimateProgress about a recent article by Michael Hanlon, one of the UK’s most prominent climate skeptics.  Writing for The Daily Mail, where he is the Science Editor, Hanlon acknowledged blatantly in the title that, “yes, global warming is real – and deeply worrying.”  What prompted Hanlon’s about-face? A week-long trip to the Arctic where Hanlon accompanied a British science team investigating increases in summer ice melt.  Of the trip Hanlon said, “I have long been something of a climate-change skeptic, but my views in recent years have shifted.  For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.”

In a year-long study that we completed back in April, Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces, we noticed similar parallels when it came to the military’s engagement on climate change. In particular, the Navy to date has been the most forward leaning service to take hold of the implications of climate change, standing up its own Take Force Climate Change to study the impacts on U.S. naval forces. But why was the Navy the first and most active service to engage climate change? The Navy noticed measurable changes in its operating environment as a consequence of climate change, including a melting Arctic.

Recommendation 3: The Department of Defense should partner with private sector innovators and establish an Operational Energy Innovation Center. In pursuing its most urgent energy vulnerabilities, DOD should take steps to ensure that it receives input from all innovators, including those in the smallest companies. However, information and communication barriers, largely related to the size disparity of the organizations, impede such collaboration. One potential avenue to connect DOD to innovators is through technology incubators, which provide the expertise needed to get small innovators firmly established. By cultivating a partnership, DOD could provide the testing data and initial market necessary to commercialize new clean energy technologies. Furthermore, to address its most urgent energy concerns, DOD could combine the innovators from nascent businesses with researchers from larger private firms, universities, and national laboratories in an Operational Energy Innovation Center, modeled on DOE’s Innovation Hubs. The Center could be funded through a competitive Operational Energy Innovation Fund.

Last week, the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Review Panel released its final report on the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The five-month review of the QDR was an opportunity for a panel of national security and defense experts (including CNAS Commander-in-Chief Dr. John Nagl) to assess the shortcomings of the QDR and its processes, and to analyze U.S. national security priorities and challenges from outside the Department of Defense bureaucracy. According to the report:

The issues raised in the body of this Report are sufficiently serious that we believe an explicit warning is appropriate.  The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure. (Emphasis mine)

When I hear train wreck I think Li Lo or Mel Gibson. Despite that distraction, I kept reading.

The panel of experts identified four key national interests that have shaped U.S. national security policy since WWII:

Since 1945, the United States has been the principal architect and remains the principal leader of a durable and desirable international system. American security rests on four principles: the defense of the American homeland; assured access to the sea, air, space, and cyberspace; the preservation of a favorable balance of power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of that region; and provision for the global “common good” through such actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and disaster relief. (P. 25) 

This morning you read what drew Will's initial reaction on the DOE-DOD MOU (pdf). I'm starting to worry about his nuclear fetish, but he may be right that that could be one of the more interesting aspects of cooperation given the natural overlap between these departments on nuclear issues.

Right out of the gate, first parapraph: The MOU is to "enhance energy security," yet it specifically covers "water efficiency." No argument here on the overlap, but it's interesting. Bases like Ft. Bliss and many in California and around the Southwest of CONUS are making waves on water efficiency, by necessity. In this case, we've spoken with many of the great Americans working on water conservation tech, and here DOD may be able to disseminate lessons learned from its own experiences.

One other wording choice that I'll flag for you all is in item B: that the departments will maximize collaboration on "emerging energy technologies." This is a big step folks. There are too many federal dollars spent on off-the-shelf energy tech right now, and not enough spent on pulling development along. (See our 2009 report on using DOD installations as testbeds for energy tech, based on a conference full of VCs, energy innovators and security types; and also the brand new CNA report that came online yesterday.)

For those intimate with the DOD energy world (I'm looking at you, aptly named DOD Energy Blog), it's nothing new that the Labs and DOE will continue to collaborate with DOD on many of the specific activities named in this MOU. It's been pretty heartening to watch that cooperation increase over the past few years, especially in California, Hawaii and Colorado, and I'm glad that this long-in-coming MOU finally enshrines this good work.

So then, what do you all think of the MOU?

Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman and Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate cooperation between the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense that will “enhance national energy security, and demonstrate Federal Government leadership in transitioning America to a low carbon economy.”

The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) really set the tone for a DOE-DOD partnership by indicating that DOD wanted to “partner with academia, other U.S. agencies, and international partners to research, develop, test, and evaluate new sustainable energy technologies,” and it is encouraging to see progress being made on that front. The MOU specifically acknowledges that the Department of Defense could speed the development and implementation of alternative energy and conservation technologies by using “military installations as a test bed to demonstrate and create a market for innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies coming out of DOE laboratories, among other sources.“ The MOU also charges a senior-level Executive Committee made up of DOE and DOD representative with the responsibility to oversee the interagency partnership.

Not surprisingly, water challenges continue to exacerbate tensions between India and Pakistan. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that India, in an effort to feed the insatiable energy appetite of an economy projected to grow by 9.4 percent this fiscal year, has planned to build several hydroelectric dams over the next decade. One planned project is a hydroelectric dam on the Indian-administered side of Kashmir in an upstream valley where waters from the Himalayan glaciers eventually flow through Indian Kashmir and into Pakistan. According to the Times, “In Pakistan, the project raises fears that India, its archrival and the upriver nation, would have the power to manipulate the water flowing to its agriculture industry — a quarter of its economy and employer of half its population.”

Despite a half-century of cooperation over water in the Indus basin, increasing apprehension between India and Pakistan over those resources has added another layer of complexity to an already complex and disjointed relationship; one mired by longstanding, cultural, social and political grievances and mistrust. As the Times reported, “The fight here is adding a new layer of volatility at a critical moment to one of the most fraught relationships anywhere, one between deeply distrustful, nuclear-armed nations who have already fought three wars.”

Last night, we hosted a top secret, off-the-record, “this didn’t happen” energy event with government and private sector experts who have a broad range of energy and national security expertise. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as top secret as we’re making it out to be given the fact that we’re touting it on the blog this morning. But for the 42 of you reading this post this morning, certainly consider yourself in the know.

What follows below are some brief thoughts on the future of the military, the Department of Defense and our energy needs. We offer these points up as some food for thought as we take a step back from the event last night and go easy on the writing this morning:

We are all here because we care about energy security – finding reliably available, affordable, and sustainable supplies sufficient to meet our demand. DOD’s energy security is a more complex concept perhaps than that of the rest of the economy: our operations depend on global supply availability, adaptability for use in multiple platforms, and infrastructure resiliency. The ability of our soldiers, sailors and Marines to do their jobs is on the line. And as we were reminded last week by the news of refined fuel being smuggled from our allies in Iraq to Iran, in defiance of new U.S. sanctions, the geopolitical impacts of our current energy system often hit U.S. security and foreign policy interests particularly hard.

Last week, President Obama met with a bi-partisan group of Senators about new legislation to address climate change and create a new energy policy for the United States, a meeting that was postponed the week before last after the excitement over the McChrystal affair.  U.S. climate change legislation has been stalled in the Senate since last year even though the House of Representatives passed a sweeping piece of legislation known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which would institute a cap-and-trade measure to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.  Senators Graham, Lieberman and Kerry spent months at the beginning of the year crafting a Senate version of the bill, though the bill unfortunately lost support as other domestic issues came to the forefront.

With a renewed sense of urgency, heightened by the environmental, economic and social costs of the BP Gulf oil spill, President Obama called the meeting to try to chart a new path forward.  However, the President’s insistence that a cap-and-trade provision be included in any new energy legislation was met with resistance from Republicans, who largely prefer to pass a pared down version that would include funding for “green” technologies like solar, wind and hydropower, but would set no emissions cap.

Congress’s ability to pass a climate change bill that caps carbon emissions could potentially have a huge impact on the outcome of the Cancun Conference, in part because U.S. negotiators cannot make any promises about U.S. emissions reductions unless the agreement could be approved by Congress (and give the state of current domestic legislation, the prospects are not great).