Center for a New American Security

Yesterday, I caught a webcast of the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight hearing over Rare Earth Minerals and 21st Century Industry. A hearing I might feel more comfortable calling “Surprise! China has all the stuff: a rare earth tale.” Witnesses included: Dr. Stephen Freimann, retired Deputy Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; Dr. Steven Duclos, Chief Scientist and Manager, Material Sustainability, GE Global Research; Dr. Karl A. Gschneider, Jr., of the Ames Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy; Mark Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Molycorp Minerals, LLC; and Terence Stewart, Managing Partner in the Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart.

Here are some of the important, though largely depressing, highlights:

*Disclaimer: I'm just highlighting what these panelists claimed; I'm not researching them or fact checking for the purpose of this post. We'll debate these perspectives and try to poke holes in the stats later among ourselves, maybe over St. Patrick's Day drinks.

• Chinese investment in Afghan copper mines may help stabilize the Logar province, reports The New Security Beat.
• The United Kingdom signs an energy protocol with Turkmenistan in the pursuit of diversifying sources of natural gas resources, according to UK Finance News.
• Reuters AlertNet reports on the food crisis in a politically unstable Zimbabwe, which may be exacerbated due to climate change.
• The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards will meet this week to discuss cooperation over the Arctic, according to KTUU, an Alaskan NBC news affiliate.
• According to Reuters, a severe drought and shrinking water table in China may be the culprit in the cracking and closure of a runway in one of the region's busiest airports.

“With more than 140 years of service in the Arctic and 11 statutory responsibilities there, the U.S. Coast Guard is at the center of efforts to adapt to [climate] change in the Arctic,” writes Christine Parthemore in her working paper, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Maritime Services. “Its missions in the Arctic include protecting indigenous populations and marine life as well as law enforcement and interdiction. These missions give the Coast Guard unique responsibilities for managing the effects of environmental change on human populations in the Arctic.”

In Promoting the Dialogue, Parthemore explores the impact of climate change on the maritime services (specifically the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard) and synthesizes how these services are integrating climate change into their strategic and operational planning. “With access to the global commons and stability abroad potentially at stake, analyzing and addressing the effects of climate change will remain important to the ability of the Navy and the Coast Guard to successfully fulfill their missions,” Parthemore writes.

Photo: A U.S. Coast Guard cutter prepares to transport a science team to a remote ice floe to analyze Arctic sea ice. Courtesy of Aerographer’s Mate 1st Class Gene Swope and the U.S. Coast Guard.

As another leg of my trip to NREL and NORTHCOM a few weeks ago with colleagues Commander Herb Carmen and Will Rogers, we swung by the Air Force Academy to check out their energy work. My biggest take-away may be that they have the largest, best-equipped S&T labs I’ve ever seen at a university. It definitely plucked my nerd heartstrings.

But to get to the real point, here is the Academy’s energy vision (pdf):

The 2008 United States Air Force Academy Energy Strategic Plan details a vision to improve our stewardship of fiscal and natural resources, by becoming a leader in the world of renewable energy and involving the 8,200 cadets, faculty and employees of USAFA. The vision is to be a “Net-Zero” electricity installation by 2015 and a carbon-neutral installation by 2025. These challenging and lofty goals raise the bar for the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense and the nation.

Love the linking of energy and climate goals. Notably, they have several key enablers of success at work here: leadership instruction; some motivated individuals; a good partner in their local utility; and funding from the stimulus package. These ingredients have to date added up to their thorough mapping of their alternative energy potential, lots of ongoing research and a solar installation on its way.

The DOD Energy Blogger, himself an Academy grad, described another important aspect of this location back in December thusly:

…tons of potential for cadet learning and culture change. All of which should impact the AF more broadly as the grads move out into leadership positions in the "Real Air Force."

Cheers to that, and while I don’t undermine its importance, I’m thinking that lessons learned they might share from working with a willing utility partner may be even more important for fellow Air Force and DOD installations better meeting energy requirements – something I studied up on about a year back but haven’t been paying as much attention to as of late. If anyone knows of any good research on how different types (or regions) of utilities are or are not integrating renewable, let us know. In the meantime, thumbs up and thanks to the Air Force Academy.

Photo: A 200-milliJoule pulse laser at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. The laser is used for a variety of experiments, including tests to determine how "pushing" sulfur into a silicon-based solar cell increases the cell's efficiency. Courtesy of Rachel Boettcher and the U.S. Air Force.

A recent article in the February 20, 2010 National Journal, “The Bottled-Water Problem,” (subscription required) explores the logistical challenges that the U.S. military and NATO troops are experiencing with water, food and fuel supplies in Afghanistan. In particular, the author, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., focuses on the military’s reliance on importing supplies of bottled-water due, in part, to concerns that contaminated water from indigenous sources is making military personnel sick.

“When we drink local water – just stuff that a normal Iraqi wouldn’t think twice about or an Afghan wouldn’t think twice about drinking, because their [immune] system is used to dealing with all that bacteria and the germs – our systems aren’t used to that,” the author quotes Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, as saying.

Freedberg explores the question of purifying indigenous sources of water and indeed points out that the U.S. military and NATO are working towards buying local water with potential investments in water purification and bottling plants. But purifying water locally might not be the most cost-effective approach to solving the military’s water supply issue in Afghanistan, at least so suggests a Dutch Air Force officer who coordinates logistics for the International Stability Assistance Force.

The “bottled water we import is cheaper than when we get it here,” the Dutch officer told Freedberg. And that might be true if one were calculating the cost of water using the initial purchase value of water by volume compared to what it would cost to get water locally through investments in water purification and bottling plants. But when it comes to military supplies that are shipped to and within a combat theatre, the value of those supplies is much greater than the price the military originally purchases it for.

The Small Wars Manual (SWM), released in 1940 by the United States Marine Corps, in response to the growing engagements in guerilla style wars in Central America and Caribbean, states:

The ‘big three’ of supply are Ammunition, Food, and Water. Combat troops can operate in the field for a very limited time in actual combat with only AMMUNITION, but their continued existence requires the other two, FOOD and WATER. Therefore, in order to conduct the advance inland, one of the first considerations in such a movement must be the means of supply.

I found it interesting that fuel was not one of the “big three,” or that there is not a “big four” as no items in the supply trinity readily lend themselves to substitution.  In fact, in the 492-page document, the term “fuel” is mentioned only nine times (one of those times merely in reference to the “fuel tank” being one of the pieces of a river boat).

One has to assume that the United States understood the vital role that fuel played in war and other engagements based upon its oil sanctions against Japan in July 1940 and its complete embargo of oil exports to Japan in November 1941. Additionally, the U.S. War Department's FM 27-10: Rules of Land Warefare, issued that same year as the Small Wars Manual, hold the concealment of fuel as an act of treason, on par with espionage. Furthermore, the only permissible non-combat destruction of occupied terrirories named is "to furnish fuel if imperitively needed for the army."

In the post-Pearl Harbor world, however, fuel took on a greater presence in the U.S. field manual cacophony that erupted after Roosevelt’s declaration of war.

Big, big natural security news from The New York Times this weekend. You know how we’ve been sanctioning Iran and discouraging U.S. investment in its energy sector? Well – prepare to be shocked – it turns out that the U.S. government “has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran.” Wowzers.

The full article is a must-read. And not just the article – I’d say its supplemental materials are worth a glance as well. The Times provides a list of the companies it identified. In addition to most of the big financial and energy institutions one could think of, it includes many auto makers, airlines, and electronics makers and service providers (cameras, cell phones, etc.). I think looking through the activities companies engaged in since 2000 beyond energy development gives the Iran debate good context. At the bottom of the same link as that list, the Times provides its methodology.

To wrap up the coverage in that paper, see Jad Mouawad’s related piece framing various energy and geopolitical issues that will affect whether or not Iran’s energy resources provide it with an upper hand in the face of sterner sanctions. For a good contrast, then jump to Haaretz, which reported statements Sunday by an official of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company that despite having reduced subsidies, Iran’s oil and gas demand has not dropped. The article implies that this could make sanctions on Iran’s energy sectors more potent, though I’m not so sure given the China factor and the myriad other pieces of the picture involved with that. Meanwhile, Iran continues to work toward its nuclear program, which I hear tell is aimed mainly at increasing the country’s energy security.

The Week Ahead

At noon Monday the Wilson Center hosts "Warning of Global Warming? Politics, Economics and Ecological Change in Siberia's Far East" based on in-country research. Wednesday at 6:00pm, check out CFR’s discussion on "Developing an International Framework for Geoengineering." (I wish I could attend this one – if anyone takes good notes and is in a sharing mood, shoot me an email.) The National Building Council holds “For the Greener Good: Greening the Supply Chain” at 6:30pm on Thursday. At 11:00am Friday AAAS convenes think tank and government experts for "Climate Policy: Public Perception, Science, and the Political Landscape."

• The New York Times reports on initiatives to marry solar technology with natural gas in Florida.
• Reuters reports that Indonesia and Malaysia are stepping up security in the Strait of Malacca to protect oil tankers from piracy.
• The European Commission grants $3.1billion in funding for energy projects to bolster EU energy security, according to RTT News.
• A drought in Vietnam has left the country more susceptible to forest fires and a "plague of insects and worms" that impact agriculture, fish stocks and the economy, reports IRIN.
• The European Union raises concerns over the impact that their future biodiesel initiatives will have on agriculture in places such as Indonesia, according to Reuters.  

• According to Bloomberg News, Syria's agriculture and people have been hit hard in the wake of a recent drought.
• Afghanistan launches a program to eradicate poppy, beginning in Taliban territory, according to AFP.
• Navy to build up to 40megwatts of solar arrays on Navy and Marine Corps bases throughout southwestern United States, reports Navy Compass.
• Reuters reports that the United States is seeking to build ties with Turkmenistan through development of its energy resources.
• Climate scientists defend work to public, according to The New York Times.

• AFP reports on the European Union’s plans to develop access to energy resources outside of Russia.
• Argentina lobbies for American involvement in a dispute with Britain over oil near the Falkland Islands, reports UPI.
• According to the Christian Science Monitor, a melting Arctic may be a point of security concern.
• Business Week reports that China has reached initial cooperation agreements with Russia on a natural gas deal.
• Water may be an overlooked national security concern, according to Grist.

• Reuters reports that Niger's junta looks at food issues in the country as a possible cause for further instability
• The Ukraine may cut off energy exports to Europe due to coal shortages, reports the Associated Press.
• A Huffington Post blog discusses American oil dependency and how it may be affecting U.S. security and foreign policy.
• Financial Times details Israel's talks with China over its energy deals with Iran.
• Water shortages in India could spell social conflict according to Times Online.