by J. John Swanko
10/18/11 (People Port) Ray Mabus, Navy Secretary’s speech last Thursday, gave a brief outline of how far his department has come in reducing Navy dependence on oil. His reasoning is simple, for every 50 convoys of gasoline, they lose a Marine. Killed or wounded, that is just too expensive.
They import more water, gas than anything into Afghanistan. The Navy is actively working, motivating, solving these problems. In April, President Obama tasked Agriculture, Energy and Navy Departments, to come up with a nationwide, geographically dispersed, competitive biofuel industry for the United States. They are actively working toward that goal.
Secretary Mabus said, “This is what we do. We change the way we use and produce energy, and we’re doing it again, and we’re at the cutting edge, which is where the Navy has always been on energy use.”
The Navy is the new biofuel market. They demand: The biofuels have to drop in and work. No tweaking. Cannot take any land out of food production. The price has to be competitive.
Our Marines -in energy- have been leading he gave this example, “Last fall, a year ago right now, 1st Marine unit, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines went into some of the hottest fighting in Afghanistan, in Sangin, Helmand province, taking alternative energy devices with them. And they were sort of given these going out the door. It was, here, give this a try, see if it works.
“In the middle of this fight, they tried. They cut their headquarters’ fossil fuel usage by 25 percent. They cut some of their Forward Operating Bases and their combat outposts about to 90 percent.”
Not to be outdone, The SEALs have a team going back into deployment, With a team that will produce all their own energy, drinking water. The Secretary asks the hard questions. That is his job. An example, What happens if there is no grid providing power.
California’s China Lake’s geothermal unit sells power back. Guantanamo Bay cranks out 3.8 megawatts.
They are well on their way to hitting the target, 8 million barrels of biofuel in 2020. The money saved is huge. The Makin Island is going to save about a quarter of a billion dollars in fuel. His 27,000 smart meters are detailing where the –line loss- is going.
He does not ignore small business. Last year, the Navy introduced the website Green Biz Ops to put all their energy and efficiency contracts and opportunities for procurement in one place. The SBA has taken that and done it governmentwide.
Note:
For gasoline: "We have to take it across one ocean or the other, the Pacific or Atlantic, and we have to put it on a convoy and either take it up and over the Hindu Kush mountain range or we have to take it down through the Northern Distribution Network, over the Amu Darya River, and then we have to take it through Afghanistan to get it to that Forward Operating Base. It’s too expensive in too many ways for us to do business as usual."
Motivation Example:
"Every year, every one of our ships, our subs, our aircraft squadrons participates in a year-long evaluation of battle effectiveness. It’s the coveted Battle “E.” If you’ve been on a Navy ship or seen one in the harbor, sometimes you’ll see these big Es on the side of the sail or the side of the stack, and this is highly regarded and highly sought after. And it’s not granted to many people, not granted to many units, not granted to many ships. Starting now, energy is going to be one of the elements of getting the Battle E.”
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Copyrighted, 2011, J John Swanko, All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, It may not be published, broadcast, redistributed, rewritten, without meeting the terms and conditions.
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