By Eric Lindeman
Building on several major think tank studies this year, a new report warns of the security dangers posed by military dependence of fossil fuels and calls on the Air Force, the biggest user, to launch a pilot “green” construction program for new and existing hangars that would reduce their energy consumption to net zero or below.
The proposed pilot program would be based on a solar energy and efficiency program similar to that at Hangar 25, a private aviation facility at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., that was built by “green builder” Shangri-La Construction and is operated by Avjet Corp.
The liberal public policy research and advocacy organization, Center for American Progress (CAP), unveiled the new work last week, following earlier reports by the Center for Naval Analyses, the Brookings Institution and Deloitte that dealt more broadly with Department of Defense energy security policy issues, including forward operations, and warned of the consequences of DoD failing to increase efficiency and use of renewable resources.
In “Clean Energy for the Wild Blue Yonder: Expanding Renewable Energy and Efficiency in the Air Force,” CAP reiterated those warnings. The authors, Alexandra Kougentakis, Tom Kenworthy and Daniel Weiss, stressed that DoD facilities expenditures were $3.4 billion for energy worldwide in fiscal year 2007, but that $1.6 billion of that went to Air Force facilities.
Electricity usage is the largest component of facility energy costs, according to the CAP report, representing 48 percent of total facility energy consumption. DoD spent about $2.5 billion on nearly 30 million megawatt-hours of electricity in FY ’07, with the Air Force’s portion amounting to $700 million.
“The Air Force is the largest [user],” said retired officer Paul Clarke in a conference call with reporters, “so a good place to start is with Air Force infrastructure.”
CAP points out that DoD has funding for many energy-related projects. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated $4.3 billion to DoD for facility upgrades, including energy-related improvements. Another $300 million under the Recovery Act went to DoD for developing energy efficient technologies and an additional $120 million went to DoD’s Energy Conservation Investment Program (ECIP) for projects that will improve efficiency and enhance national security while cutting costs, raising total energy funding under the act to $4.7 billion.
Last year, the Air Force issued its own policy, the Infrastructure Energy Strategic Plan (IESP), which goes beyond the scope of the DoD-wide ECIP. The IESP sets specific goals for the Air Force, including:
- Reduce energy infrastructure costs 20 percent by 2020.
- Reduce facility energy intensity (the amount of energy required for each unit of output or activity) by 3 percent per year through 2015.
- Reduce base water use by 2 percent per year through 2015.
- Increase use of renewable energy by annual targets (3 percent, 5 percent, 7.5 percent and 25 percent) through 2025.
- Reduce ground vehicle fuel use by 2 percent per year through 2015.
- Increase alternative fuel use by 10 percent per year through 2015.
CAP acknowledges that the Air Force is already the largest buyer of clean energy in the U.S. government, with renewable sources accounting for five percent of all Air Force consumption. “Investments in wind, solar, and other renewable sources make the Air Force the seventh largest clean energy consumer in the country,” the report said.
Pointing to the 14 megawatt solar power array at Nellis AFB, Nev., as an example, the CAP researchers reported that “a number of important Air Force bases are in areas with ample solar energy resources, making the expansion of solar technologies an attractive option for them.”
With the successes at Nellis and other facilities, the Air Force “could dramatically ramp up its use of solar energy,” the report said, adding, “A study by Sandia National Laboratories in 2004 concluded that, ‘Nearly all military bases have potential for one or more economically viable solar projects.'”
CAP also cited a 2007 report by Booz Allen Hamilton that assessed all domestic Air Force bases for potential renewable energy use and identified 18 bases in seven states–the majority in the Southwest and West–with particularly significant potential for solar energy.
CAP projects huge, quantifiable benefits for Air Force bases with solar energy potential if they were to adopt the principles that underlay Hangar 25 design, construction and operation.
According to the CAP report, Hangar 25 is “the world’s first aviation facility to receive the U.S. Green Building Council’s platinum certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and it offers a financially viable model to dramatically reduce electricity and oil consumption, and generate solar electricity.”
The design of Hangar 25 “combines an emphasis on cost-conscious sustainable design with a 100-percent clean-energy delivery system,” CAP said. “In fact, the 1,530 rooftop photovoltaic panels produce from 110 to 200 percent of the building’s electricity needs. The building is a net zero energy installation, generating all power to meet its needs onsite, with the ability to make a profit by selling the excess electricity. In 2009 alone, Hangar 25 returned approximately 175.8 megawatt-hours of clean, renewable electricity back to the grid.”
Advanced sustainability strategies in design and construction of the hangar resulted in significant reduction in energy consumption and operational expenses. CAP said capital expenditures were comparable to traditional construction costs while operational costs were cut to about $.02 per square foot.
“At $276 per square foot to construct, Hangar 25 shatters the myth that green building requires a cost premium,” the report said. “Historically, Air Force hangar construction costs are $187 to $208 per square foot, depending on the purpose of the hangar. A hangar construction project initiated by the Delaware Air National Guard last year with numerous clean-energy features, including a geothermal heating and cooling system, is estimated to cost $325 per square foot. A Hangar 25-style strategy would achieve huge reductions in energy costs and carbon emissions at a lower cost.”
The sustainability strategies used at Hangar 25 can be adopted at other hangars and at most other kinds of buildings, CAP believes. They include:
- Cool roofing that reflects the sunlight off of the building rooftop while minimizing the temperature of the roof itself, thereby reducing heat gain and urban heat island effects.
- Efficient building ventilation and air conditioning strategies.
- Drought-tolerant landscaping that reduces water and electricity use.
- Site paving of other surfaces with a high solar reflectance index material to reflect solar radiation.
- Use of daylight in 95 percent of spaces through skylights and windows.
- Thermal mass effect of concrete floor, which retains and re-emits heat energy.
- Reduced exterior lighting.
The CAP study said that a combination of solar array and energy efficient strategies at Hangar 25 has resulted in annual savings of nearly 134 tons of coal, more than 4.2 million cubic feet of natural gas, and 41,000 gallons of fuel oil. The reduction in fossil fuel use has eliminated 288 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from building operations.
Major oil cost savings could also be a result. Hangar 25 can house three Boeing [BA] 737 airplanes. For ground and maintenance operations, the hangar’s planes plug into a ground power unit that uses electricity provided by the building’s solar array, eliminating the need to run the plane’s auxiliary power unit, which provides electricity for all functions other than propulsion. The APU typically uses 50 to 60 gallons of jet fuel per hour.
According to CAP, a Boeing 737 at Hangar 25 consumes about 120 fewer gallons of jet fuel daily during scheduled maintenance in the solar-powered hangar. The average cost of jet fuel was $3.02 per gallon in 2008, saving each airplane more than $130,000. The planes housed there to date have saved 43,200 gallons of jet fuel through the use of solar power. Ground equipment, too, is electric instead of diesel, and is also powered by the hangar’s solar panels.
“Hangar 25 demonstrates that large hangars can employ solar electricity and efficiency measures and save money,” the study concludes. It also maintains that DoD “currently lacks the engineers and designers to make such improvements to military installations” and for the creation of a clean energy task force with the Department of Energy.
“Collaboration between DoD and the Department of Energy would be appropriate for this initiative. A precedent for such a partnership already exists with the DoD’s Energy Security Task Force, whose stated purpose is ‘to define an actionable investment roadmap for lowering DoD’s fossil fuel requirements and developing alternate fuels for use by the department.'”