Alternative Energy: Saved by the Military?
by David Biello, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, March 3, 2011
Flexible solar cells now power communications equipment used by U.S. Marines fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, enabling them to shed 315 kilograms worth of batteries while on foot patrol. But an F-16 fighter jet flying over Miramar training base in California burns 105 liters of jet fuel a minute with its afterburners engaged whereas the C-17 cargo consumes 11,350 liters an hour.
That heavy reliance on oil—much of it imported—presents a real challenge to the U.S. military. As Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., put it in an address to the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-e) conference here on March 2: “We are reliant on our adversaries for our national security.”
That’s why the U.S. Defense (DoD) and Energy (DoE) departments are partnering on initiatives to further develop and test energy-storage technologies first developed by ARPA-e. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced two such development and deployment partnerships on March 2 for power electronics modules and batteries capable of storing megawatts of power—both to be funded by a requested $25 million each from DoD and ARPA–e in the fiscal year 2012 budget.
“Twenty-five million dollars is the cost of one H-1 helicopter,” Mabus said. “The change that $25 million from DoD and ARPA–e can generate, can multiply that one helicopter hundreds and thousands of times.”
Mabus was referring to saving both lives—for every 24 fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq, one soldier or Marine is killed or wounded, according to a U.S. Army study—and money. The DoD fuel bill came to some $14 billion in 2010. “For every dollar the price of a barrel of oil goes up, the Navy spends $31 million more for fuel,” Mabus noted. “Our dependence on fossil fuels creates strategic, operational and tactical vulnerabilities for our forces.”
The Navy has taken a lead in attempting to change that, setting a goal of deriving half its energy needs from non–fossil fuel sources by 2020 as well as making half of its bases energy self-sufficient. Already, the Navy has ordered some 150,000 liters of jet fuel derived from Camelina—an oil-seed plant like canola—and more than 75,000 liters of diesel like fuel for ships from algae, an order the U.S. Air Force has matched by requisitioning 150,000 liters of bio–jet fuel. “The Navy has taken delivery of its first algae-based jet fuel. We’re not talking about some environmental weirdos, we’re talking about the Navy,” former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) noted in an address to the ARPA–e conference on March 1. “Why should a dried up little country with a crazy dictator like Libya play havoc with America’s energy future?”
And the Navy’s first hybrid electric-drive ship—that uses electric motors for speeds under 12 knots—saved some $2 million in fuel costs on its maiden voyage from Pascagoula, Miss., to San Diego. “Changing the way we produce and use energy is fundamentally about improving the national security of this country,” Mabus said, noting the Navy’s history of fuel switches—from wind to coal in the 19th century and coal to oil supplemented by nuclear over the course of the 20th century. “I am confident—as we lead again in changing the way we power our ships and aircraft—that the naysayers who say, ‘it’s too expensive, the technology is not there,’ are going to be proven wrong again.”
That is exactly what ARPA–e—and more broadly the goals set by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu—could prove. “You cannot decouple energy and national security,” says ARPA–e Director Arun Majumdar. Via the ADEPT (Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology) and GRIDS (Grid-scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage) programs, ARPA–e aims to prove the energy-storage technologies that the Navy and other armed forces need. “We want to develop storage and do that with batteries, flywheels at the cost of $100 per kilowatt-hour, [and] use it anywhere in the world.” [Read rest of article]