In about five years, more than 10,000 Marines and their families will move from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam on what promises to be the greenest military base in the world.
The Guam construction is one of dozens of high-profile projects being undertaken by the Navy in a concerted effort to cut energy use and decrease consumption of oil and other fossil fuels by harnessing solar power, wind energy and even ocean temperatures.
The Navy, like all federal agencies, is under pressure to curb energy and water consumption and increase use of renewable energy. Defense Department agencies have gone a step further than existing federal mandates by setting an internal goal to generate 25 percent of all energy from renewable sources by 2025.
“The numbers are staggering, and they’re driving DoD and the government to set the standard for everybody,” said Joseph Gott, chief engineer and director of capital improvements at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. “We’re going to experiment with just about everything we can to try to lower our energy.”
Indeed, the Navy has a host of energy-saving projects either on the ground or in the works, including:
• Wind energy generation. A large-scale wind turbine in the desert at Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, Calif, scheduled to go live in January, will generate 1.5 megawatts of energy a year, enough to power 1,000 homes. Six windmills at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, generate 3.8 megawatts of electricity annually, enough for 2,500 homes.
• Solar photovoltaic systems. The Navy has a photovoltaic carport at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., that generates 806 kilowatts of solar-powered energy each year. All told, the Navy has photovoltaic systems at 12 locations — including on the roof of a historic aircraft hangar in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — that generate a combined 3.2 megawatts of electricity annually.
• Geothermal systems. A system that taps into heat stored in the Earth generates 270 megawatts of energy to power the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., and another 1.4 million megawatts of power annually that’s fed to the state power grid, generating enough electricity to power 180,000 homes annually.
• Ocean thermal energy conversion. At sea, the Navy is testing a new process for producing electricity by harnessing the temperature difference in the warm surface water and the cold water below. The system is being used at Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, to produce not only electricity but also drinking water and air conditioning.
One of the most ambitious projects on the drawing board is the new Guam construction, which will be a series of buildings all developed to achieve silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. The 10,000 Marines destined for the new base will begin arriving there around 2013.
“This will be the first opportunity I think any of the services have had to go from ground zero or baseline to an up-and-operational-type base under the LEED concept,” said B.J. Penn, assistant Navy secretary for installations and environment.
Results so far
Projects completed so far have netted impressive results. The Navy has reduced its overall energy consumption by 12 percent as of this year, reaching federal energy reduction targets a year ahead of schedule.
The Navy estimates it’s avoided more than $600 million in energy costs between 2000 and 2007, compared with 1985 baseline levels. When adjusted for inflation, that equates to $3.3 billion in avoided energy costs.
The projects are being recognized both inside and outside government. The Navy and Marine Corps have won 28 percent of all presidential energy management awards and 30 percent of all federal energy and water management awards during the past eight years.
One of the main drivers for the Navy in pursuing energy efficiency, outside of legislative mandates, is the effect of fluctuating oil prices on the budget. Every $10 increase in a barrel of oil translates to $60 million in increased costs to the Navy every year.
“Oil has gone up maybe $50 [per barrel] over the last five years, so it’s major,” Penn said.
Other initiatives
At sea and in the air, the Navy requires its ships and jets to operate at less than maximum speeds to achieve fuel economy. In fiscal 2007 alone, the Navy avoided using more than 1 million barrels of oil by ensuring that ships operated using the most efficient engine configurations, powering only those systems that were required and maintaining equipment for optimum efficiency.
Penn said the Navy has encouraged employees to reduce energy consumption by making the business case that money saved in energy bills will translate into money for facility upkeep and maintenance.
“We’re trying to motivate our folks to the point that if we save money in this area, we can use it in another area. You know what the budgets are like now, so it’s working. It works very well for us,’’ Penn said.
Still, there are challenges. Reaching the Pentagon’s internal goal of generating 25 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2025 will be “very difficult,” Penn said, especially because no additional money has been allocated for the effort.
Like many agencies, the Navy is relying increasingly on share-in-savings contracting vehicles to fund its energy-related facility improvements at no upfront cost to the Navy.
Many of the Navy’s projects are being funded through either Energy Savings Performance Contracts or Utility Energy Services Contracts. Companies pay for the energy upgrades out of their own pockets, and the Navy pays them back through resulting savings in its energy bills.
“This allows the Navy to spend their money in places where they really need it, like on the military side,” said Matt Greiner of ConEdison Solutions.
ConEdison Solutions is performing numerous projects for the Navy, including a $3 million upgrade to lighting systems and controls at the Navy Yard that was completed last year in southwest Washington, D.C. Special motion and sound sensors were installed throughout several buildings at the yard that turn off overhead lights when no activity is present. The project will result in about $412,000 a year in energy savings that will be used to compensate ConEdison until the contract is paid off in about eight years.
ConEdison is working on a second phase of the lighting controls project to tackle buildings that weren’t covered in the first round, plus some more advanced features such as installing a photovoltaic carport and a co-generation plant. It’s also beginning the design work on a project to replace failing condenser pumps at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
The Navy also is promoting ways for employees to save energy costs in their own homes, such as installing more energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances and turning off lights when not in use.
Penn said employees are buying into the program, and their commitment to energy efficiency is apparent. But the Navy has no intention to slow down.
“It’s one of those things, just like safety, [where] we have to increase our energy awareness, and we push it every day,” he said.
