{"id":11195,"date":"2012-05-22T11:29:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T16:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=11195"},"modified":"2012-05-22T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T16:32:11","slug":"how-the-military-is-re-thinking-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/05\/22\/how-the-military-is-re-thinking-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Military is Re-thinking Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense<\/p>

Defense official Sharon Burke says the military needs to change how it supplies its energy.<\/p><\/div>\n

How\u2019s this for a mouthful: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs. It\u2019s basically a complicated way of saying the Defense Department official in charge of figuring out how the military uses and deploys energy in the field. That is Sharon Burke\u2019s<\/a> position, and in a recent speech<\/a> at the University of Texas at Austin, she talked about the military\u2019s new mission to reexamine their sources of energy.<\/p>\n

Why? For reasons both economic and strategic.\u00a0By virtue of its mission, the military is a prodigious consumer of energy, Burke says. \u201cImplicit in the kind of military force we need to have moving forward\u201d is the need for an immense capacity to use energy, she said. For instance, Burke noted that the military uses 1.7 million gallons of fuel per day in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, where the terrain and climate can be quite inhospitable, it\u2019s tough to transport fuel to where it\u2019s needed. She showed one photo displaying an adaptation the military has come up with: a mule with generators strapped to each side. (Soldiers aren\u2019t strangers to being beasts of burden themselves; Burke says they carry an average of sixteen pounds in batteries alone.)<\/p>\n

In order to overcome these energy challenges, the Department of Defense is looking at solutions both big and small. On the larger end of the spectrum, she foresees the military using technologies \u201cthat are forward-leaning like hybrid solar systems that integrate storage, diesel generation, micro-grids, and solar panels.\u201d On the simpler side are solutions like increasing the education of personnel.<\/p>\n

These attempts to develop and implement new energy strategies in the military aren\u2019t without resistance<\/a>.\u00a0But Burke understands all too well that development in the energy sector usually happens at a snail’s pace: \u201cWe need change, and it doesn\u2019t happen fast,” she said.<\/p>\n

Daniel Ramirez is an intern with StateImpact Texas.\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How\u2019s this for a mouthful: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs. It\u2019s basically a complicated way of saying the Defense Department official in charge of figuring out how the military uses and deploys energy in the field. That is Sharon Burke\u2019s position, and in a recent speech at the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":11308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[69,145,153],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}