The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plays a vital role in building resilience in our Army communities. Resilience enables Army installations to quickly recover from challenges with limited or no loss of training time or mission readiness, and protects the welfare of the Soldiers and their families.
The National Command Authority has recognized the importance of resilience as well. The President's Executive Order 13653: "Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change" defines resilience as "The ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions." In addition, the Army's "Energy Security & Sustainability (ES2) Strategy" published in May 2015, states that our installations exist in a world defined by complexity, uncertainty and rapid change. This document emphasizes resilience as the key component of the Army's energy and sustainability strategy for our communities.
Across USACE, our workforce is learning about the USACE Resilience Strategy and the new Resilience Program. We established this strategy and program last winter to support the nation's movement toward more resilient communities. USACE is well positioned to further contribute to the nation's resilience to climate change, disasters, and other adverse events through planning, engineering and design, construction, operations and maintenance, and research and development.
To better communicate methods for improving community resilience, we have categorized resilience into four key concepts: Prepare, Absorb, Recover and Adapt. These four concepts provide the framework for a community to become more resilient in the face of shocks or changes from manmade or natural occurrences such as cyber threats, population changes, dynamic coastlines, and storms. With our diverse mission set, USACE supports Army communities through all four aspects of resilience.
Resilience is a vital part of both our military programs and civil works operations. The nation's armed forces and military installations must prevail despite disruptions due to enemy action, weather, or water and energy scarcity.
RESILIENCE AND ARMY COMMUNITIES
Army installations must be resilient because they are critical military resources where Soldiers live, work, train and deploy. Our installations have neighborhoods, retail facilities, recreation, and a complex infrastructure. Soldier readiness is linked to installation resilience: the ability to withstand any sort of disruption and continue with the mission.
One example of disruption is the degradation of infrastructure over time. Our installations require constant maintenance and modernization to withstand the ravages of time and heavy use. In addition, as the Army modernizes with new units, new equipment and new technologies, facilities must be repurposed.
Throughout its history, USACE has navigated this complex process of construction, conservation and renewal of Army military communities, and has helped our installations adapt old buildings to new purposes. A current example is the Corps' work at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg's 900-acre former ammunition supply point has been repurposed for the Patriot Point Build Out. The complex will consolidate several U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and Army subordinate commands into one location that will improve their operational efficiency. Our Wilmington District is responsible for projects on 600 acres of the land, while Savannah District is responsible for projects on the remaining 300 acres.
The complex will contain the 82nd Airborne Division, 3rd Special Forces Group, 95th Civil Affairs, 528th Sustainment Brigade, and the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. The current accommodations for many of these units are outdated and their facility components are considered obsolete. Modernization and repurposing of the former ammunition supply point will greatly improve the support that USASOC provides Army special operations Soldiers worldwide. The completion date for the entire Patriot Point complex is about 2023 at a total cost of almost $1 billion, much less than it would cost to build an all-new complex to house those units.
NET ZERO
The Net Zero Initiative adopted in 2010 is one of the most important factors in enhancing installation resilience. Net Zero is a holistic strategy to manage energy, water and waste at Army installations by combining long-standing sustainable practices with emerging best practices. The intent of Net Zero is to enhance mission effectiveness and increase installation resiliency. By achieving Net Zero energy, water and waste, our installations can more quickly recover from catastrophic events and minimize disruptions to mission operations.
On April 19, 2011, the HON Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, announced 17 Net Zero pilot installations. Fifteen installations are designed to be Net Zero for energy or water or waste. Two are designed to be Net Zero integrated energy-water-waste installations. In addition, there is one statewide Army National Guard Net Zero energy program.
USACE has been part of the Net Zero Initiative since its inception because many of these pilot programs involve designing and building new facilities. For energy, Net Zero means that an installation produces as much energy on site as it uses during a year. Power generation facilities built at several installations, such as solar energy farms, are some of our most technologically advanced projects.
Fort Hunter Liggett (FHL), California, is a good example. The installation of a 1.5 megawatt photovoltaic (solar power) array at Fort Hunter Liggett is in progress and is expected to be completed by September 2015. Power will then be supplied to the installation via a signed interconnection agreement with the local utility provider.
In addition, there are already 3 megawatts of photovoltaic systems providing power to the grid at FHL. Original estimates showed that the installation would require 8 megawatts of power production to reach Net Zero. This means that FHL has reached 37.5 percent their Net Zero goal.
With the recent approval of a FY16 Energy Conservation Investment Program (ECIP) project that will provide another 5 megawatts of power and 3 megawatts of battery storage, FHL will be able to meet their Net Zero power production goal by 2020.
Conserving resources is also an important part of Net Zero. An installation that conserves its own resources is less dependent on outside resources and thus more resilient to disruptions. Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pennsylvania, draws their water supply from six deep groundwater wells. An acoustic leak detection survey conducted by Baltimore District detected six unknown leaks, which were repaired. The district also installed 54 leak detection sensors throughout Tobyhanna Army Depot, which detected other leaks that have been repaired. This high-tech solution using underground acoustic sensors and water pressure monitoring data enables Tobyhanna Army Depot to minimize leaks and losses in their water system, thus increasing the efficiency and conservation of water resources.
NET ZERO PLANNING AND TOOLS
Hard-wired technology is only part of the Net Zero story. To achieve resilience, long-range master planning is equally vital. For example, a two-year Department of Defense grant is helping USACE develop a new user-friendly tool so that installation managers can meet energy optimization and reduction goals in the federal push toward Net Zero.
The $1.22 million grant from the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) includes funding for demonstration programs at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, and Fort Hood, Texas.
The ESTCP grant funds the combination of the web-based, user-friendly Comprehensive Army Master Planning System (CAMPS) dashboard with the Net Zero Planner for life-cycle energy use analysis and forecasting. The new tool (not officially named as of this writing) is being tested at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Fort Hood.
In Hawaii, the demonstration site is Ford Island where the overriding issue is the high cost of electric power. Ford Island relies on diesel fuel to generate electricity, so their electric rates are three or four times higher than on the mainland. By identifying excessive energy and water users, the new tool will help select conservation targets.
At Fort Hood, real-time metering and monitoring will be fed into CAMPS with the Net Zero Planner so that planners can see tenant energy-use data at a glance. Until now, they've had to rely on an energy data dump every few months from another system. The new tool makes energy data more accessible to commands across Fort Hood, pushing them closer to the Net Zero goal of energy independence, and thus greater resilience to energy disruption.
NET ZERO CONTRACTING
Much of the Net Zero work is designed and managed by USACE, but it must be built by contractors. To accomplish the work requires innovative contracting methods, which makes those methods equally important to our energy resilience goals.
In December 2011, President Obama issued a Performance Contracting Challenge that directed federal agencies to commit $2 billion to Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) and utility energy savings contracts through 2013. In May 2015 the challenge was extended to $4 billion by Dec. 31, 2016.
Most of the Corps' Net Zero energy work has been achieved through ESPCs, which is a partnership between the Army and an energy service contractor. In consultation with the garrison, the contractor provides money and expertise to make comprehensive energy and water efficiency improvements at installations (or implement and maintain new renewable energy capability) in exchange for a portion of the generated savings.
In 2014, Huntsville Center awarded 16 ESPC projects with a combined capital investment of $243.6 million. It is estimated that these projects will save the Army a total of 984 million British Thermal Units (enough to bring about 2,320 tons of water to a boil) and help numerous Army garrisons meet their energy reduction goals.
For example, in late 2014 Huntsville Center completed an ESPC project at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, with two wind turbines that provide about five percent of the energy consumed by the installation. In addition, 21,824 solar panels produce about 5.5 megawatts, which is about 60 percent of Fort Buchanan's current power demand.
On May 8, 2015, Huntsville Center awarded a $1.5 billion ESPC Multiple Award Task Order Contract to 14 energy service companies for the design, construction and operation of energy savings projects to help military installations meet mandated energy savings goals.
In all, Huntsville Center awarded $424 million worth of projects, which was 86 percent of the Army's total of $495 million for the initial two-year Performance Contracting Challenge period. That resulted in the Army exceeding its goal of $384 million by 29.7 percent.
These projects and others like them increase the installations' resilience through energy independence, and innovative contracting tools help make the projects a reality.
USACE civil works projects also benefit from Energy Savings Performance Contracts. On Jan. 21, 2015, HON Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, and Federal Environmental Executive Kate Brandt toured our first ESPC project at Stennis Lock on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi. Through a $3 million ESPC, Mobile District is retrofitting and replacing lighting at 46 locations along the 234-mile waterway, which will result in guaranteed savings of more than $172,000 in the first year alone. Using third-party financing through an ESPC, the district had no upfront costs. Total savings during the 22-year contract with Siemens Government Technologies are estimated at $5.2 million.
CONCLUSION
The HON Katherine Hammack underscored the importance of resilience at our installations in a speech to the Association of the United States Army on Oct. 14, 2014. "Ensuring that our installations are equipped, and ensuring that they have the energy and water required to meet the mission, is a fundamental enabler of our national security," Hammack said. "It also underwrites our unique ability to rapidly deploy, employ and sustain military forces around the globe."
USACE is committed to implementing measures to increase resilience across our Army in support of our mission, and to protect the welfare of our Soldiers, Civilians and families.
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