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Resilient Installations

Friday, October 17, 2014

What is it?

U.S. Army installations are America’s power projection platforms, supporting the Army’s mission anywhere in the world. Resilient, energy efficient and energy secure installations ensure this capability and the Army’s ability to conduct military operations.

Why is this important to the Army?

A resilient Army can rapidly adapt to change. A more flexible and adaptable Army is more capable of performing its mission in a resource-constrained environment.

The nation has seen increased power disruptions and natural disasters growing in frequency, intensity and unpredictability. In the last 10 years, the Army has seen a four-fold increase in power interruptions on the installations. The 12 hottest years on record have come in the last 15 years. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. These combined factors are straining already fragile ecosystems, hindering the ability to respond and recover from them, and affecting the Army missions on installations.

Ensuring resilient installations, through energy and water security, improved efficiencies and diligent management of resources, reduces the vulnerabilities.

What has the Army done?

Through partnering with industry and other Federal agencies, the Army is increasing installation resiliency by reducing energy demand, increasing efficiency, optimizing costs and improving our operational capabilities. The Army is leveraging industry and agency expertise, and working with the other services to focus on its core competencies–manning, training and equipping the forces to fight and win the nation’s wars.

On-site alternative energy resources contribute to installation resiliency. The newly established Office of Energy Initiatives (OEI) coordinates and develops renewable energy projects equal to or greater than 10 megawatts, and helps to ensure the Army’s goal of deploying one gigawatt of renewable energy projects by 2025.

The Army is addressing the challenges of installation resiliency through technologies, policies and programs, such as the Net Zero Initiative. Net Zero is a force multiplier, as reducing the energy, water and waste demands frees up resources that can then be used to achieve the mission at hand. Net Zero’s goal is reduction – reducing energy use, water consumption and waste generation. This is followed by repurposing, recycling, energy recovery and disposal.

What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?

As the Army manages installation “boot print,” it will continue to reduce risk to the critical missions. The Army will balance overlapping and competing priorities. We will balance our goal to increase energy security, surety and reliability with goals to reduce fuel costs, while protecting the environment. To ensure a ready and resilient force, the Army will make an effort to have ready and resilient installations.

Resources:

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