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4.2 Navy Task Force Energy
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom
Before I get into my remarks, let me briefly recap a couple of
questions that were apparent in the presentations and discussions
that have already taken place.
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom graduated with distinction from the
U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in physics. He also holds
a master’s degree in business administration with distinction from
Harvard Business School. At sea, he has served in various operational
and engineering billets aboard USS Truxtun (CGN 35), USS Jesse L.
Brown (FF 1089), USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), and USS
Mobile Bay (CG 53), participating in numerous exercises and counternarcotics patrols as well as Operations Desert Storm and Southern
Watch. From 1998 to 1999, he commanded USS Mitscher (DDG 57),
deploying to the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and North Seas during the
Kosovo crisis. As Commander, Amphibious Squadron 3, he served as
sea combat commander for the 1st Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG-1) in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom (2003–
2004). From June 2007 to August 2008, he commanded the Eisenhower
and George Washington Strike Groups, as Commander, Carrier Strike
Group 8. Ashore, he has served in various staff, policy, strategy, and
technical positions. Joint assignments have included defense resource
manager within the J-8 Directorate of the Joint Staff, White House
Fellow to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and
Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control at the National Security
Council. He also served as the head of Officer Programs and Placement
(PERS 424/41N) for all surface nuclear trained officers from late
2001 until 2003. In September 2008, he assumed his present duties
as Director, Fleet Readiness Division of the Navy staff. Rear Admiral
Cullom’s personal awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal
(two awards), Legion of Merit (five awards), Defense Meritorious
Service Medal, Navy Meritorious Service Medal (two awards), Navy
and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (three awards), Joint Service
Achievement Medal, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
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One of the questions that came up was, if we go this route
toward energy efficiency and we are using less, are not we less
capable as a force? I hope that at the end of this symposium, we
will walk away with a really good feeling that that is exactly not
true. I intend to show that by going the route of efficiencies, we
really will get more combat capability. In fact, we are currently trying to keep that focus on every single investment that the Navy has
already made on the tactical side as well as on the force side. We
are trying to get greater combat capability for the forces we support, as well as for the forces that are about to deploy.
The second question that came up was, what do you pursue
first? Do you go the route of alternative fuels or do you go the route
of efficiency? Which is more important? And I think Professor
Lewis spoke very eloquently about the fact that efficiency really is
the right path to go down because the carbon that you do not produce—the barrel of fuel that you do not burn—is the barrel that
you never have to draw. That is important from the standpoint that,
if you can gain that amount of money back, you can go on to other
things that are probably a lot more important in the big scheme of
things. So hopefully that lays a good context for my presentation.
What I would like to do first is describe briefly how we got to
where we are in terms of energy. As it turns out, the Navy started
to think seriously about how it uses energy approximately 5 years
ago. As we have been looking at this issue, as we developed the
new maritime strategy, we were struck by the fact that almost 80%
of the world’s fuel travels by the ocean. In the end, there is an
awful lot of ocean out there, and there is not nearly as much land
in comparison. The Navy’s role really is to protect those lifelines.
Well, how important is that today? How important is it going to be
in the future?
The upper panel of Figure 1 shows the world at night today as
you would see if you could see the night 24/7 all the way around
the world. This image gives you a pretty good idea of some of the
aspects of the energy usage that occurs. Now that panel, in context
with the lower panel, which is where it is going to be in 2030, gives
you a little bit of feel for how much it may change, how much it
is very likely to change. These are, I think, pretty good predictions
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Figure 1. The Projected Growth of Global
Energy Consumption
that we have from industry and, I would say, from global international concerns that have contributed to produce this. But take a
look at where it grows—China, India, South America, South Africa,
Australia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Look, too, at how
little the United States grows.
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So most of that growth is not going to occur where we are,
and I think that is going to have some important ramifications and
implications for us as a nation, for us as a military, and for us as a
navy. How does that really affect us? Hopefully, Figure 2, a kind
of quick around-the-world quad chart, will bring some of that to
bear. The upper left panel shows the flows of oil—where it has to
go through and the choke points involved in it. As you see, there
is an awful lot coming this way. There is obviously very little that
goes in the other direction. But, as you can see, very little of the oil
that America consumes comes from the Middle East.
You need to remember, though, that oil is a global commodity. For us, an awful lot of it comes from other places. The ones
labeled “Not U.S. Friendly” do not necessarily want to sell it to us
all the time—certainly not at the price we might necessarily want
to pay—or they may want to try to, as part of Organization of
the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), drive the price in one
direction or another. So this figure shows you a little bit of the fragility of some of that supply. It also shows the choke points through
which that 80% has to go day to day.
Figure 2. Global Energy Drivers
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Let’s go back to the quad again. So that is kind of the political
side of the house; let’s talk a look at the economic side. The economic side is pretty much any time the supply and demand get a
little off whack for one reason or another, whether it is by control
of Middle Eastern countries or by the fact that the refineries are
cranking out too much, and the next thing you know, they have a
little bit of a glut on the market. Then what you end up seeing is the
impact on the price of a barrel of oil. That value decreased from
$75 in just a few years down pretty low to $55. Between 2007 and
2008, we saw a pretty dramatic change.
That change, in fact, was one of the great precipitants for the
Navy to get its act together on energy because we went from needing to spend $1.2 billion for our fuel in 2007, when the price was
$33 per barrel, to $5.1 billion in 2008, when the price rose to
more than $140 per barrel. When that happened, the Navy had
to find almost $4 billion from its Total Obligated Authority (TOA)
to pay for more fuel. Although we did get some adjustment
from Congress, at the end of the day, the money had to come
from somewhere.
A large share of it came from the other things that the Navy
was planning to do. Some came from current readiness, some
came from not buying as many planes or ships or other systems as
we had originally intended to buy. There is a ramification for it. So
that large swing was one of the things that drove us to getting our
act together. As part of my job at Fleet Readiness (N43), I pay that
bill, so I really feel it when it changes by $4 billion in 1 year, probably the natural reason that I ended up inheriting the Task Force
Energy hat.
But that is not the only thing. We also have to look at the growth
of carbon emissions that is occurring and where that is likely to go.
We have heard about the Executive Order issued by the President.
During this symposium, we heard Rear Admiral Dave Titley talk
about his look at climate change. He mentioned that his Task Force
Climate Change is integrally linked with my Task Force Energy. In
fact, I sit on his Executive Committee (EXCOM) and he sits on
mine. As a result, we are continually sharing information, recognizing that the two issues are absolutely linked. That is one of the
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reasons that we have been driving down some of the specific paths
that we have chosen.
Another thing that we have looked at from a purely Navy perspective is what is really happening in terms of our energy usage.
Unfortunately, the things that we oftentimes buy tend to use more
energy, not less, because we want to do more and get more capability, and, generally speaking, that requires more energy. Future
weapons systems tend to use more energy than the systems that
they will be replacing. We need to start turning that trend around.
So, here is the profile for Navy energy use (Figure 3). As you can
see, 75% of our actual energy consumption occurs during tactical
operations, and only 25% is consumed by our shore-based installations and operations.
In terms of where we get our energy, the vast majority of it
comes from petroleum. Most, but not all, of the remainder comes
from electricity. We also rely on nuclear energy to power all of our
aircraft carriers and submarines. The Navy’s use of renewables currently stands at only 1%, but it is growing significantly each year.
This is where we fit within the larger scheme of things, and you will
Figure 3. Navy Energy Profile
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no doubt hear a number of presentations during this symposium
talk about the fact that the Navy uses a lot of fuel. Between the Air
Force and the Navy, we use an awful lot of petroleum fuel. At the
end of the day, however, the U.S. government uses only 2% of the
overall energy used in the country.
By the way, roughly 70 of every 100 barrels of fuel that we
use come from overseas. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
uses 93% of the fuel purchased by the government, and the Navy
uses roughly a quarter of DoD’s share. That amount is pretty
much evenly split between the ship and aviation sides; use by our
shore installations accounts for the remainder. Our expeditionary forces—the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command, which
includes the Seabees and riverine forces—account for roughly 1%.
We actually have had a lot of success; thus far, however, most
of that has been on the shore side rather than on the tactical side,
where, as I noted, we use 75% of the energy that the Navy buys.
If we are going to truly get our act together, it has to be on tactical
side. That is really hard because many of our warfighters come in
with the view that if I focus on saving energy, I am going to be less
capable. If that is truly the case, then why would I do it?
So, it is essential that we be able to find ways to actually get
more capability. In essence, we need to be able to do a 21st century
version of the Doolittle Raid and get more by lightening our load
so as to get more range. We need to show that efficiency will give
us more combat capability.
On the shore side of the house, since the 1980s we have been
relying on geothermal energy to provide 270 MW of power at
China Lake. We have a wind farm at Guantanamo Bay that provides
3.8 MW, which is important because that base is isolated, and we
would otherwise have to rely on tankers to deliver fuel. We also
have photovoltaic systems set up in places such as San Diego, and
we are pushing those out to other places that make sense. On the
aviation side, we are looking at increased use of training simulators.
However, we are not ready to require their use as part of the training and readiness (T&R) matrix that our pilots must execute before
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they are certified for deployment. In the future, though, we expect
that simulators will become part of that.
The Navy has had the Energy Conservation (ENCON) Program
for incentivizing energy conservation for a long period of time. As
a commanding officer on a ship back in the 1990s, I actually set
winning that award as a goal for my ship and worked very hard to
achieve it. But such things can only go so far. You need to be able
to change behavior in order to make a large difference. If you can
do that, you can actually save a lot of fuel. So the end result of the
Navy’s fuel cost rising from $1.2 billion up to $5 billion was for the
Chief of Naval Operations to turn to my boss and ultimately to me
and say, “Phil, get hot. You have to have an energy plan. You’ve
got a few months.”
So we set to work on creating a Task Force Energy that has a
number of working groups (Figure 4). We have functional working
groups and supporting working groups that are led by either flag
officers up to the three-star level or a senior executive. We are collaborating with the other services as well as other agencies. There
are a lot of people working on this stuff, and the more we can try
to find synergies in these efforts, the more progress we ultimately
are going to make.
The Secretary of the Navy has set some goals that will help us
gain energy security, and hopefully national security in the process, by having us help lead the way (Figure 5). We are going to try
to sail the great green fleet. We will have testing and certification
protocols done for all of our engines around the Navy by 2012, and
we will exercise them in local operations by 2016. Our great green
fleet will include an aircraft carrier that is nuclear powered, it will
be loaded with aircraft that will be flown on biofuel, and it will
be escorted by surface ships that will also be powered by biofuel.
So basically everything that goes into those prime movers, those
muscle movers, will be powered by biofuel—actually a 50/50
blend of biofuel and fuel oil.
On the nontactical side, by 2015, the Navy’s commercial fleet
will get 50% of its energy from biofuel. We also intend to change
the way we buy stuff. That is probably the hardest thing, but it is
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Figure 4. Navy Task Force Energy
Figure 5. Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Energy Goals
also one of the most important things for where we are going to
ultimately end up in the 2020 or 2040 timeframe. The Secretariat
is hard at work on making sure we can do that.
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I am hoping that Amory Lovin’s way of reverse engineering the
process will become part of the way we do that, but that is just my
personal opinion. I think that could make a huge difference in how
much we actually end up using so that we do not end up having
that curve of consumption continue to go up, but instead get it to
level off or actually decrease it. We also have tried to translate this
for warriors, because if it does not make sense for a warrior to do
this, why are we doing it? We have a mission set and we have to
understand that that mission set has to go accomplish things.
Among the ways we are considering to ensure mobility is
through reliance on alternative fuels. Such fuels will allow us to
move away from volatilely priced petroleum; they will give us that
off-ramp to petroleum at a price at which we do not get held hostage (Figure 6). We also want to ensure that we can protect critical
infrastructure and have grid security and backup power for our
critical assets. Alternative fuels can play an important role here as
well. So even though some alternatives may not make economic
sense today, they may be useful from the perspective of protecting critical infrastructure, whether from a national perspective,
from the combatant commander’s perspective, or from a service-
specific perspective.
We are also trying to expand our tactical reach—the 21st century equivalent of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. If we can save 4%
of fuel used by an F/A-18, we will need to spend less time underneath another F/A-18 getting refueled, which is about the highest
cost of fuel that the Navy has—when you account for all the costs,
fuel provided by a refueling aircraft comes in at over $100 per
gallon. Think of that the next time you buy gas for your car.
When we account for the cost of putting another F/A-18 into
the air, the amount of fuel it expends, the amount of time it takes to
hook up, the amount of fuel you actually get, it is a lot better to get
it from a KC-10 tanker if we can get it that way. Unfortunately, you
cannot always get it that way. So, if we can stay airborne for 4%
more time by improving efficiency, we can enhance our overall
capability. A nugget pilot who has already boltered several times
because he missed the wire can get one more pass around the carrier before he has to go to a divert field—pretty important stuff for
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Figure 6. SECNAV Goals and Energy Security
a warrior at the pointy end of the spear. Or, we can use that fuel to
fly 3% or 4% farther to execute the mission.
In conjunction with our efforts to lighten the load, we are
working very hard with the Air Force to take advantage of their
leading-edge efforts in composites and in trying to lighten the load
of the ordinance that we drop. If you can move away from steel
casings, you can build lighter bombs that allow you to fly farther.
If they are properly designed, you can get more combat capability
and you can deliver that capability farther. That is just one example
of how the services can work together.
Finally, we are greening our footprint. If we do it right, it will
not only reduce carbon emissions and provoke good stewardship,
but also give us some resilience against the fragility of the grid. We
were also provided America Recovery Act (ARA) funds that we put
to good use on the research and development side as well as on the
shore side. We spent some of that money for Military Construction
(MilCon) and for specific Operations and Maintenance (OMN)
items such as smart metering (Figure 7).
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As of about a year and a half ago, many of our bases had only
one electrical meter at the point where power came into the base.
What incentive was there to conserve energy? No one could even
tell how much energy they were really burning in a building other
than by looking to see whether all the lights were on. Nor did you
have a way, when an aircraft carrier pulled into port, to measure
how much energy it was using while it was pier-side. We simply
had no way to tally up energy use by the subcomponents as a
basis for incentivizing energy conservation. So a lot of the initial
ARA money has been used to move us along the path toward that
capability. Smart metering will not only help us conserve, it will
also provide some resiliency to the grid if it is properly protected.
We are also looking at ocean thermal energy conversion and
wave action energy generators. Ocean thermal energy conversion is something that we would see being ideal for places such as
Diego Garcia, Guam, and Hawaii, where the price of fuel is very
high because it has to be delivered by a freighter or tanker. It may
be possible to use the differential temperature between deep in
Figure 7. Current Navy Energy Initiatives
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the ocean and at the surface, particularly at the Equator. That delta
in temperature gives you an engine and you can use it to produce
power and fresh water.
A lot of things are being done on the expeditionary side.
We are deploying onboard vehicle power generation so that our
ground forces are able to shoot and operate their computers on the
move. They do not have to tow a generator behind, they do not
have to stop, and they do not have to power it up. As a result, they
are less vulnerable and more capable. So, as you can see, many
of the things that conserve energy can actually enhance combat
capability if we do it right.
On the maritime side, we are looking at stern flaps and hull
coatings and things like that, many of which have been pioneered
in the private sector. Of course, some of these are better than
others. We are installing and operationally testing the best ones and
obtaining fairly significant savings as a result. We are also making
sure that fleet scheduling does a better job of avoiding areas where
there are heavy storms. We have done that for years, but we have
not always done it with the aim of saving energy. Now we are.
We are also trying take advantage of ocean currents by adjusting our routes and dropping down a couple of degrees in latitude
to follow the ocean current rather than just sailing a great circle
route, which may seem shorter but ends up using more fuel. We
are working on an onboard computer that shows you how much
fuel your ship is actually using as you steam along.
On the aviation side, a new efficient F-414 engine can get you
that extra 4%. There are actually other engines down the line that
would be better replacements for our F/A-18 fighters. Many of
these changes could also be incorporated into the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter so that our sister services and some of our allies would
also benefit. We are also starting an energy conservation (ENCON)
program on the aviation side to replicate what we have done for
the past decade and a half on the surface ship side of the house.
Alternative fuels are key in that the Secretary wants us to move
toward 50% use of such fuels. In that regards there are a lot of different possibilities (Figure 8). There are also multiple challenges.
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Let me say that both the Navy and the Air Force have been working with the Defense Supply Center (DSC) on a number of different
alternatives. Two of the most promising are camelina and algae.
Either will give you roughly the same amount of energy. Moreover,
fuel from these sources has a much higher energy than is the case
for fuel from corn. In fact, their energy density is almost equivalent
to petroleum, not quite the same, but within 90%.
The real difference among all of these things is how much
energy you have to put in to be able to get energy out. That is
where these start to become a reasonable replacement for petroleum at a reasonable cost. To do that, we need processes that
are not only scalable, but also repeatable. It may be necessary to
modify some of these plants genetically so that you get out more
oil. That is one approach; there are other approaches.
In a couple of weeks we are going to be flying an F-18 called
the Green Hornet on camelina-based biofuel. We have already
tested a Hornet engine in afterburner using the fuel in conjunction
with the testing and certification protocols that have been going on
for the past 6 months, so we know it will work. The test program
will continue for another couple of weeks, culminating in the flight
test of the Green Hornet. Assuming that effort is successful, we
Figure 8. Alternate Fuel Initiatives
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should be on track to meet our 2010 goal and ultimately the 2016
deployment of the Green Strike Group.
At the end of the day, toward what is this directed? It is directed
toward our 2020 goal of 50% use of alternative fuel, which is going
to require us to be able to consistently buy 8 million barrels of
biofuel every single year. So if industry representatives are here,
please listen up. The Navy plans to buy 8 million barrels of biofuel
per year. Importantly, that is after we have done all of the efficiency
reductions that we are embarked on already. We want that 8 million barrels to be a consistent demand signal from 2020 on. If we
can build up to that sooner, we would love to do so. Because at
the end of the day, what does it do? It saves carbon from being
produced, it gets us moving toward that off-ramp from petroleum,
and it gives us the capability to be resilient in the face of an uncertain future.
Before I close, I want to make an analogy based on the
Navy’s experience with one of its most famous ships—the USS
Constitution. Among the little-known facts about that ship is that
for its day—and that was some 200 years ago—it was the most
revolutionary platform on the high seas. It could sail 2 knots faster
than any other ship of the day. It attained that speed advantage by
having a nonstandard length-to-width ratio. American ship builders had done the necessary experiments and shown that, with the
right hull form, they could get a faster ship. That was important
back then because faster speed translated directly into combat
capability. It allowed you to cross the T and by so doing, it made
it possible for your entire line of ships to direct its fire on the lead
elements of the enemy formation as you sailed past along the top
of the T.
Another important fact about “Old Ironsides”—as the USS
Constitution was also known—is that it was built differently than
standard naval vessels. It had ribbing in different places than was
conventional in the Royal Navy at the time. The ship was built
using wood from the live oaks grown in Georgia in place of the
oak from the forests of New England as was the standard at the
time. The wood from the live oak tree is much denser, it actually
sinks when you put it in the water; it does not float. Live oak is so
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dense, in fact, that when the cannonballs hit, they bounced off, so
it gave you a much more resilient warship. Now that is American
ingenuity, right?
We still have that today. How much do we need to, and how
willing are we to, apply that initiative so as to be competitive in
the energy arena, not only in the DoD energy arena, but in the
national and international energy arenas, and then hold that competitiveness for the long haul? That is the question I pose to you.
The other question I pose to you is what generation do we really
want to end up being? As I look around the room, I would guess
that most of our parents were the Greatest Generation; they really
did save the world from tyrants. For the most part, we are Baby
Boomers, although there are a few younger people here. What
have we been for the most part of our lives? The short answer
is consumers, consumers of everything—of energy, of consumer
goods, of everything. After 9/11, what did we do? We went out
and spent money at the mall, right? That is how we contributed. Is that the way we want to go down in history or do we
want to be part of a different generation that is a regeneration
generation? I really think the decision is up to us—including
the military. I think we can play a part in leading the way into a
regeneration generation.
Q&
A
with Rear Admir al
Philip H. Cullom
have the Navy or DoD done in terms of assessing their
Q: What
energy vulnerabilities to help prioritize their actions? Has
anyone looked at the issues of what that does for us, what it needs to do,
where we need to place emphasis?
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : There are several things that I
can tell you about what the Navy has done. On the shore side of
the house—the infrastructure side—I cannot really get into a very
detailed discussion because it gets classified very quickly for very
obvious reasons associated with the grid. But I can say that one
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of the things that we have done in the Navy is to include energy
considerations in our annual war game. We have made energy a
strategic resource that an adversary could try to exploit in much
the same way that we see in the conflict in which we are currently
engaged. We look at the vulnerabilities in our lines of resupply.
Although specific details are classified, I will say that it has proved
the importance of logistics in the big scheme of things in any campaign plan, which oftentimes get overlooked. It has also proved
how important fuel- or energy-efficient platforms are to whether
or not we are going to be able to protect our centers of gravity and
whether we are going to win in a potential conflict.
We have also run an energy futures war game. As part of that,
we have developed a series of energy futures based on different
projections. Although picking any one of them as the likely future is
almost certain to be proven wrong, we can benefit by understanding the trends and uncertainties that come from the entire collection. When you mix the different scenarios, you can see how those
trends and uncertainties play. And that gives you a pretty good idea
as to whether or not some of the initiatives we are considering will
help solve a problem or whether they have little or no value in
terms of altering the military’s outcome or the Navy’s outcome in
the various energy futures. So, that is one of the things that we are
taking into consideration when we look at what we should invest in.
of our analysts has done some research into worldwide
Q: One
use of biofuels. If I remember his research correctly, there were
problems with adopting biofuels and green propulsion because of issues
like corrosion and clogging and that type of thing. I think the Royal Navy
has done some experiments with it and had some negative results, and
I think the U.S. Navy was aware of those; maybe they experimented as
well and had some negative issues there, too. I just wondered what comments you might have on the technological hurdles and expenses associated with biofuels.
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : That is a great question
because there is certainly a lot of literature out there that talks
about the potential difficulties with using biofuels in a marine environment. But what I would say as a caveat is that most of what
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has been published deals with first-generation biofuels—biodiesels
and things like that. Biodiesels, by the way, have been used pretty
effectively by cruise liners, but cruise liners do not have compensated fuel tanks. On Navy ships, we fill our fuel tanks with water
as the fuel is drawn down so as to compensate for the change in
ship moments. Because the fuel is lighter than water, it floats on
top. Biodiesels did not work well in that environment.
The second- and third-generation biofuels, which is the direction that the military is going, are much different. They do not have
the same issues and problems; you do not end up with sludging,
you do not end up with marine growth, and you do not end up
with green goopy stuff that grows in your fuel tanks or, worse yet,
goes into the engine and clogs it up, burns it up, and destroys it.
That is why we are pursuing second- and third-generation biofuels. These fuels are long-chain carbon-type fuels that can be used
as drop-in replacements for petroleum-based fuels. That is a very
important point. We do not want to end up using a fuel that has to
be segregated from the other fuels we use.
In fact, we mix our new biofuel 50/50 with petroleum. When
we first started using petroleum fuels, we discovered that those
fuels include compounds that lubricate the engine as you are running it. It turns out that the second- and third-generation biofuels do not include those particular carbon chains. So, to ensure
that we are not degrading performance, we have decided to use a
50/50 mix of biofuel and petroleum-based fuel.
As a result of using the mixed fuel, the ship can fill up with the
50/50 fuel and then, several days later, pull up alongside an oiler
and refill with petroleum if that is all that is available. And then the
next time you refuel, you can go back to biofuel. That allows you
to have a truly flexible fuel fleet without ever having to redesign
any engine to be able to do it. All you have to do is complete the
necessary testing and certification protocols.
Of course, what we really hope to do is make the engines that
much more efficient, so that instead of refueling a destroyer every
4 days, you stretch that out to every 8 days or every 10 days. That
is the type of enhanced combat capability that we want to get first
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and foremost while we enhance resiliency by not always having to
buy petroleum.
mentioned use of renewable energy sources and the difQ: You
ferent ones that you have looked at and how, in the tactical
forces, it is a little bit lacking as of yet. Have you considered using seawater air conditioning (SWAC) to cool your engine rooms and other warm
places inside your ships? And, have you considered using co-generation
capability on land and in your engine rooms, which can give you an efficiency of about 80%?
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : Those are two excellent possibilities that we can pursue. In fact, seawater air conditioning is
one of the things that we have been looking at. We often overlook
our heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and
how you can make them more efficient. That was actually one of
the things that Amory Lovens found when he did his study on the
USS Princeton. As it turns out, there are a lot of simple things that
we can do. Those are the things that we are pursuing first and foremost because we can gain significant benefits with a pretty small
investment; in many cases, you are able to pay back that investment in as little as a year.
As for co-generation, now you are talking about cutting out an
engine room, putting in a whole new engineering plant, or mixing what you already have with something else, doing a pretty
significant redesign. That is a lot of expense. It will take a lot longer for that to pay back. In fact, even the hydroelectric drive that
we can either build in from the start—as on USS Makin Island—
or can backfit into ships—as we are planning on doing with our
destroyers—is a fairly costly endeavor compared to some of these
easy things.
As I stated previously, the first thing we need to do is pursue
behavioral changes. The cheapest thing is putting this box on a
bridge, if you will, that can tell you whether or not you are stepping
on the pedal too much or whether you have lit off too many fire
pumps or that you have too many HVAC systems up for what you
really need. When you see the light go from green to yellow, you
can change your behavior day to day. We need to be able to make
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people energy aware and energy conscious and to fundamentally
change how they do business. That will net us the most savings.
But at some point it is asymptotic. You get down to a level that
is all you are going to get by changing the way you are doing business; that is when you start to need technology to get you down to
the next level. So to start, we have decided to go after the things
that are the easiest to implement and that entail minimal investment while pursuing biofuels for the future.
The Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD)
Q: have
various campaign models that represent warfighting
effectiveness and support different studies such as the operational availability studies that OSD and the Joint Staff do every year. As a rule, those
models are generally weak in integrating logistics and warfighting capability. Are there initiatives to quantitatively represent energy efficiency in
our logistics processes and then in warfighting capabilities into some of
the models that we use to buttress our decisions?
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : Absolutely. OSD has been
working for some time now on what is called the fully burdened
cost of fuel. We participated in a study with them to take a look
at one of our ship classes, the frigates, and figure out how, by
changing its efficiency, we could affect total ownership cost of that
platform. The results of that assessment will be coming out soon.
I think that is going to help add to what OSD is trying to develop,
which is a metric ability to be able to look at the fully burdened
cost of fuel.
Remember what I said about using an F/A-18 to refuel another
F/A-18? The fully burdened cost of fuel is pretty high for that particular evolution. On the other end, when one of our combatants
comes alongside an oiler that just came out of port and picked
up its load and you are the first customer—well, that is a pretty
low fully burdened cost of fuel. We want to be able to assess the
effects of changing the efficiencies on various classes of ships, different platforms, different model series of aircraft. Developing a
fully burdened cost of fuel will allow us to do that. We can see
how changes in efficiency would affect life-cycle costs and total
ownership costs, as well as allow us to make better decisions
Chapter 4 Energy Imperatives: Part II
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about future weapon systems and platforms or regarding future
efficiency initiatives.
energy considerations change the makeup of a battle
Q: Could
group, for example, as we move forward?
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : Yes, absolutely. It could have
some impact on how we operate or how we task organize, perhaps.
wanted to ask about the figure that depicts the Earth at night
Q: Itoday
and in 2030. If we look at that figure from an efficiency
perspective, 100% of that image is wasted energy because we are not trying to light space. One of the advances with light-emitting diode (LED)
lights is streetlights. One of the benefits and savings is it is directional
with less light going into space. So that is perhaps a point to be making
when you use that image.
Rear Admiral Philip H. Cullom : You have hit the nail on the
head. Wasted energy is wasted energy. If we do not have to waste
it, think about how much different our overall energy demand
would be worldwide and how that would profoundly change what
the cost is to every consumer around the world, whether you are
putting gas into your Nano in India or into your hybrid vehicle here
in the States or elsewhere.