Efficiency and conservation not enough to achieve energy security.

• Author: Kerner, David
• Position: VIEWPOINT

The Defense Department currently deals with changing energy circumstances by reducing demand through efficiency and conservation, and by attempting to improve supplies.

While this approach may optimize the use of those resources, it overlooks the many other energy-related challenges that the military must cope with and still accomplish the mission. The current strategy leaves the U.S. military highly vulnerable to supply challenges that are beyond its control.

The fault lies, perhaps, in the department's definition of energy security: "Having assured access to reliable supplies of energy and the ability to protect and deliver sufficient energy to meet operational needs."

For war fighting, the Defense Department pursues this through a small set of operational energy goals: Ensuring the availability of resources, pursuing efficiency measures and implementing conservation programs. But while these key elements provide the operational energy strategy with critical pillars, they are insufficient, simply because the government cannot always guarantee access to reliable supplies of energy.

The current goals neglect to address how the mission still gets accomplished without enough energy resources. And the same concern applies to defense installations.

To ensure mission sustainability, the military must understand the Full range of potential vulnerabilities to energy shortages and disruptions and prepare to handle circumstances where supplies are not assured. So while the current energy security goals are important, true energy security must include understanding and addressing all vulnerabilities.

To ensure mission sustainability when supplies are not assured, the Defense Department should incorporate an additional pillar into its operational energy security strategy--that of energy resilience.

Resilience can be defined as being able to perform the intended mission despite energy supply perturbations. This definition refocuses policy from assuring supply to assuring preparedness, thus setting the framework for planners and operators to improvise, adapt and overcome the effects of potential supply interruptions.

The U.S. military understands resilience. Small unit leaders regularly demonstrate extraordinary initiative and imaginative problem solving. The Defense Department generally excels at organizing around a problem and orienting the combined capabilities of military research, industry, national laboratories, academia and other organizations toward solving complex problems. it will need to capitalize on these strengths as it contends with challenges to energy security.

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Engineers and business leaders think of resilience as the amount of disturbance a system can...