by Shane Henson — April 8, 2013—As the largest single consumer of energy in the federal government, the U.S. Air Force has been aggressively searching for and implementing strategies to reduce its energy use, and has made great progress. In late March, Air Force officials highlighted their recent energy use reductions, touting savings of $1.5 billion in energy costs in 2012, and announced current initiatives under the new Air Force Energy Strategic Plan, which has already led to significantly reduced energy consumption and increased use of renewable energy, says the Air Force.
As part of the military branch’s plan, it is following a net-zero approach to water and energy installation to help meet a 2030 federal net-zero energy goal for all new facility construction and alterations. It has reduced facility energy intensity by more than 21 percent since 2003 and is on track to meet its goal of reducing energy intensity by 37.5 percent by 2020. Last year, 5.5 percent of the Air Force’s electricity came from renewable energy sources, and by 2025, it plans to get 25 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, Air Force officials say.
“These are fundamentally important accomplishments for the nation,” says aid Dr. Jamie Morin, acting under secretary of the Air Force. “Every taxpayer dollar we can save on energy is absolutely going to help us transform resources into increased Air Force readiness, increased combat capability for the joint force.”
The Air Force is also working to further cut fuel use.
“We may not always be able to control exactly how much we fly, but we can control substantially how much fuel we use for each amount of flying we do—and that is at the heart of the updated energy strategic plan that we’re releasing,” Morin added. The plan “shifts our lens and our metric of how we look at energy from simply consumption to overall operational efficiency.”
