In 2006 an urgent request came from the top U.S. military commander in western Iraq. Rather than asking for more tanks or troops, Marine Corps Major general Richard Zilmer said he needed “a renewable and self-sustainable energy solution” for forward operating bases and combat outposts.
—Discover Magazine
Politicians have been talking for years about the need for us to wean ourselves from oil, and apparently the military is starting to do something about it. The Pentagon is doing this partly to free itself from being at the mercy of foreign oil producers. But it is also making the switch because in the field fuel needs to be transported in convoys, and these convoys are easily attacked. Soldiers needed for the main mission have to be diverted to protect the supply line. Or, in the case of Pakistan now, the oil tankers are simply being destroyed.
There’s an old saying,
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.
Hopefully the military’s interest in renewable energy will have some long-term benefit by creating a large, ready market for new technology. What do you think? Do you think it will help?
Shooting each other in Iraq isn’t working, so to HELP them with these windmills seems like a good idea.
However we need windmills HERE & renewable energy sources. Where is the money going to come from, since we (USA) are so broke?
(I’m not qualified to comment on this since I haven’t the time to read much about it.)
bikehikebabe,
Iraq has plenty of resources, especially oil. Their problem right now is forming an effective government. We’re still helping but the reins have been passed to them. They’ve broken a world record for the length of time after an election it has taken to form a government. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11457868 and http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/05/iraq-paralysis-nouri-al-maliki
They’ve finally chosen Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister but it’s not clear how it will all work out.
About renewable energy…China is working hard to be a provider of technology. The idea of this post is if the military is a good market maybe some of our companies will invest their own money in developing products. A lot of companies still have money even if our government is up to its ears in debt.
Thank you for commenting!
Like the pun on wind.
Wind turbine technology, as I understand it, is not even financially self-sustainable, yet, without government subsidies. For example, wind energy power production in Spain is guaranteed, by the government, to earn market value of the power plus 90%.
Evan,
Thanks. 🙂
Mike,
It depends on how far you have to transport fossil fuel. According to a New York Times article it costs $400 a gallon to transport gas to some places in Afghanistan.
Mike, it depends on what is included in costs. Does it include the clean up for the Gulf Spill – how do you even start to cost something like that?
Most of modern gadgets that we cannot do without, have been fall outs of defense research and quite why this particular demand from the military for alternate fuels should not result in similar long term weaning away from oil should be any different is beyond me. If the world can be weaned away from oil, the world will have a much better and more peaceful place to live in. The Arabs, that is the non Sheikhs will go back to their ‘puritan’ life style and leave us all the rest alone to get on with our lives peacefully.
Thanks rummuser (Ramana).
rummuser,
Agreed! I don’t know about the military, but the space program definitely led to advances in technology. I was thinking of that when I wrote this post. Anyway, there’s nothing like $400 a gallon for gasoline to encourage looking for alternatives.
Actually the price of gas may be going up in Afghanistan. Pakistan is now thinking of taxing the NATO convoys because of the damage to its highways. The damage was caused when the Taliban blew up at least 150 NATO tankers during the 10-day period that Pakistan closed the main supply route into Afghanistan and the tankers were sitting ducks.
Pakistan closed the Torkham checkpoint because NATO helicopters crossed the Pakistani border chasing insurgents and accidentally killed some Pakistani border soldiers. What a mess. I don’t know about you, but it reminds me of the Keystone Kops. Too bad it’s real life and not just a fictional comedy.
You can either think of world _politics– supply your own word. I can’t think of one), as the mess that it is & get boiling mad (angry). Or think of it as the comedy that it is & laugh.
Jean, huge amounts of research was/is funded by the military. At one stage this included esoteric things like funding philosophy of logic by the navy as it was thought this might lead to breakthroughs in encryption.
encryption:
Process of disguising information as “ciphertext,” or data that will be unintelligible to an unauthorized person. Decryption is the process of converting ciphertext back into its original format, sometimes called plaintext ( see cryptography). Computers encrypt data by applying an algorithm to a block of data. A personal key known only to the message’s transmitter and intended receiver is used to control the encryption. Well-designed keys are almost impregnable. A key 16 characters long selected at random from 256 ASCII characters could take far longer than the 15-billion-year age of the universe to decode, assuming the perpetrator attempted 100 million different key combinations per second. Symmetric encryption requires the same key for both encryption and decryption. Asymmetric encryption, or public-key cryptography, requires a pair of keys, one for encryption and one for decryption.
You go there Evan. (But I didn’t have to look up esoteric.)
Evan,
I hesitated about military spending because my impression working at a national laboratory was the Department of Defense wasn’t interested in funding basic research, it was mostly interested in projects with a quicker payoff. But, of course, there’s DARPA, which is looking ahead for the needs of the future. It was responsible for creating the first version of the internet. 🙂
bikehikebabe,
Encryption is another funny story. Until 1996 the U.S. banned the export of encryption technology because it would interfere with our spying. Now some countries are considering banning blackberries unless the company gives them a way to listen in to the encrypted messages.
Keystone Cops sums up the situation beautifully. The tango of the USA with Pakistan is also an unfolding comedy for us Indians. It is the tango being danced to the beat of the Bangda!
rummuser,
I figured you would love that. 🙂
bikehikebabe,
What we need are entrepreneurs with vision and money. Like Google trying to invest in the infrastructure for wind farms off the Atlantic coast: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/science/earth/12wind.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
rummuser,
You might also love this article about why more tankers aren’t blown up. As I understand it the part about the police and other government officials taking their cut could apply to India too. 🙂
One of the reasons private entrepreneurs has not been interested in investing their money to renewable energy products is the absence of mass demand. Perhaps the request from military is a good start. 🙂
tikno,
That’s why I’m so pleased about the military. They’re a market worth scrambling for.