Because its biggest energy problem is price rather than supply, the US military should concentrate on lowering consumption rather than developing renewable sources.
"Too often, military planners are afflicted with petroleum anxiety," writes James Bartis, a RAND Corp. senior policy researcher in a new study for the Air Force. "They think prices are heading in only one direction: up. But history teaches otherwise."
History since Bartis wrote those words—with the West Texas Intermediate crude price having fallen by more than 20% since early May—surely proves the point.
To a Department of Defense with a strategy, called operational energy, that emphasizes development of renewable energy along with reduced consumption, Bartis offers useful perspective.
Although DOD is a big oil user, Bartis points out, it's neither a major influence in the market nor especially vulnerable to supply disruption.
Its oil use represents less than half a percent of global petroleum demand, the analyst notes. And its supplies are safe.
"Considering that the United States produces over 8 million b/d of oil domestically and imports an additional 3 million b/d from secure supplies in Canada and Mexico, we can find no credible scenario in which the military would be unable to access the 340,000 b/d it needs to defend the nation," he writes.
The military's main problem is price, which—as everyone knows—can be "uncomfortably high."
With price, renewable substitutes don't offer much help.
"Alternative liquid fuels do not offer DOD a way to appreciably reduce fuel costs," Bartis says.
So what's the best remedy for uncomfortably high prices of oil products? Moderation of oil use, of course. Flagging demand growth is half the reason crude prices are falling now. The other half is supply up by much more than the military ever will produce with renewable-energy programs undertaken for bad reasons.
The implicit message: Unwarranted panic over petroleum supply can breed unrealistic hope for costly energy forms when the focus instead should be on using less energy overall.
The military needs to hear that. So does the country it defends.
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