WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) released a new report that highlights the need for the U.S. military to assign a dollar value to energy security. The final white paper, Monetizing Energy Security, outlines liabilities fostered by the natural dependence of the Department of Defense (DOD) on energy resources, and suggests that DOD should closely consider the actual, all-in cost of energy to make its energy system more resilient, efficient, and secure.
"As the largest, most technologically advanced, and geographically dispersed military in the world, DOD has sought to develop a more comprehensive energy strategy to reduce liability on limited energy resources," said Lesley Hunter, ACORE's lead researcher and the paper's editor. "We believe, and our research backs this up, that there's significant room for improvement in cost-accounting of DOD's present energy strategy, and that renewable energy and microgrid technologies can add real value in the push for energy security."
This research indicates that renewable energy offers greater lifecycle value when compared to fossil or nuclear energy, and provides a more reliable and secure resource that ultimately lowers the actual levelized cost to DOD. Furthermore, the paper asserts that – with improved supply-chain accounting for costs of present installation energy and realignment of some federal processes – private, third-party capital investment in military renewable energy would exponentially grow.
President and CEO of ACORE, Michael Brower, also noted the challenges associated with of shifting one of the world's largest energy consumers to a modern, reliable and diverse system. "This essential matter is very complex and subject to the views of many stakeholders. ACORE is very optimistic that the paradigm is positively shifting as reflected by the joint services' recent actions."
Co-author and Managing Director at Distributed Sun, Jeff Weiss, praised the collaboration between ACORE, the private sector and the Department of Defense. "Distributed Sun encourages our nation's Armed Forces to advance renewable energy and energy security." He continued, "ACORE's convening ability has been a key factor in uniting these stakeholders, and we look forward to assisting DOD on delivering on their 2020 renewable energy goals."
The report concludes by noting that energy security and resilience on DOD installations, as well as the reduction of the growing level of costs and uncertainty energy security represents for DOD planners, is increasingly recognized as being essentially intertwined with DOD's primary mission to protect and defend.
ACORE believes that, because energy – and thus energy security – is a major driver of costs, deployments and national policy, the opportunity of long-term cost control and parallel energy resiliency can only be realized by tapping private-sector partnership innovation and capital resources.
The paper is available for download here: http://www.acore.org/monetizingsecurity.
About ACORE:
ACORE, a 501(c)(3) non-profit membership organization, is dedicated to building a secure and prosperous America with clean, renewable energy. ACORE seeks to advance renewable energy through finance, policy, technology, and market development and is concentrating its member focus in 2014 on National Defense & Security, Power Generation & Infrastructure, and Transportation. Additional information is available at www.acore.org.