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3
Wrap-Up Discussion
The final day of the workshop was devoted primarily to general discussion and to
distilling and considering the main points that had been presented. The discussion
involved the following topic areas: (1) management and leadership, (2) budgets and
funding, (3) information resources, (4) metrics, (5) culture change, (6) personnel and
training, and (7) investment opportunities.
MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
To most participants who spoke at the workshop, it appeared that the Air Force
has a solid overall energy strategy and that the representatives from bases such as
Arnold AFB and Tinker AFB have a nuanced and well-thought-out understanding of
energy usage in general and of process energy and opportunities for addressing the
associated challenges without impact to the mission. With the right vision from
leadership and access to resources, the facility managers who addressed the workshop
appear to be well positioned to implement improvements. Many participants were
impressed with the progress that the Air Force has made on its energy goals. Stimulated
at least in part by the successful efforts of civil engineers who have demonstrated that a
reduction of energy waste in facilities augments mission capability, most participants
seemed to think that everyone is trying to support the energy goals of the Air Force.
The primary criteria on which the Air Force is judged are combat readiness and
mission capability; reducing energy use can contribute to energy security and can save
money that can be used to improve readiness, but reduction in energy use per se is not
a primary objective, especially if it conflicts with maintaining mission capability. Many
speakers noted that energy reduction will not stand a chance if it stands alone; it needs
to be a part of every operational decision. Energy projects that have a long payback time
are particularly hard to fund and sustain, in part because the tenure of any particular
commander is typically short compared to the payback time. For example, it was noted
that paint hangars are expected to last a long time and should be able to sustain long-
term investments.
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It was a general view among participants who spoke at the workshop that Air
Force leadership has stepped up to spend on reducing energy use in buildings in
response to federal mandates, but there have been no comparable goals or mandates
addressing the fuel or industrial process aspects of the problem, despite the likelihood
that the lower-hanging fruit and biggest potential reductions are on the aviation side.
There appears to be no guidance that puts an emphasis on energy efficiency and
conservation in decisions related to process energy use. Several speakers asserted that
the procurement process needs to be adjusted in order to better reflect total life-cycle
O&M costs for equipment purchases. Often, more efficient equipment has a higher
upfront cost but can deliver significant energy savings over its useful life. In general,
many participants thought that the Air Force has been forced to take an ad hoc
approach to energy efficiency and conservation improvements, reacting to available
funding or available resources to support a specific effort. Sometimes, projects can
counteract each other and cumulatively miss the “big picture” objective. For example,
one participant pointed out that process energy needs are not necessarily compatible
with the installation of nonfirm renewable power generation.
Several participants believed that the Air Force should consider taking a more
holistic approach to developing a long-term strategy for addressing the energy cost and
delivery of buildings and facilities for a particular base or depot, regardless of current
funding sources. They noted that this could also be done within the context of local and
regional energy issues and opportunities. In that way, a base could collaborate with
local groups to implement an overarching strategy when and if it became appropriate to
pull in other non-Air Force resources, and simultaneously the base could apply available
Air Force resources to projects within a larger strategic plan for the facility as they
become available. Energy efficiency is likely an area that would provide a significant ROI.
Moreover, DuPont has found that there are ways to save money by streamlining the
project-management process itself. Thus the problem may be related less to a lack of
funds and more to insufficient focus on energy by the allocation process. Several
speakers noted that the way in which energy plays into the Air Force base decision
process needs to be codified.
BUDGETS AND FUNDING
A budget is an expression of values and priorities at a given time. A variety of
government budget authorities and of public and private mechanisms are available to
fund energy-reduction projects. These include the following:
• Operations and maintenance (“3400”) funds, used to recapitalize
infrastructure. The Air Force has historically funded this at less than 2 percent
of plant replacement value, compared with a typical private-industry
investment of 6 to 8 percent.
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Research, development, test, and evaluation (“3600”) funds, controlled by A3
(Operations) of which approximately $300 million is to sustain the test
program infrastructure. It does not appear that energy and water
conservation projects have received support from this community. Also,
energy and water conservation are not included as part of the discussion in
test infrastructure/equipment construction, restoration/modernization,
sustainment and demolition.
Milcon (“3300”) funds for new construction and major renovation and
Working Capital Fund Capital Investment Program (WCF CIP), controlled by
A4 (Installations and Logistics). The U.S. Army Materiel Command has
designated 6 percent of its CIP for infrastructure renewal projects, in
compliance with guidance from the National Defense Authorization Act of
2007 (Public Law No. 109 364). The Air Force does not appear to have
interpreted this as a “hard and fast” requirement. Although there are recent
successes of including energy and water conservation in some
infrastructure/equipment upgrades, the concept is not fully integrated into
the Depot Maintenance Activity Group framework—which consists of
infrastructure/equipment construction, restoration/modernization, and
sustainment and demolition.
Third party funding, a financial contract in which a company saves the Air
Force energy and/or water over a period of years, and for payment over the
term, keeps the savings. These include Energy Savings Performance Contracts
and Utility Energy Savings Contracts. The Air Force expects to rely more
heavily on third party funding for energy projects in the future as internal
funding sources shrink.
No Air Force budget line is specifically devoted to energy. Several workshop
participants expressed the idea that these diverse sources tend to lead to a fragmented,
ad hoc approach to energy projects that lacks a long term vision, is suboptimized, and
can lead to “color of money” constraints. Most participants felt that the Air Force’s use
of ESPCs, as required by presidential order, is a good mechanism for providing funding
for infrastructure and efficiency improvements in the absence of other funding sources.
ESPCs accomplish the goal of reducing energy usage (intensity), although they do not
result in cost savings to the Air Force over the near term and may actually result in cost
increases if a contract needs to be “bought out” due to base closure or shifting
priorities. Nonetheless, absent other funding sources, they appear to be a valid
mechanism and worth implementing.
INFORMATION RESOURCES
Several workshop participants noted that Air Force personnel should look for
opportunities to identify the processes that offer the largest potential ROI for energy
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reduction and also should seek opportunities to leverage what they know and how they
do what they do through collaboration and networking with subject matter experts and
consortia of organizations concerned with making processes better, faster, cheaper,
safer, and more energy efficient. This collaboration could be institutionalized. Examples
include the Construction Industry Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, which
brings together experts from many major companies, academia, and government to
discuss technical concerns. The Air Force could consider stimulating an analogous
interaction with industry, academia, and other agencies on a continuing basis. The key
to the success of such collaborations is a continuing interaction, with a focus on
accomplishment. In this environment, all participants can receive benefits that far
exceed participation costs. Networking can also be done remotely. Many participants
agreed that there is a reservoir of goodwill and desire to help the country in many major
companies, especially if the information provided will be used on a noncompetitive
basis.
The technical underpinnings for such an interaction are in place. For example,
DuPont has a list of best practices that it used when it increased output while
decreasing energy input. Robins AFB started an energy and conservation forum in 2008
to discuss energy reduction efforts in the AFMC, and further forums are planned. But
many participants noted that the primary emphasis of such efforts has been on the civil
engineering (CE) side rather than on the process side. These efforts can be folded into—
and serve as foundation for—Air Force participation. Finally, the Advanced
Manufacturing Office within DOE’s EERE has been working with companies to improve
processes for 30 years. All of the resulting documents are free and available on the web.
The Federal Energy Management Program in DOE’s EERE offers consulting services, with
experts in various process technologies, and evaluation software tools.
Since energy, water, and waste issues often scale beyond the installation
perimeter, several participants stressed that it is important for base commanders to get
involved with the broader community—for example, by participating in energy use
groups. Such participation has already saved money at Tinker AFB. The larger the set of
parameters over which a solution is optimized, the less likely one is to have a
suboptimized, inefficient solution. However, participants noted that it also should be
recognized that each Air Force installation is unique and may have its own special
requirements. Awareness of new technologies and ways of doing things is important.
Training and software tools are available, but they must be adapted to local procedures.
It is becoming increasingly feasible to develop computer based models of a facility that
provide the information needed to plan and assess the impact of emerging energy,
water, and waste technologies.
Energy efficiency, water conservation, process improvement, smart grid, smart
buildings, facilities, and cities are all major engineering research topics today. Thus it
was not surprising to hear from industry speakers that their research staff is intimately
involved in improving energy productivity. Several participants noted that the Air Force
Research Laboratory is well positioned to help the Air Force improve its energy usage
and has published a description of its energy focus. However, it appeared to several
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participants that the relationship between the depots and AFRL is limited. They thought
that AFRL could be tasked with helping the depots. This tasking would be consistent
with a focus on next generation technologies. Improvement of industrial processes is a
fertile field for innovative engineering research. For example, an AFRL funded industry
partnership developed improved high speed drill bits that lasted longer and saved
water.
Some participants noted that a second tasking for AFRL could be to serve as the
primary interface between the Air Force and the DOE national laboratories. The Air
Force could take advantage of these resources, but the various DOE laboratories
compete with each other for funding. Choosing the right avenue of collaboration
requires that the users of the technology be knowledgeable about the strengths and
weaknesses of the various programs. The staff members of AFRL are the technical peers
of the DOE scientists and engineers and are likely in the best position in the Air Force to
provide the interface needed to use the national laboratories’ capabilities effectively.
Several participants were of the opinion that a third tasking for AFRL could be to
form a closer relationship with Air Force energy managers. Much of the ad hoc approach
to energy at Air Force installations is due to the fact that installations do not have the
technical capability to assess technologies and systems with existing staff and often rely
on open source information without due diligence to the overall Air Force approach. For
example, an industry provider may approach the CE lead at an installation with a valid
technology for battery storage on a site, but the local CE lead might not have the
capability to assess this across all battery technologies or similar technologies (e.g.,
flywheels).1 There are many best practices to identify and share, such as Arnold AFB,
Tennessee, managing its workload by moving high energy use testing to off peak hours
(nighttime) to reduce costs. One suggestion was to compile examples from both the Air
Force and industry into a best practices handbook that could be useful in sharing those
experiences. Other participants indicated that there are likely opportunities to install
energy saving measures such as soft starts and variable frequency drives on equipment,
and that an inventory of such opportunities should be conducted on a facility by facility
basis.
METRICS
Many workshop participants agreed with the idea that data—and therefore
appropriate metrics—are critical for various purposes such as the following: for raising
awareness of energy use, driving culture change, making the business case for
investments, and presenting the value proposition to commanders that energy use can
be reduced while improving mission capability at the same time. However, as metering
and data collection are improved in order to understand energy usage, it is important to
understand what will be done with the resulting information in order to avoid
1
The three taskings may require some restructuring of how AFRL operates since energy issues cut
across AFRL directorates.
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”collecting data for data’s sake.” One participant noted that developing a data-collection
and data-management plan to inform the overall objectives can avoid the challenge of
swimming in data that are not meaningfully used.
Data are also important in order to understand actual performance versus
projected performance. Often, systems underperform compared to expectations, and
documenting why this occurs is important for improving future projects. Also, one
participant stated that people involved in a specific project can become “project
champions” and at times can lack objectivity. Having a process to go back and assess
actual performance to inform future project and funding decisions is important. Several
participants were of the opinion that in the next 10 years, metering of energy use—at
least at the building level—will indicate new ways to improve and will “break the waves”
for more detailed energy analyses at the individual process level. Many stated that the
Air Force should consider adopting the Navy Geospatial Energy Module/Energy
Dashboard, which can roll energy usage from a building to the facility level and provide
clear energy information to users compared to an established baseline. The Air Force’s
advanced meter reading system as presented at the workshop may perform a similar
function, but participants commented that it would be worth comparing best practices
with the Navy so as to avoid re-creating a system that already exists.
A frequently expressed view by the participants was that the Air Force needs
better energy-use metrics that measure the right things. The most commonly used
metric for energy intensity is British thermal units per square foot (which should be
reported in joules per square meter, since the U.S. government has committed to the
use of the metric system). This metric is driven by the externally mandated goals. It is
obviously a metric that focuses on building shells and personnel habits. As such, it has
stimulated the DoD to invest in energy efficiency in order to meet mandated
improvements in that metric. Largely, the investments appear to have been made in
ways that enhance both energy security and mission effectiveness. But one participant
noted that this metric is flawed in three important ways:
• It rewards lightly used and lightly serviced buildings. In the extreme, it could
serve as an impediment to the destruction of obsolete and unsafe buildings.
More importantly, however, it rewards light rather than optimal use of a
facility. It counts the consolidation of activities and/or surges in personnel or
mission activities as an increase in energy intensity, whereas these are
actually actions that can reduce the energy required to meet the mission
effectively.
• The DoD maintains industrial facilities that produce products. An example is
the Air Force depots that refurbish the nation’s military aircraft. Industrial
experience suggests that there is significant energy and cost savings that
could be achieved by a serious look at these processes. The metric used,
however, stimulated a funding focus on facilities, thereby limiting the
funding available to address energy-intensive processes and the equipment
that leads to that inefficiency.
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Finally, a key responsibility of the military is to project military force. This
activity requires fuel. The energy intensity metric is obviously irrelevant to
effective fuel use.
Several participants agreed that the important issue raised in this discussion is
that the Air Force would benefit if it had a coherent and transparent set of metrics that
related energy use to the accomplishment of the mission—the desired metric for
making a value proposition to decision makers and commanders. For industrial
processes, this might be energy used per unit of product (for example, General Motors
uses megawatt hours per vehicle). One way of accounting for surges in activity might be
to normalize the existing energy intensity metric to the number of direct labor hours.
The current energy intensity metric, albeit flawed, demonstrates that metrics can
stimulate beneficial behavior. Many participants believed that the Air Force should
consider concentrating more effort on developing a set of metrics that permit it to
improve its mission capability while lowering energy use and cost.
Another view stated that it is also important to recognize that in some areas in
which process energy is central to the mission, opportunities for large scale reductions
in energy usage or savings are not feasible. This consideration needs to be reconciled
with established metrics such as energy intensity. Energy intensity as a singular metric is
probably not appropriately applied to facilities with high process energy needs required
to meet their mission.
CULTURE CHANGE
Many workshop participants were of the opinion that the Air Force is making
good progress toward metering individual facilities; however, it is imperative that the
information get back to the individual users of that facility, who are in the best position
to enact small, incremental changes. The Air Force estimates that behavior change can
result in a 2 percent improvement in energy usage for buildings. However, one
participant stressed that the overarching goal should be toward a culture shift at all
levels of the organization—“culture” being defined as behaviors that individuals engage
in even when no one is looking.
Another participant noted that it is critical that Air Force uniformed personnel in
the field participate in shaping the specifics of strategies to reduce energy use, and that
procedures not be simply dictated from headquarters by people who have no
experience in the field. Several speakers noted that two possible paradigms for how to
integrate energy awareness into corporate wide thinking are illustrated by efforts
already made to promote pollution prevention and safety. Air Force instructions
mention pollution prevention and safety, but not energy use. There could be a reward
system for personnel in the field who come up with good ideas for saving energy.
Several participants noted that considering improvements in energy management as a
criterion for promotion for facility managers could also help drive cultural change.
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Culture change needs to occur throughout the organization, and must be supported by
the upper level of leadership. Blindly working toward achieving metrics and milestones
does not necessarily meet the underlying goals.
PERSONNEL AND TRAINING
Many participants expressed the idea that it is important for individuals in the
Air Force at all levels of management and responsibility to be aware of the importance
of addressing energy security/ surety and costs, and that, at times, improving efficiency
and reliability can result in enhancement to the mission. Some participants suggested
that having mandated energy training throughout the Air Force might be a driver
toward greater understanding of the problem. Classes in energy related topics are
already offered by the Air Education and Training Command. Another suggestion was to
have energy efficiency written into the job description (and performance evaluation) of
process managers and that they receive appropriate training. Yet another suggestion
discussed by participants was a graduate degree or certificate that could be offered by
the Air Force Academy or the Air Force Institute of Technology with a focus on energy.
It was demonstrated in several presentations that the acquisition of new
technologies and infrastructure provides a great opportunity for improvements in
energy efficiency and long term energy reduction. A key target for improving energy
awareness is the acquisition community, to get life cycle energy use to be one of the
criteria on which acquisition decisions are made. One participant noted that an example
target group is the Logistics Officers Association. There is no codified knowledge base
for process equipment at depots. An example is the lack of maintenance manuals
written to support test facilities at Arnold AFB. One suggestion was that progress might
be made through working with the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals.
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Several speakers noted that the civil engineering community has shown the Air
Force that energy reduction projects are a good investment—typically returning $2 in
savings for every $1 invested. One speaker noted that specific processes such as
painting offer opportunities for improvement (as the General Motors presentation
showed), but there is no budget for it. The CE community typically does not own either
the industrial process or the budget. Participants noted that other processes that are
good candidates for efficiencies are those that generate or transfer heat or involve
rotating equipment. One participant noted several potential areas for future Air Force
investment:
Work process design and associated training and audit protocols focused on
business effective energy management.
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Standardization of all common, repetitive processes such as machining,
parts/equipment cleaning, painting, etc. across all sites.
Engineering evaluation of rotating and heat exchange equipment to establish
life cycle energy use and operating costs.
Formal assessments of current operations vs. standard protocol to identify
short and long term improvement actions and projects (see Appendix E for
possible areas to consider).
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