Two Reports Analyzing US Department of Defense and Federal Energy Management Co-Authored by ISE Senior Fellow, Dorothy Robyn
Dr. Dorothy Robyn, a Washington DC-based ISE Non-Resident Senior Fellow, specializes in energy resiliency of US military bases. She is the former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment where she oversaw $850 billion portfolio that included 300,00 buildings and 28 million acres of land. Most recently, Dr. Robyn served as the Commissioner of Public Buildings in the US General Services Administration.
Dr. Robyn also serves on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task Force of on Federal Energy Management, which recently produced one of its most thorough reports of the last eight years. The report analyzes ten important federal energy management challenges and identities opportunities to improve performance. Read the full report here.
Recently published, Power Begins At Home: Assured Energy for US Military Bases, commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts, examines the US military’s use of energy. A summary and link to the full paper can be found below.
Power Begins At Home: Assured Energy for US Military Bases
The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) fixed installations are the backbone of American military readiness. Although U.S. military bases have long supported the maintenance and deployment of weapons systems and the training and mobilization of combat forces, increasingly, they provide direct support for combat operations and serve as staging platforms for humanitarian and homeland defense missions. Energy is the lifeblood of military bases: in FY 2015, DoD’s fixed installations, which contain 284,000 buildings and 2 billion square feet of space, consumed 1 percent of the total electric energy consumed in the United States, at a cost of almost $4 billion. The military’s use of installation energy entails risk as well as cost. Installations are dependent on a commercial grid that is vulnerable to disruption due to aging infrastructure, severe weather, and physical and cyberattacks. Major power outages are growing in number and severity in the United States, and military bases experience more and longer duration outages than typical utility customers because many bases are located in outlying areas.