US marines in Afghanistan launch first energy efficiency audit in war zone

Commandant calls for 10,000-strong contingent to be more energy efficient to save lives and money
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 August 2009 18.07 BST
The US Marines Corps ordered the first ever energy audit in a war zone todayto try to reduce the enormous fuel costs of keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent.
US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. That's a higher burn rate than during an initial invasion, and reflects the logistical challenges of running counter-insurgency and other operations in the extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan.
"We need to understand where the fuel goes," Conway told a Marines Corps energy summit today. "The largest growing demand on the battlefield today is for electricity and how we create that."
He added: "We are going to more efficient. We have got to be."
Conway's announcement — and the summit itself, which is the first of its kind — were seen yesterday as a dramatic shift in the US military's approach to energy consumption and climate change.
The Pentagon began to acknowledge America's reliance on fossil fuels and climate change as a national security concern in 2002. A report from the Pentagon's military advisory board last May called on military bases to work to lower their carbon footprint. A number of bases inside the US have begun to tap into renewable fuel sources including wind and solar energy.
But the Marine Corps are the first service to try to put those policies into action on the battlefield.
Conway, who led the marine invasion of Iraq in 2003, said he was motivated by the high costs — as well as the risks to troops – of getting oil and water to combat zones. For land-locked Afghanistan, the nearest port at Karachi in Pakistan is more than 400 miles away from marine bases, and maintaining those long supply lines has become an increasingly dangerous proposition.
Some 80% of US military casualties in Afghanistan are due to improvised explosive devices (IEDS), and many of those placed in the path of supply convoys.
The costs of shipping water and fuel to the troops is also becoming unsustainable. The price of a gallon of petrol in a war zone can cost up to $100. "It is a shocking figure to compute what it costs by the time you pour that gallon of gas into a Humvee or an aircraft in the place you are operating," Conway said.
He said he was looking to his energy auditors to find ways of cutting back energy consumption at operating bases, and also to pare down the equipment carried by each individual marine. An average marine carries about 9lbs of disposable batteries in their kit to power equipment such as night vision goggles and radios.
One immediate target of the auditors is likely to be climate control. Some 448,000 gallons alone are used to keep tents cool in the Afghan summer, where temperatures reach well over 40C, and warm in the winter, said Michael Boyd, an energy adviser to the Marine Corps.
The marines have been exploring ways to reduce that consumption by spraying tents with a foam coating.
"That's a huge saving and you are no longer putting trucks on those roads, and tanker drivers in harm's way and everyone else involved on the way," Boyd said.