Top 5 challenges of the Air Force Facility Energy Program

  • Published
  • By Jennifer Elmore
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
ATLANTA --  Energy - how to use less and create more - is a hot topic in the national news but for hundreds of Air Force civil engineers, energy conservation is more than a headline. It's a daily job with numerous mandates and goals; utility costs; data collection; excess facilities; and a complicated renewable energy approval process making this area of work challenging but rewarding.

The Air Force's Facility Energy Program is headquartered at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center's Tyndall AFB, Fla., location. AFCEC Energy Directorate's Rates and Renewables Division Chief Ken Gray attended the 2012 World Energy Engineering Congress in Atlanta, Ga., earlier this month these challenges and how the Air Force is overcoming them.

Mandates and goals
"We have a host of mandates and goals that we're given," said Gray. "We get dizzy trying to keep track of what we're reporting on for what purpose." The goals that garner the most attention require the Air Force to reduce energy intensity 30 percent by 2015 from the 2003 baseline; use 7.5 percent renewable energy by 2013; increase on-base renewable energy production to 25 percent by 2025; and reduce water use 16 percent by 2015.

"Each of those, unfortunately, has a different set of what counts and what doesn't count. We have three or four sets of books that we have to run all the time to answer how we're doing on these," said Gray. It's a tough job, but the Air Force is getting it done by reducing facility energy use consistently since the early 1990s.

"We've cut our energy use by a third," he said. "We've gone from 100 trillion Btus to 64 trillion Btus."

Utility costs
"While we do concentrate on goals and mandates, managing and making improvements in how we're using energy is very much a fiscal issue for the Air Force," said Gray. The Air Force spent over $9 billion on energy in fiscal 2011. While most of it was for aviation fuel, 11 percent, or just over $1 billion, was spent powering facilities.

The Air Force has reduced facility energy use 35 percent over the past two decades, but the unit cost for that energy has grown by 90 percent.

"The good news is that by reducing our facility energy use, we've avoided over a half billion dollars that we would have had to pay for energy if we weren't in the energy reduction business," said Gray.

Data collection
At the heart of the Air Force facility energy program is data. Base energy managers enter monthly utility data into a new system called the Air Force Energy Reporting System or AFERS. It replaced the 30-year-old Defense Utility Energy Reporting System in 2011. Major commands and AFCEC validate the information. AFCEC also compiles data from energy purchases, project lists, production/consumption estimates, real property records and meters.

The Department of Defense required all Air Force bases to install electric, gas, water and steam meters where cost effective by the end of 2012.

To ensure each installation doesn't have to manually read meters, AFCEC awarded a $33 million contract in September to install Advance Meter Reading Systems at 40 bases with plans to award 40 additional locations in 2013. The AMRS may save the Air Force up to $25 million a year in utility costs, and will provide near real-time utility information, identify anomalies, flag buildings that are performing out of normal range and forecast future consumption

Excess facilities
The Air Force attention on efficiency includes demolishing excess facilities that require time, energy and dollars to maintain. Known as the "20/20 by 2020" goal, the Air Force plans to reduce its physical footprint and operating costs by 20 percent by fiscal 2020.

AFCEC's new sustainable infrastructure assessment program created in fiscal 2012 will help the Air Force meet its goal by combining six building processes assessments into one SIA. Energy audits are one of the assessments. SIAs are planned at 93 installations over the next two years.

Renewable energy
The Air Force more than doubled its number of on-base renewable energy projects from 131 in 2011 to 266 in 2012, a major feat considering it can take up to two years or more to develop, gain approval and construct a renewable energy project. AFCEC is working with the Air Force secretariat level and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to streamline the process and continues to search for new opportunities. In fiscal 2012, the Air Force conducted assessments on the resource availability and the economic feasibility of developing renewable energy resources at 75 installations.

"We're working to meet the mandates," said Gray. "We get a two-to-one return on what we invest in energy." This means for every dollar the Air Force spends on an energy-focused reduction effort, it gets two dollars back to invest in the mission, making overcoming energy challenges worth the effort.