A New Shade of Camouflage: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Helps the Department of Defense Go Green

The notion of energy security is not a new one. In modern American history, the United States has recognized since the 1970s the need to develop a sound and comprehensive energy security and conservation policy. While as a country we have in some ways been slow to act, the U.S. has nonetheless begun to craft important legal and policy initiatives. However, there continues to be some resistance to investing in such initiatives. This posits the question: How vital is it to both reduce our energy consumption and find alternative sources of energy in the name of national security? The recent political landscape in Washington, DC has largely made developing a comprehensive national energy policy that would address these issues difficult, but there are signs pointing to progress. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the single largest energy consumer in the United States, has made energy reduction and increased supply of alternative energy high priorities. In 2010, DoD consumed ninety percent (90%) of the energy used by the entire federal government, spending approximately $15 billion on energy. To put that in perspective, if DoD was a country, it would be the fifty-eighth largest energy consumer in the world; if DoD was a state, it would be the thirty-third largest energy consumer in the United States. To DoD’s credit, however, it recognizes that current energy consumption and predominantly traditional fuel source usage are unsustainable, from both a budgetary and security standpoint. This article discusses how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) provides DoD with funding for a multi-faceted platform to launch energy-reduction programs while increasing energy security. Specifically, the article highlights four programs central to DoD’s success: 1) the Near Term Energy Efficient Technologies (NTEET) Program; 2) the Environmental Conservation Investment Program (ECIP); 3) the Military Construction (MilCon) Program; and 4) the Facilities Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization (FSRM) Program. The article principally concerns NTEET and ECIP, as they place greater emphasis on DoD’s operational energy use (especially NTEET), which, according to DoD’s recently released Operational Energy Strategy (OES) is the OES’s primary focus. The article then provides commentary on how these programs can be effective in supporting DoD’s energy reduction and alternative energy development efforts.