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DoD’s New Energy Strategy Has Implications for Acquisition, Warfighters

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William J. Lynn III and Sharon Burke, Photo: Defense.gov

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III unveiled the Defense Department’s new energy strategy at a Pentagon briefing yesterday, describing the plan as a way to increase energy efficiency and adapt the forces to “emerging threats.”

“Our use of energy cuts across each of these issues,” he said, according to a American Forces Press Service report. “It affects military planners, acquisition managers and the warfighters alike. The way we build energy into our operations is a core part of fighting and winning the nation’s wars.”

The Pentagon is responsible for 80 percent of the federal government’s energy use and spent $15 billion on energy last year, Lynn said.

“Not only does [energy] cost the taxpayers, it costs the warfighters,” he added. “Every dollar spent on energy use is a dollar not spent on other warfighting priorities.”

DoD’s renewed stance on energy was indicated by the Pentagon’s four-year strategic plan, the Quadrennial Defense Review, which recommended a new position focused on energy. Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs, now holds that position.

Burke, who has advocated that military energy use be considered in operational strategy, joined Lynn for the new strategy’s unveiling.

The Pentagon sent its report, Energy for the Warfighter: Operational Energy Strategy, to Congress yesterday.

Click here to read it in its entirety.

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