The Army of Washington, Pershing and Patton is starting to measure its carbon footprint, part of a broader emphasis on the costs of climate change.
 The Army starts to count carbon. |
An environmental, health and safety management system called Enviance, piloted at Fort Carson in Colorado, is being rolled out to 11 more Army facilities around the country, including Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Benning in Georgia, to help track their carbon “bootprint.” The Army has over 100 installations in the United States.
Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety and occupational health, said it is expanding its focus to climate change issues beyond its traditional energy security focus.
The Army issued its first annual sustainability report last fall and is already being affected by carbon-reduction regulations: a 2007 executive order signed by President Bush set a goal for all federal agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent annually through 2015.
Measures already in place to cut emissions at U.S. Army installations include making buildings more energy efficient, greater use of cars that run on alternative fuels and buying or generating renewable energy. For example, the Army is exploring geothermal energy at Fort Knox in Kentucky. The Army is also trying to tally the carbon sequestration potential at Fort Benning and could reap carbon credits in the future.
And the sun may well snap to attention from now on whenever reveille plays at Fort Irwin in California. That’s where Clark Energy Group and Acciona Solar Power will develop a 500 MW solar power project. The solar project will develop both photovoltaic and concentrating solar thermal technologies. Plans call for up to 1,000 MW of solar power to be developed at the fort.
“Lightbulb Socialism”
The phase out of energy-intensive light bulbs began September 1 in Europe. But it seems the energy-saving compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs that will replace them are not so popular. Some German consumers and retailers are hoarding traditional bulbs.
The European Union adopted a measure last March that calls for replacing traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. The first to go were 100-watt bulbs. Other wattages will gradually fall under the ban, which is expected to cover all bulbs by September 1, 2012.
German hardware stores and home-improvement chains reported big jumps in the sales of traditional lightbulbs. According to one market research company, sales in Germany of incandescent light bulbs between January and mid-April 2009, saw a 20 percent jump over a year earlier. CFL sales actually shrank by 2 percent.
The EU’s ban was originally meant to help it reach energy efficiency and climate protection targets. Though cheaper to buy, incandescent bulbs have been seen by some as wasteful.
One German member of the European Parliament accused the EU of imposing “light bulb socialism.” And a Munich-based lighting designer recommended protests against the ban, including lightbulb hoarding and civil disobedience.
Perhaps a candlelight vigil for the endangered lightbulbs might be in order?