Lessons from the Edge

Lessons from the Edge

Presenter: Peter Newell, (BMNT Partners, USA)

Overview

Lessons learned by the Army in changing how it meets energy needs on the battlefield can well inform how energy solutions are brought to rural areas around the world.The high human cost of delivering energy on the battlefield led the Army to reexamine its assumptions about how energy is provided and used.Changing the way they framed the problem led to better energy solutions, saved lives, and made the missions more resilient.The resilience paradigm is also well suited to rural energy applications.Based on the Army’s lessons learned, the authors describe the attributes of a resilient system and discuss how these terms can be applied to instill energy resilience in rural communities.

Main Issues Discussed

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· Afghanistan, US Military

· Difficult to deliver supplies to rural bits

· Discovored that human capital expense was immense

· There was a lot of loss of goods, In addition to loss of humans

· Initlaly, people were resistant to idea of renewables

o They were too heavy, unfamiliar, not “trusted” on the ground, etc.

· Making the case for renewables took some time

· Definition of terms:

o Resiliance

§ Interested in the ecology def, where potential unkonwns are incoprorated into design

§ Stability, Adaptive Capacity, Readiness

· Worked with groups outside of the US Govt

o Found that groups that were actually using the tech, were the best to work with

· They deployed some great tecnnologies that are very sustainable, and appropraite for outposts

· Reduction in exposure to combat

Questions Posed

o Back calculate the cost of a barrel of fuel?

§ Its pretty immense ( in the thousands)

§ Discussion of human capital seems to have changed the conversation in congress (as opposed to economics)

o How much of system was designed specifically for the application?

§ Working with a collection of suppliers

§ Slight modifications to civilian projects

· General Questions

o How can we learn from the military approaches (top down) and lots of capital for the rural applications (base of the pyramid)?

§ Newell

§ Military approach was in large part informed by rural innovations

§ Want to make sure that the military didn’t compete for resources with the local communities, for water, fuel, etc.

o What equipment will stay in Afghanistan, and will they be repurposed for local communities?

§ Decided on a case by case basis

§ Depends on agreements with the host nation

§ Ultimate decision is made by the state department

§ Lots of factors apparently play into the decision