By Jason Fornicola, Director of Custom Media Federal News Radio

The Air Force, which spent $8.9 billion in fiscal 2014 on electricity and fuel for its operations, is always looking for ways to conserve energy and be more efficient. Roberto Guerrero, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy, oversees these efforts.

“It’s very key for us to ensure that we are using our energy wisely,” Guerrero said. “Every pound of jet fuel, every watt of electricity, every gallon of gasoline counts for us.” “The Air Force has looked at traditional ways of saving energy through our facility energy projects,” Guerrero told Federal News Radio’s Agency of the Month radio show.

“So those would be cases where we come in and look at the lighting, we look at the insulation, we look at the air conditioning units, and other HVAC-type equipment to upgrade those to newer standards that can save us costs of our electricity bill throughout the year.”

But for Guerrero, energy reduction goes beyond those traditional methods. “When we look at it, though, it’s not just that that we concentrate on,” he said. “We’re changing the way we fly, increasing our aviation efficiency, obviously building more energy efficient facilities across the Air Force and we feel that through the smart use of energy, not only do we save money, but we’re able to fly farther, take more cargo with us, stay on station longer.”

“All of these things that are key to our ability to fly, fight and win in air space and cyber space,” Guerrero concluded. “When you look at the way we look at technology, there are some times when we are a technology leader, so space equipment – equipment that we use on orbit – launch for that space equipment, aviation high-tech engines that we have, those are the kind of things where we’re going to be leaders because we don’t want it to ever be a fair fight. We want to have the best stuff to support our airmen in executing their mission. So in those cases we would lead.” But, there are other instances when the Air Force is what Guerrero described as a “fast follower,” with the commercial industry’s technologies maturing to the point that the Air Force can also use them.

“This might be commercial aircraft engines that we can apply to our large aircraft,” Guerrero said. “It could be in advanced designs in LED lighting, or in HVAC equipment, or even along the lines of cyber equipment – ways that we store our data, data warehousing – that is more efficient than we’ve done in the past.

“Those areas we’ll be a fast follower, where when we see it’s adopted in the industry, we will analyze it and see where we can incorporate it in our mission and follow by acquiring those types of technologies.” Guerrero also described other ways the Air Force relies on partnerships with the private sector to meet its energy conservation goals.

“When we look internally to our energy and how we can work with third parties to enhance our energy consumption/reduction metrics, a prime example would be what’s called the energy saving performance contracts initiative that we have in the Air Force,” Guerrero said.

“These are contracts that we let with third parties – a group of companies that specialize in energy saving actions – and we will identify a base, we have them come in and take a look at the lighting, the air conditioning, other energy usage items and provide newer technology.”

“And really what we’re doing is we’re leveraging their buying power and their third-party investment into our facilities, and they get refunded through the savings of those particular projects.” The projects typically run for longer periods and deliver a favorable outcome in the end. “These are usually 10- to 15-year projects, but they cover all the maintenance for it, so that is a manpower savings for us, as well as we own the equipment once that particular time period is done,” Guerrero added.

All of this, according to Guerrero, who spent time during his career at the Air Force Safety Center and as a Navy and Air Force pilot, is to help the airmen do their jobs as safely as possible. “It’s really a consideration in all that we do, and take that same type of mentality and take it to the energy world,” he said.

“The safety piece for me was always about, obviously, protecting the crew and protecting the assets so that you can get your mission done the next day. Being able to identify the risks, mitigate the risks, and carry out the mission and come back for the next mission.” Saving energy and preserving funds allows the Air Force to expand the mission and even modernize equipment and other things that support the airmen and accomplish the task at hand.

“For us, really, the bottom line is it’s about the mission,” Guerrero said. “It’s not as much energy for energy’s sake as it is about ensuring that we have the ability to take care of what we need to take care of when the nation calls us to act.”

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