Part 1

Part 2

A progressive veterans group is making a provocative push to get comprehensive energy reform passed, launching a new ad that ties oil consumption to Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. troops.

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Group links energy, national security

Monday, January 18, 2010

By GINNY WRAY – Bulletin Staff Writer

Alternative energy producers such as Red Birch Energy can help increase national security.

That is the message of the National Veterans for American Power Tour, which stopped in Henry County on Sunday.

“I don’t want to send friends into a war over energy,” said Lela Graham of Charlottesville, an Army veteran who was among those on the tour, which stopped at Red Birch Energy in Bassett Forks.

Graham and three others rode on a blue bus with “More jobs, less pollution, greater security” written on its side. The bus had been in Charlottesville on Saturday, and it was headed to Danville later Sunday where 5th District U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was to meet with the veterans.

From there, the bus will travel to Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, according to its Web site. The trip is sponsored by Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security organizations who see climate change as a threat to national security.

The veterans believe that America’s dependence on oil is providing funding to its enemies. Or, as Graham put it, the nation is “funding both sides of the war on terror.”

At the same time, climate change is destabilizing countries, “creating failed states which provide breeding grounds and recruiting opportunities for terrorists around the world,” Jon Powers, chief operating officer of the Truman Project and an Iraq war veteran, states on Operation Free’s Web site.

“There are 157 families in Virginia who would say that the cost of moving from fossil fuels to clean power is negligible” compared with the cost of the lives of Virginians lost in recent wars, said Chuck Tyler, an Army veteran traveling on the bus that stopped here. He was referring to the 157 Virginians who have died in recent wars.

During the bus tour, Operation Free volunteers are urging residents to ask their senators to vote for the Clean Energy Jobs Act, Senate Bill 1733, Tyler said. He called it a “first step in a move toward clean American power.”

That also is a goal of Red Birch. Graham, Tyler and National Guard veteran Stefan Stent of Washington, D.C., toured the energy company Sunday, three days after it received $750,000 in federal stimulus funds to install a system to use glycerin to generate electricity.

Glycerin is a byproduct of the biodiesel fuel produced and sold at Red Birch. Glycerin has little value now, but Red Birch part-owners Gary Sink and Dean Price plan to burn it to generate electricity to power their refinery and the Red Birch Country Market next door. If they have electricity left over, they will put it on the national electric grid, Sink said.

The beauty of the system, in terms of national security, is that it decentralizes energy production and removes the threat of terrorism, said Sink, a Vietnam-era Army veteran who said he “absolutely” agrees with Operation Free’s stands.

Sink pointed to the fuel tank farm outside Greensboro, N.C., as an obvious type of target for terrorists who want to strike at the nation’s transportation system and infrastructure.

“This model (at Red Birch) dispels the need for tank farms” because the electricity would be produced and sold on site, he said.

In addition, he said, for every $1 spent to make fuel in this country, 90 cents stay where the fuel is made and the other 10 cents go for taxes. “If you make it in this country, the money stays in this country,” he added, rather than funding terrorists around the globe.

The system also poses no environmental threat, Sink said, because all its raw materials are biodegradable.

He and Price said they had funded the operation themselves so far, but they could go no further. Their options were to wait for the economy to improve or ask the government for help, which they did.

But, Price added, they would not have received the money if they had not had a working model to show the viability of their idea.

They will use the money to develop a prototype for commercial burners. If that is successful, they hope to replicate the model at other Red Birch Markets by forming cooperatives with local businesses, Sink said.

It is, according to Price, a “world-changing idea” that is rooted here in Southside Virginia .

Perriello, veterans unite to share support for clean energy

By Tara Bozick
Published: January 17, 2010

Army veteran Lela Graham would like to be able to show veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan how America is investing in energy independence.

Graham and other veterans visited Red Birch Energy in Bassett and the Institute of Advanced Learning and Research in Danville on Sunday as part of the Veterans for American Power national bus tour sponsored by Operation Free.

“I just see a lot of potential,” Graham said.

Graham, of Charlottesville, National Guard veteran Stefan Stent, of Washington, D.C., and Army infantry staff sergeant veteran Chuck Tyler, of Pittsburgh, will spread the word nationally about bioenergy projects and energy and education initiatives occurring in Southside.

The biodiesel-fueled bus tour highlights the connection between climate change and national security and supports clean energy legislation. The veterans toured the Institute with Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, and thanked the Congressman for supporting clean energy.

“At the intersection of American patriotism and American entrepreneurship is the new energy economy,” Perriello said.

Other countries aren’t waiting to see if America is going to lead. They’re trying to beat us, Perriello continued.

“We have the opportunity in Southside Virginia to lead the new energy economy,” Perriello said. “I want the jobs to be grown right here in Southside instead of India or China.”

Secondly, creating energy gives Americans the chance to make the country more secure in terms of energy independence, Perriello said.

Additionally, the implications of climate change are important. As sources of water dry up, conflicts over water or other resources could arise, Perriello said.

Stent said he saw how climate change and natural disaster could affect countries like Indonesia.

“Climate change and the lack of action thereof makes the world a dangerous place,” Tyler added.

The veterans, Perriello and other community leaders learned Sunday how the Institute works to help Southside in alternative energy. Barry Flinn, Ph.D., of the Institute for Sustainable and Renewable Resources showed how researchers work to create crops that regional farmers can produce, including crops used for bioenergy production.

Executive Director Liam Leightley shared plans for the Institute’s new Sustainable Energy and Technology Center, which would serve not only as a place of research but a demonstration in itself. The building will be LEED-certified and specially designed for energy efficiency, using LED lights and solar panels.

Students touring the facility can see how alternative energy works in practice.

“This will serve as a center for excellence,” Leightley said. “It will serve as a proving ground.”

“Some may wonder why NATO would be interested in climate change. To me, this is a bit like asking why a person would be interested in a change in gravity.”

What he is saying, is that the threat climate disruption poses to global security could not be more pressing or clear. In fact, he goes further, saying:

“NATO may be called upon to address the consequences of climate change directly. The military is often the ‘first responder’ to natural disasters. We saw this in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and floods that more recently struck Eastern Europe.”

This will have very real security implications for the US military – by far the greatest contributor to NATO forces – at a time when resources are already stretched thin by conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet perhaps the most powerful imperative for action is this:

“Climate change presents security challenges of a magnitude and a complexity we have never seen before.”

That the most successful defensive security alliance of all time, views climate disruption as its biggest threat and greatest challenge – bigger than terrorism, bigger than nuclear war, bigger than any other challenge they have yet faced – says it all.

Sun Tzu, writing thousands of years ago said, “a good general knows the outcome of the battle before it begins.” Our generals know how fighting the planet will turn out, and are trying to tell us it is not a battle we want to have.

The U.S. Military is getting into the clean energy act in a big way. It’s now pretty well known that the largest solar power plant in the world is located at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The Air Force, however, isn’t just resting on it’s laurels; the Soaring Heights Community at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon, Arizona is about to become the largest solar powered community in the continental U.S. (http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/10/27/arizona-air-force-base-community-to-rely-75-on-solar)

The project will boost Arizona’s use of renewable energy by 15%! Not to be outdone, the Army is getting into the act with their own solar powered housing complex in Hawaii which, when completed, will be even bigger than the Air Force’s in Nevada.

And on Friday, October 30th the Navy earned two Presidential Energy Saving awards, as well as eight awards from the Department of Energy.  The Navy estimates that since they began focusing on saving energy and water they have saved billions of dollars in utility costs.

But why are the services doing this? The first reason is rather obvious- cost. Every dollar the services can save on energy costs is another dollar that can be spent on body armor or mine resistant vehicles for our troops or other priorities. But more importantly, the leaders of the our nation’s military have recognized that our dependence on fossil fuels hurts our national security. At the strategic level, it forces us to build relationships and defend countries with whom we have little in common, who don’t share our values, and who often plain just don’t like us very much. At the operational level, being dependent on a resource that you don’t control in order to fly your planes, drive your tanks, or sail your ships, leaves a vulnerability that the enemy can exploit. At the most basic tactical level, our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have to go out on the roads, where they are vulnerable to IEDs, so they can move fuel around from base to base. Every time we can take one of these convoys off the road because effieciencies mean that the fuel is not needed, it put less of our troops at risk and lets them focus on defeating our enemies instead of moving gas around. Clean Energy- its not just for tree huggers anymore!

Rob Levinson, Lt Col USAF (Ret)

America’s electrical grid is a dinosaur in a digital world. A “smart” grid is not your typical point-to-point power system – it actually allows power generated from anywhere (a home with solar panels, a farm that captures biofuels) to be uploaded onto the grid, letting you sell electricity back to the grid. And and allows consumers to time their use of energy to minimize both generation needs and cost. For example, smart grid technology will let you time when your plug-in hybrid charges itself based on when electricity is cheapest and the technology producing it is the cleanest.

This has a two-fold benefit for our energy security: By spreading the ability to generate power among more, smaller sources, we guard against the potential for a single event — a terrorist strike or natural disaster for example — to completely disrupt our power supply.

Secondly, the “smart” grid itself is required for us to maximize our renewable energy potential by allowing individuals the choice to equip their homes and businesses with alternative energy generatorsand to sell any excesses back to other users. This will help decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, much of which we purchase from states whose interests run contrary to our own.

Read more about the announcement.

Matt Oberhoffner is an Operation Free Field Director.

Energy, climate change, and national security are all inextricably linked. General Magnus detailed the need for the US to explore alternative sources of energy. The US is too dependent on fossil fuels, which also cause of climate change – a security double whammy. Increased world temperatures will cause catastrophes due to mass drought, damage to infrastructure, and the spread of contagious diseases. Each of these developments can act as a ‘threat multiplier’ that decreases stability and increases conflicts that our military will have to be engaged in.

The Marine Corps at Parris Island has cut its energy consumption by 33 percent in a little over 20 years. The nation needs to follow the Marines’ lead before we have to send our troops to face the inevitable consequences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgRodOFk7Dk