The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes climate change as an immediate national security priority. SERDP and ESTCP are developing and demonstrating solutions to reduce the impacts of climate change on military installations and the natural and physical infrastructure that support critical DoD missions. At the 2022 Symposium, SERDP, ESTCP and Operational Energy-Innovation will host a range of technical sessions that discuss DoD climate and energy resilience efforts. A description of each session is included below.
Solutions for Installation Carbon Emission Reduction
President Biden’s Executive Order 14057 and accompanying Federal Sustainability Plan set out a range of ambitious goals to deliver emissions reduction. The session will focus on the solutions to support military installations to achieve two of these goals: 100% Zero-Emission Vehicle Acquisitions by 2035, and Net-Zero Emissions Buildings by 2045. Technology research and demonstrations covered in this session include electric vehicle charging support equipment, building electrification, and intelligent load management for building operations.
Vehicle Electrification and Technology Adoption
This session hosted by Operational Energy–Innovation will explore the technologies the DoD is investing in to electrify ground and air vehicles and the requirements for future technologies. This presentation will also review the recent Memorandum of Agreement between the DoD and Defense Innovation Unit that will expedite technology adoption by the DoD. This session may include additional briefs from Service representatives adding Service-specific requirements for vehicle electrification.
Installation Resilience
DoD installations are unique in their scope and specificity, they both globally distributed and geographically specific. As such they face a diverse and evolving array of challenges with implications to mission that are known knowns and some that are unknown. This session will examine research activities currently being pursued to understand resilience, ecological regime shift, and provide methods to reduce the unknowns.
Microgrids and Energy Storage
In the last several years, ESTCP has focused its investments in the microgrid and energy storage strategy to improve the energy resilience, and operation flexibility at our military bases. This session will cover this strategy showcasing advancements and solutions addressing the technical challenges and barriers to microgrid adoption at DoD. Speakers will highlight advances to the state of microgrid control platforms, and energy storage solutions to cost-effectively optimize load and distributed generation to meet installation’s energy security, and reliability needs.
Installation Energy and Water Resilience
DoD must have the ability to avoid, prepare for, minimize, adapt to, and recover from anticipated and unanticipated energy and water disruptions for mission assurance. Furthering the call for resilience needs at DoD is Executive Order 14008, which requires climate considerations to be an integral component of all DoD strategy, planning, and programming activities. This session will spotlight ESTCP demonstrations that are bolstering energy and water resilience at military installations, as well as other solutions that enable DoD’s facilities and personnel to perform critical missions when commercial and other off-base energy and water resources are unavailable.
The Symposium will offer 23 technical sessions, 7 short courses, and over 400 technical poster presentations. Visit the Symposium website to register and learn more about other sessions.
