Clean Energy

The Defense Department is more effective at commercializing clean energy technology breakthroughs it funds through its research and development program than the Energy Department because DOD can procure and deploy research breakthroughs, creating a market for its technologies, according to a new study. As InsideEPA.com reports:

"Although investments at DOE exceed those at DOD, until DOE is more strongly linked to deployment and procurement mechanisms, DOD’s investments could potentially have a much greater impact," says the Oct. 16 report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a group whose board members include representatives of major high-tech companies and environmental groups.

The report, which is a follow up to a study released last year that first recognized the potential of DOD use as a way to advance new energy technologies, says DOD has the potential to supplant DOE's importance as the lead agency for advancing clean energy and making innovative, low-carbon energy technologies competitive with fossil energy.

The report comes as many in the sector are working with the department to advance clean energy technologies. The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) is hosting a week-long clean energy conference in Washington, DC, Oct. 15-19 where it will discuss the work it is doing with the military to form a partnership focused on advancing clean energy through DOD's procurement system and its ability to rapidly scale up and commercialize technology.

The new report, "Lean, Mean, and Clean II: Assessing DOD Investments in Clean Energy Innovation," does not favor one agency's programs over another, but recommends increased coordination between the two agencies to more rapidly commercialize transformative technologies. "The linkage between R&D and procurement makes DOD's investments complementary to DOE's investments, and in many ways it is conclusively necessary," says the report. "DOD strongly links its research to potential procurement, while DOE's research is weakly associated with federal deployment subsidies, tax incentives and grants."

Surveying DOD's investments in energy storage, "smart grid" technologies, biofuels, advanced grid electronics, energy efficiency and renewable power technologies, the ITIF report says DOD is focused primarily on "procurement," giving it the unique ability to commercialize technologies more quickly than DOE's historic R&D approach that can leave technologies trapped in the "Commercialization Valley of Death" -- where new innovations are developed but cannot find the investor capital. . . .

The report says DOD fills the "gap" in advanced energy development that DOE cannot close through its programs alone. "This gap -- largely non-existent for DOD -- inhibits clean energy technologies from competing equally with other energy substitutes in the market, and results from a lack of government investment as well as private sector investors' reluctance to support high-risk technologies," says the report.

"DOD's procurement process provides the demand and the capital for the production of emerging technologies, inevitably moving DOD's innovation cycle forward, and potentially providing the technologies presence in commercial markets."

The report says DOD has increased flexibility in its energy programs "to shift funding as technology develops," which is a "major weakness" in non-defense advanced energy programs, and indicative of the type of innovation structure "missing at the DOE."

To view InsideDefense.com's coverage of Pentagon energy issues, check out Defense Energy Alert.