In his morning keynote at the sold-out Southern Solar Summit, Col. Dan Nolan (U.S. Army ret.) asked the musical question:

“When did our Marines become Birkenstock-wearing tree huggers?”

This was after some Marines asked for solar power so they wouldn’t have to haul fuel in long convoys, which were among the most dangerous missions. Most of that fuel was going into very inefficient generators to run very inefficient air conditioners in tents in the desert. Dealing with that got the military thinking about energy security: assured access to mission-critical energy.

Looking up, he asked:

“What is it we as a nation need to understand about our own energy security?”

He identified America’s strategic center of gravity as its economy. It’s very resilient but has vulnerabilities open to attack. So how do we secure those vulnerabilities?

The main vulnerabilities are: Continue reading →