The changing U.S. and international energy pictures have a profound effect on security, a senior Pentagon official said here yesterday.
Sharon E. Burke, the assistant secretary of defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs, told industry partners and congressional leaders at the American Council on Renewable Energy's National Renewable Energy Policy Forum that the motivation for seeking out clean energy sources is strongly rooted in national security interests.
The International Energy Agency’s world energy outlook, released in November, is “the shot heard ’round the world,” Burke said. According to the report, she said, the world will need $37 trillion dollars in new investment in the energy supply system from now to 2035.
Even as mature economies increase their energy efficiency, switch fuels and reduce their petroleum demand, the thirst for oil among the world's economies -- particularly developing economies -- will continue to grow apace, Burke said.
“China will account for something like 50 percent of that [growth],” she told the audience. “When you add in India and the Middle East, you're talking about 60 percent.”
The United States is affecting the most change on the world energy picture, she said. The IEA estimates that by 2020, the United States is going to outstrip Saudi Arabia as an oil producer. Another report predicts that the U.S. will succeed Russia as a natural gas producer, she added.
This means the possibility exists that North America could be energy self-sufficient by 2035, Burke said. “Even as everyone else in the world has growing demand and contracting supply, we're bucking the trend,” she said.
This possibility has generated a lot of justifiable excitement, and for a variety of reasons, Burke said. There are positive consequences for the U.S. economy, for jobs and for the manufacturing sector, she said. But the Defense Department is most interested in the second-order geostrategic effects, Burke noted.
A danger in all this enthusiasm, she said, is that it overlooks the fact that the United States will still be part of a highly volatile global energy market, “and the world's supply and demand trends are going to continue to shape our own prosperity here at home.”
The energy security variables have implications that aren’t yet understood, Burke said. For example, she asked, what will happen if Saudi Arabia -- already the largest single consumer of petroleum in the Middle East -- becomes a net importer?
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