Navigating by the Sun: U.S. Department of Defense Takes Aggressive Lead as Early Adopters of Solar Energy

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has a long-standing tradition of accelerating technological innovation, serving as early adopters and impacting the broader commercial market in such areas as aviation, computing and global positioning systems (GPS). For the past several years, the DoD has been playing this same role in the renewable energy space. In fact, The Pew Charitable Trusts reports that the DoD clean energy investments increased 300 percent between 2006 and 2009, from $400 million to $1.2 billion. Projections for 2030 are set to eclipse $10 billion annually,1 with an overall target of obtaining 25 percent of the DoD's energy from renewable sources by 2025.