On the battlefield electricity comes from a generator that runs on gas or diesel fuel, and clean, fresh water comes from plastic bottles stacked in the corner. Resources sometimes have to bedelivered over rough, treacherous roads.

Senior leadership around Quantico is focusing efforts on self-sufficient combat effectiveness and expeditionary energy that lead to the base-to-battlefield concept.

The mission is for the Marine Corps to meet all the goals foralternative energy consumption and reduction, and by 2025to man, train and equip Marine Expeditionary Forces to generate the energy and purify the water necessary to sustain themselves.

‘‘The Commandant of the Marine Corps stood this up in November of last year,” said Col. Robert Charette, the director of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office. ‘‘He basically told us to go out there and analyze, develop and direct the Marine Corps Energy Strategy.”

The strategy, projected to be signed by the commandant in August, changes the way the Marine Corps employs energy and resources to increase combat effectiveness and reduce the need for logistics support.

For example, the efficient use of vital resources to increase combat effectiveness can be as simple as a bottle of water.

Charette explained how trivial the circumstances seem that Marines risk their lives for everyday.

In a war zone, a truckload of bottled water costs the Marine Corps roughly $8,000, Charette said. Many times Marines will drink a half of a bottle of water and leave the rest. Little do they realize that some Marine’s life was on the line for that half bottle of water when he was supplying it to the front lines.

‘‘Our job is to make the Marine Corps more combat effective,” said Charette. ‘‘We’ve had a lot of people over the last few months come in and helps us analyze this. The focus is to help us do the right thing for the nation and Marine Corps.”

The Marine Corps needs to be efficient in the use of vital resources, such as water and power, and eliminate the risk of having Marines provide thoseresources when a threat is present.

‘‘Statistically, 58 of the 673 programs at Marine Corps Systems Command require direct electric generator support. Sixty-nine percent have a critical orrequired power need, while 52 percent have an exclusive power need.

‘‘In Afghanistan today, we are employing as much energy as did the entire Marine Corps in the summer of 2001,” said Charette. ‘‘It’s no fault of the Marines. It’s a fault of ours as an institution.”

Many of the Marines out there don’t understand the concept of energy efficiency and have not received training on what to do when forward deployed to produce the resources they need.

‘‘They’re out there doing their jobs,” said Charette. ‘‘They don’t have the equipment, and they don’t have the training to get this done. So, this isn’t all about just buying the next solar panel. It’s about getting the training in our institution and getting the ethos that energy [conservation] is just as important as pulling the trigger.”

Another example is air conditioning units. The amount of energy for fuel and electricity used can besignificant. ‘‘It doesn’t mean we don’t want to try to provide our Marines with the best,” said Charette. ‘‘We could cool 4,000, 20 x 20 rooms in Arizona. That’s how many [air conditioning units] we deployed to Afghanistan. Each is running on a generator that consumes fuel which must be delivered.”

During the expeditionary forward operating base experiment in March, seven systems were evaluated and selected including lighting systems, water systems and solar systems.

‘‘We’re going to take those systems and move them to Afghanistan after we train our Marines on them,” said Charette. ‘‘We’re training the Marines in 3⁄5 at Camp Pendleton. We’re trying to take a company and give them the ability to operate with no requirement to have fuel and water shipped in.”

— Correspondent: meloney.moses@usmc.mil