Joint base plans further energy savings Published June 5, 2015 By Senior Airman Tara A. Williamson Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Driving through the joint base, community members will see solar panels, hybrid cars and electric vehicle plug-ins - these are the most visible of the many energy-saving initiatives taken on by JB MDL over the past two years. One of the base's largest energy initiatives is an enhanced-use lease program, which creates energy and revenue generation programs for underutilized land. Roughly 500 acres are available for EULs and the land is planned to be used for solar arrays, or photovoltaics, gas lines, waste-to-energy services and even a large-scale power production facility powered by gas. The Army and Navy were the first to begin the EUL program and have several more bases with successful systems in place. The joint base is among those paving the way in this monumental program. "Other bases are nowhere near the magnitude of the projects that we are working on," said Matthew Bell, 87th Civil Engineer Squadron enhanced-use lease team member. "All the projects together, if we were able to execute all of them, there's over a billion dollars in investment that we're seeking to have here." Solar Panels "The base itself has several solar arrays on some of our larger facilities," said Bell. "The 99th Regional Support Command has solar on it, the clinic has it, the library has it, the 87th CES operations building has it, and there's a couple other buildings with them on top in the National Guard area." The thousands of solar panels throughout the joint base save millions of taxpayer dollars annually and, when last recorded, save more than 2,000 tons of airborne toxins. Alone, two of Lakehurst's hangars outfitted with solar walls in 2014 save $100,000 in utility costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 470 metric tons per year - which equates to taking 100 vehicles off the road. In base housing, 1,500 out of 2,200 buildings have solar panels, generating approximately 13.7 million kilowatt hours of electric power annually and providing a third of the power used in housing. Though this project is headed by the privatized housing company, United Communities, base members and their families still benefit greatly from this cost-saving initiative and the environmental benefits from this use of natural, renewable resources. In addition to these established projects, there are several additional planned solar array installments around the base as part of an EUL. The project furthest along in planning is the installation of photovoltaics on the former Fort Dix landfill. "This will return, potentially, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in rental lease and in turn, the developer will put a solar array there and sell the power out to the grid," Bell said. "It takes a piece of land that was a liability and turns it into an asset that will also generate revenue for the base." Gas Line During Hurricane Sandy, some areas of the joint base lost power for almost six days. Bell said that while key facilities have generators, housing, dining facilities and fitness centers do not. It's a potential problem if the base isn't resilient enough to resist impacts to energy infrastructure. To remedy this, Bell and his team members are working with New Jersey gas companies to make the gas line system "more robust." "They want to loop their system so that they're less susceptible to failures at any one point in the line, and part of that plan is to run a substantial part of the gas line through the base," Bell said. The base would then be able to distribute gas power to the more austere locations of the installation, like the range complexes.