You are Air Force Energy

  • Published
  • By Mr. Daniel Thiel
  • 52nd Civil Engineer Squadron
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany --  We work every day to conserve letters in a text message to save time and effort. In the same line of thinking, we can work a little harder at conserving our "NRG" consumption.

October is the month we celebrate Columbus Day and enjoy a fun and scary Halloween night. However, for the Air Force, it is more than this. October is also Energy Action month. It's the time we should pause and think about how we deal with energy and how it impacts us in our daily routine and lives.

Once we flip a light switch, the light bulb turns on and brightens our rooms. We adjust the thermostat and enjoy feeling the room heating up or cooling down. These are all things we take for granted, but for Spangdahlem Air Base, these actions lead to an electrical consumption of nearly 43-million kilowatt hours per year (costing about $7-million) and a fuel oil consumption of approximately 2-million gallons per year (costing about $5-million).

$12 MILLION... This is what Spangdahlem Air Base spent on energy in FY2015.

Energy is needed to keep the mission at Spangdahlem Air Base running and to maintain our military family living areas.  We cannot simply just cut the cables or pipes to reduce our energy bills, but that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do to lower our yearly energy consumption. There are plenty of ways we can save energy and anyone can do it, no matter what age. One of the keys in energy use reduction is understanding where we use energy, where we can reduce its usage, and the resultant cost to all of us.

During the month of October, the 52nd Civil Engineer Squadron will help you to focus your thoughts on energy awareness. CE will be providing educational articles to help you understand how energy usage affects all of us and ways we can personally reduce our consumption.  In addition, CE will be recommending some energy saving initiatives that you can participate in to increase awareness. This can be a day where you decide to carpool to work, join in limiting energy use for an hour to demonstrate cost savings with awareness or compete in the 5K Energy Run on October 9th. Find out what fits best for you and join the mission to reduce our energy consumption.

You have it in your hands to make a difference!  YOU are Air Force Energy.