Retired military officers are urging the U.S. to get serious about changing the country's approach to energy use.



Nellis AFB hosts one of the largest solar arrays

In a new report from Alexandria, Va.-based Center for Naval Analyses, a bevy of high-ranking former Army and Navy officials stress that the country's reliance on oil poses a threat to national security and undermines the country's ability to wage war. That's because the hegemony of oil empowers plenty of dodgy nations, and because it imposes huge (and expensive) logistics strains on the U.S. military, as made clear in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report calls for the Pentagon to lead a shift away from oil and toward renewable sources of energy--not so much to save the planet as to make it easier to defend.

The stress on energy and national security isn't surprising. National Security Adviser James Jones' former gig involved drafting a new blueprint for changing America's energy mix to boost security.

What's really interesting about the report is that it highlights how important the Pentagon could be in blazing a new energy trail. The U.S. Department of Defense is the world's single-largest energy consumer, so any shift in energy use by the Pentagon automatically has massive repercussions. That's especially true when it comes to new technologies: