As the new assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy in charge of environment and energy, Jackalyne Pfannenstiel has a job that would give any executive pause. She is charged with implementing the goal of reducing the Navy's use of energy by half by the year 2020. Matter Network sat down recently with Ms. Pfannenstiel to learn more.

Part I of our interview was about the specifics of the Navy's energy strategy. Now we turn to what Pfannenstiel's and the Navy's experience can teach businesses that are trying to reduce their own energy footprint.

Ms. Pfannenstiel spent two decades with Pacific Gas & Electric, the California utility, and headed the California Energy Commission. She has no prior military experience.

Matter Network: Is the Navy in a better position to reduce its energy use than the private sector?

Jackalyne Pfannenstiel: We have some of the same constraints. It has to be with a payback that makes sense to us. We have environmental constraints like anyone else does. We have old buildings that need upgrades, and while there are a lot of people out there think the Pentagon has infinitely deep pockets, I can assure you we don't. Coming up with the money to do this is just as difficult.

Matter Network: The goals that your boss, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, has laid out are far more ambitious than the renewable-energy goal in your home state of California (the legislature is debating a 33 percent renewable standard by 2020). Also, your goal of cutting use of petroleum use in vehicles by half by 2015 goes well beyond the new U.S. fuel standards for cars. What resources does the Navy have to pull this off?

Pfannenstiel: We have several things. One is that we're more homogeneous. Our bases differ in geography and emissions, but we're more homogeneous in terms of our culture. We have a culture that is willing and dedicated. We're not getting any pushback. The other thing we have is our somewhat-enormous market power. We're a blip compared to commercial airlines, but we have a big enough demand for biofuels, for example, between our ships and our planes and our vehicles to make a difference. We can both testbed and stimulate a market. We have R&D of our own and we're plugged into a lot of federal R&D. This is a really important part of our mission as we see it now. We have decided that we are going to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.

Matter Network: Tell me more about your career with Pacific Gas & Electric, and how it compared to your new job.

Pfannenstiel: I was (at PG&E) for 20 years and I did a lot of different things. The common thread for most of it was planning -- strategic planning, financial planning, corporate planning, regulatory planning -- so I worked in the financial forecasting, budgeting, strategic part of the company. Here I'm working between the Marines and the Navy, two services, but trying to provide help and guidance on energy. Which is good for me, because I come in with a wealth of energy background. You can't ask me much specifically about the military because I don't know much about that, but I know a lot about the energy part.

Matter Network: What lessons has the Navy learned so far that energy leaders in companies can use?

Pfannenstiel: One thing that really does help is that (Navy Secretary) Ray Mabus came out with his energy goals, and has gone out and made a million speeches to let people know this is important and that we have to value it. When he did that, people really started thinking differently. So I would say set some goals, set some stretch goals, achievable goals, and communicate them. Make sure people really know what it is you want them to do.

Matter Network: In a speech, I heard you say that the Navy needs to "incent sailors to regard energy as a precious resource." How do you go about doing that?

Pfannenstiel: It''s probably the $64 million question. When I was at the California Energy Commission, it occurred to me that policymakers hadn't done a very good job of getting people to think about energy, the way we energy wonks thought about energy. Californians tend to be a lot more attuned and energy conscious than a lot of the rest of the country, and even there I was taken aback by how little people knew, how little they thought about energy. Even when they tried to make the right decisions they frequently didn't.

So in my last couple years on the energy commission we tried very hard to find a way of getting into that. One of my colleagues was a scientist and engineer and he had this view that if I build the right energy widget, people will buy it because that's what it takes. I'm an economist, and I always thought if you just price energy right, people will change. And you know, we're both wrong. Neither of those things really happen.

People aren't focused no matter what we did on energy. So it seemed to me there was something missing, whether it was marketing, or education, or gimmicks - i don't know what it was. So then I came here, and I think it might be kind of the same thing. People want very, very much to do the right thing, but they don't always know what it is. So if you can figure out what the incentives are, what will make people want to do the right thing, you can set certain behavior. On a base that means finding ways not to be in a private vehicle, car ridesharing, buses. A great example is that now everyone brings their own bags to the grocery store. Why? There is an incentive in D.C. to pay for plastic bags. People have now learned a behavior change.

Matter Network: Have you identified what those behaviors are?

Pfannenstiel: Not yet. not yet. That's exactly what I want to do. In four months, I have only identified the fact that I have to identify them. (laughs) I do know that people's way of thinking about things can change. The first people who started to carry their own canvas bags to the grocery store were ridiculed. Now everybody does it.

Photo by frostnova/flickr/Creative Commons

David Ferris is managing editor of the Matter Network.