Mountain View, CA (August 11, 2025) – As part of its effort to accelerate deployment of reliable and affordable energy solutions at U.S. military installations, the Department of the Air Force in collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) launched Finance First – an initiative to improve energy resiliency and maintain uninterrupted mission continuity. The Finance First initiative leverages agile private sector practices to enable rapid development, deployment and financing of energy solutions that can withstand power grid instability, cyber warfare, and other adversarial attempts to disrupt critical operations and missions. Utilizing an “all of the above” approach to fuel sources and energy generation technologies helps to ensure on-base power redundancy during outages.
By contracting with industry, the Department seeks to use novel, turnkey financing solutions to create scalable and repeatable processes that quickly deliver proven solutions while minimizing or eliminating the need for upfront DoD capital outlays. Finance First's objectives include developing new processes through collaboration with private industry that will:
Identify installation energy resilience gaps threatening mission continuity.
Develop comprehensive technology solutions that best address identified gaps.
Design, construct, and deploy these technology solutions.
Harness private capital to efficiently finance developed energy solutions through existing acquisition authorities, a combination of those authorities or, if necessary, newly created authorities.
Create "turnkey" energy mission assurance, where private industry designs, builds, finances, operates, and maintains developed solutions.
"Our ability to deter adversaries depends on secure, resilient, reliable, and efficient [1] energy on our installations," said Nancy Balkus, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Infrastructure, Energy, and Environment. "Through the Finance First program, we are leveraging proven commercial business practices to accelerate the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of national security energy projects – ensuring every Department of the Air Force installation remains mission-ready and powered for today, prepared for tomorrow.”
“The ability for the Department of the Air Force to develop resilience solutions with speed and scale is critical to maintaining mission capabilities across our installations,” said Kirk Phillips, Director of the Air Force Office of Energy Assurance. “Finance First will facilitate these efforts through the development of business processes that bring financing discussions earlier into the project development process so that the right resilience solution – and the means to execute it – can be discussed simultaneously.”
ECC Energy Solutions LLC, FESCO Energy LLC, and Ionic Blue Management LLC were competitively selected in April to develop these business processes. The prototype processes will be tested at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and could lead to government-wide adoption.
"Ensuring that our defense installations have resilient energy sources is mission critical for the United States,” said DIU Energy Portfolio Director, Dr. Andrew Higier. “The Government’s current approach to building this capability is too slow, costs too much, and is too capital intensive. By harnessing best-in-class private industry processes, we believe that the DoD can develop faster, cheaper, and less capital-intensive energy solutions that meet the critical challenge of hardening our installations against foreign attack as well as natural disaster and assure mission continuity."
Finance First directly supports Executive Order (E.O.) 14265 – Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Industrial Base, E.O. 14156 – Declaring a National Energy Emergency and E.O. 14154 – Unleashing American Energy. These EOs acknowledge that external energy dependencies create potential disruption and mission risk from constrained grid energy systems, natural disasters, or physical and cyber-attacks on infrastructure. By leveraging DIU's commercial solutions opening (CSO) process, which leads to Other Transaction agreements, Finance First will develop new and flexible business processes that meet the deployment speed, financing flexibility, and execution excellence that DoD needs by building upon leading private enterprise practices. In developing these new processes, this program aligns with the goals of E.O. 14265 focusing on streamlining acquisitions to accelerate defense procurement and ensure decisive advantages for our nation's defense in the future.
Finance First will establish a replicable business process that can accelerate energy project development times across the entire United States Government.
[1. Efficient energy (A) maximizes output while minimizing waste and cost, enabling operational effectiveness and fiscal responsibility; (B) minimizes fuel and resource consumption, which is vital in remote or contested environments; and (C) reduces dependence on external energy sources. ]