US Army Picks Nuclear, Fuel Cell Power for Six Bases

The U.S. Army has conditionally awarded long-term Enhanced Use Leases to three private developers — Ameresco, the Indelible-Bloom Energy partnership, and Frontier Power USA — to finance, design, build and operate new power generation at six Army installations in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, the service confirmed on September 18-21, 2026. The technology mix spans small modular reactors, an integral molten salt reactor, hydrogen fuel cells, battery storage and natural gas, making it one of the U.S. military’s most concrete moves yet toward privately financed, multi-technology base power.

What the Army Awarded, and to Whom

The awards run through the Army’s Enhanced Use Lease authority under 10 U.S.C. § 2667, which lets the service lease underused land to private developers while retaining title to the property. The developer finances, designs, builds, operates, secures and eventually decommissions the facility — the Army buys power rather than owning generation assets.

No capacity figures in megawatts and no dollar values have been disclosed by the Army or the developers for any of the six projects. Construction cannot begin until the projects clear environmental and regulatory review under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, plus applicable federal, state and local permitting.

Why Reactors and Fuel Cells, Not Just Solar and Batteries

The technology choices reflect a shift in how the Army is framing installation energy: not primarily as a decarbonization exercise, but as a resilience and self-sufficiency problem. A base that depends entirely on the commercial grid is vulnerable to outages, cyberattacks or physical disruption; firm, on-site generation — gas, fuel cells or nuclear — can keep critical functions running independent of the grid, which battery storage alone cannot do without a generation source to recharge it. That logic is consistent with the wider push the Army and the Department of War have signaled this year, including the Janus microreactor program and the projects showcased at the Pentagon’s September 2026 Energy Innovation Expo.

Ameresco’s Co-President Nicole Bulgarino said the Aberdeen and Picatinny awards “represent a significant opportunity to advance both traditional firm power generation technologies and innovative nuclear solutions,” pairing near-term natural gas with a longer-term nuclear build-out once permitting clears.

Where This Technology Already Powers Civilian Grids

Each of the reactor and fuel cell technologies selected has a civilian energy track record independent of this Army program. Terrestrial Energy’s IMSR, the reactor design set for Aberdeen Proving Ground’s Phase II, is rated at 390 MWe and has separately been selected for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program, with a planned unit at Texas A&M University aimed at the civilian and campus power market. Bloom Energy’s solid-oxide fuel cells, the technology behind the Indelible-Bloom awards, are already deployed commercially at data centers, hospitals and corporate campuses as on-site, grid-independent power — the same resilience case the Army is now buying for Fort Detrick, Letterkenny and West Point. Battery storage and natural gas generation, the components at Tobyhanna, are standard tools in civilian grid-balancing and backup power, meaning the Army’s award effectively channels military procurement dollars into technology already scaling in the commercial energy market.

What’s Still Unconfirmed

Several material details remain open. The Army has not released megawatt capacity, cost or contract-value figures for any of the six sites; a widely cited $2 billion aggregate figure has circulated in trade coverage but has not been confirmed in the Army’s own announcements or in company statements reviewed for this article, so it is treated here as unverified. Frontier Power USA has not specified which of the three listed technologies — battery storage, gas or nuclear — it will actually deploy at Tobyhanna. No construction timeline or in-service date has been set for any site, pending environmental review.

Sources

• Ameresco, “Ameresco Selected for U.S. Army Strategic Capital Initiatives to Advance Energy Resilience at Aberdeen Proving Ground and Picatinny Arsenal,” September 21, 2026.
• American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, “Army announces new power projects for installations,” September 21, 2026.
• Engineering News-Record, “Corps Awards $2B Contract for Military Energy Resilience Projects.”

Illustrative image. Photo: Florival fr, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source