Coca-Cola expected five Bloom boxes will help it cut the carbon footprint of an Odwalla plant by 35 percent.
In the gush of enthusiasm for Bloom Energy’s new energy box, one topic has received scant attention: its environmental impact.
The hype is that the new Bloom Energy Server is ready to save the world, to generate electricity without producing greenhouse gases. It is not quite that simple.
When most people think of fuel cells – Bloom hut-sized device is in fact a fuel cell – they think of hydrogen cells, which consume hydrogen and oxygen and produce heat and water. Very clean.
The Bloom Box is different. It requires oxygen and a fuel, such as natural gas, methane or biofuel. So while it generates electricity without combustion, it does produce the greenhouse gas CO2.
At a coming out event Wednesday morning, Bloom argued the box’s emissions were substantially less than those of a traditional power plant. Hence the claim of clean energy.
But it is a matter of degrees. Bloom says its new 100 kW box is 67 percent cleaner than a coal-fired plant, the dirtiest of the traditional electric plants. To drive home this point, it offered testimony from its first Fortune 500 customers.
Coca-Cola, for instance, has five boxes it intends to install at its Odwalla plant in California. The Energy Servers will run on biogas, generate 30 percent of the facility’s power and cut its carbon footprint by 35 percent. Coca was the most detailed.
Bank of America plans to use five Bloom boxes to run a call center in Southern California. The units will replace diesel generators and cut carbon emissions, though the company didn’t say exactly how much.
On its Web site, Bloom aims to be more specific. Customers will cut CO2 emissions by 40 percent to 100 percent, depending on the fuel they use, and virtually eliminate sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxide and other smog-forming emission. A biofuel would likely equate to the 100 percent claim, though it, too, would produce CO2.
Looked at another way, says Bloom, since the Energy Servers first appeared at customer sites in July 2008, they have generated more than 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity and reduced CO2 by about 14 million pounds.
That’s an important step. But alone it wouldn’t solve the climate crisis.