Environmental Impact of Bloom Energy’s Main Technological Innovation (Case Study Sample)

Environmental Impact of Bloom Energy’s Main Technological Innovation
Bloom Energy is a public corporation operating in San Jose, California, specialized in manufacturing and marketing solid oxide fuel cells that generate electrical energy. The company was created in 2001 and was publicly listed in the stock market in 2018. In its competitive industry, Bloom Energy contends against other dominant brands such as Ballard Power System, FuelCell Energy, and Joi Scientific. Moreover, the corporation’s mission is to ensure that the global customer segment has access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy. The brand has marshalled a diverse group of individuals with a collective objective of improving the world through innovation and environmental stewardship.
Principle Technological Innovation
The main technological innovation that Bloom Energy use is its Bloom Energy Server. It is a distributed generation platform that offers frequent electrical energy. The server offers several advantages to the company such as its ability to be personalized to deliver various benefits. For example, when customized, the server delivers a combination of dependability and resiliency, cost predictability, and sustainability. In essence, the Bloom Energy Service is a compact oxide fuel cell energy generation system designed to improve the company’s competitive advantage (Whiston et al., 2019). The energy server was constructed with comprehensive product life cycle sustainability as a prerequisite. As its primary technological innovation, the Blood Energy Servers performs various functions. For example, its goal is to transform fuel into electrical energy under an electrochemical procedure that involves combustion.
Furthermore, another significant process in this conversion involves numerous solid oxide fuel cells that are integrated to create fuel cell stacks, which are positioned into self-contained components. Moving on, the Bloom Energy Platform is created when multiple modules are joined to create a modular Bloom Energy Server platform. At this point, the energy servers generate Nokia’s 400kW of energy in a trajectory nearly comparable to 50% of a standard 30-foot shipping vessel (Chen & Kim, 2020). As such, the solution is effectively combined into the server’s surrounding due to its appealing design, solid physical footprint, decreased noise profile, and zero toxic contaminants.
The Bloom Energy Server provides numerous ways of minimizing carbon emissions. For example, its advanced decarbonization features include various technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, electrolyzer, marine, carbon capture, and biogas. With multiple countries starting to minimize their carbon footprint, hydrogen plays a vital role in achieving decarbonization objectives. Since the hydrogen economy is expanding across various industries, Bloom Energy’s Server has incorporated hydrogen fuel cells to increase the generation and usage of hydrogen (Chou et al., 2019). The Bloom electrolyzer also constitutes the company’s technological innovation that facilitates the generation of clean and affordable hydrogen. In addition, the server also utilizes biogas from dairies, water treatment facilities, and landfills to supplement its long-term goals. The energy company has also entered the marine transport industry to enable the industry increase its move towards a greener future through the development of ships powered by fuel cells. However, it is currently facing various challenges in the marine industry since this sector has over 50,000 commercial ships still powered by carbon-based fuels such as hydrocarbons (Whiston et al., 2019). Finally, Bloom Energy’s carbon capture is incorporated in its fuel cell to perform carbon capturing functions.