"Bloom has been able to milk Delaware taxpayers and ratepayers for massive subsidies," says one critic of Bloom Energy, which occupies this building in Newark, Delaware. (Photo: Kris Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Delaware residents are the victims of deceptive business practices associated with a green energy scheme resulting from elected officials’ sweetheart deal with a fuel cell company, policy analysts and academics argue.
Bloom Energy had pledged to create 900 full-time jobs in Delaware by Sept. 30, 2016, and to continue employing these workers for at least seven years.But a
filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from Bloom Energy’s initial public offering in June shows that as of March, it had only 277 full-time employees.
“Bloom has been able to milk Delaware taxpayers and ratepayers for massive subsidies, gain preferential treatment on multiple fronts, and avoid rules that are rigorously applied to other industries,” energy researcher Paul Driessen said during an event Friday at The Heritage Foundation’s headquarters on Capitol Hill.The Delaware General Assembly extended financial inducements to Bloom Energy through legislation in 2012, a major topic during the panel discussion at Heritage, as was what Driessen and other speakers called preferential treatment from state regulators and other government officials.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company manufactures solid oxide fuel cells that use an electrochemical reaction to transform natural gas into electricity.Bloom Energy traces its roots to 2002, when a Silicon Valley venture firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, invested in the green energy company. (That firm is now known as Kleiner Perkins.)
In April 2012, Bloom Energy opened a
manufacturing facility in Newark, Delaware, on a site owned by the University of Delaware that previously was occupied by a Chrysler assembly plant.David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, told the Heritage audience that Bloom Energy isn’t a genuine green energy company because its fuel cells use fossil fuels and release more carbon dioxide than traditional natural gas plants.
Bloom Energy’s fuel cells also run on methane gas, which produces hazardous waste, he said.Even so, the company qualifies for renewable energy credits under Delaware’s
Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards Act, which calls on utilities to draw 25 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025. The company also is exempt from the state’s hazardous waste rules.
“Bloom Energy asserts that nothing on either side of the chemical equation is hazardous material, which technically is true,” Legates said.
“However, no clean commercial source of methane exists. Thus, it contains many hazardous products that must be removed from the methane before it can be added to the fuel cell to avoid contamination … These compounds must be removed in sulfur canisters.”