Bloom Energy Half-Way To Turning A Profit

Bloom Energy, a hydrogen fuel cell company, has just reported that it is half-way towards profitability, with new orders and installations doubling every six months. Unlike so many green energy companies, Bloom Energy may soon actually make money. Could this be the beginning of an energy revolution?

The Bloom Cash Boom

A lot of ink has been spilled regarding Bloom Energy, especially after it was featured on 60 Minutes about two years ago. Since then though, I haven’t heard a whole lot about the company except that it has raised an impressive amount of capital, which isn’t unheard of for a clean energy company.

What sets Bloom apart is that their fuel cells use natural gas or biogas to create an independent source of power from the grid. Data centers are a big part of Bloom’s business, lowering both carbon footprints and energy costs thanks to the efficient operating nature of the fuel cell and extremely low natural gas prices.

Energy Independence At A Reasonable Cost

Being independent of an increasingly old and unreliable power grid is also important for data centers that house thousands of servers for Internet companies like eBay. Thanks to this expansion of business, Bloom Energy is doubling its revenue every six months, meaning that the ten-year old company could break even in just a few more years.

That would make Bloom Energy one of the only green energy companies in the past decade to turn a profit. Even the foremost electric car maker in the world, Tesla Motors, has yet to turn a profit on its huge investment.

Bloom has reached a point where the scales of economy are starting to kick in; the bigger a company gets, the more it can reduce costs. And if Bloom could scale down the size of its fuel cells, we could see an automotive revolution as well. That said, there is still no word on a Bloom Energy IPO, something a lot of people seem very interested in. Once that happens, who knows what might happen Imagine using America’s vast quantities of natural gas to power hydrogen fuel cell cars?

That seems like a solution where everybody wins, a rare factor in today’s hyper-polarized world.

Source: GigaOm

Print PDF