Bloom Energy Scores Environmental Legal Victory in Santa Clara, California
January 17 2020 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
Bloom Energy today announced the result of a defining legal
victory before the Superior Court of California, which overturned a
resolution by the City of Santa Clara that would ban future
installations of Bloom Energy’s fuel cells. The court found that
Santa Clara violated the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA), which requires that an impact study be conducted so the
public is aware of any issues to the environment or health of its
citizens prior to implementing such a resolution. By failing to do
this, the City of Santa Clara not only broke the law, but attempted
to implement policy that could do more harm to the environment.
Bloom Energy produced evidence in the litigation that a ban of
this nature would likely result in increased greenhouse gases, air
pollutants, and reliance on dirty diesel generators – specifically,
that Santa Clara’s aging combustion-based power plants are not as
clean as Bloom’s distributed, always-on, non-combustion process of
generating clean electricity. The court reaffirmed Bloom’s position
in its ruling that fuel cell deployment decreases the City’s
dependence on combustion-based power plants, and therefore very
likely could reduce harmful emissions and improve air quality.
“Environmental policy should actually work to reduce harmful
environmental impacts, serve the public good, and be carefully
crafted in consultation with experts. But in this case, officials
in the City of Santa Clara made the inaccurate claim that their
policy was good for the environment and would contribute to reduced
emissions – ignoring the views of environmental experts on the
policy’s potential environmental harm and the needs of the
community for clean, resilient power sources,” said Josh Richman,
Bloom’s vice president of business development and policy. “This
case should serve as a cautionary tale to policymakers who would
seek to use the false pretense of sustainability to garner support
for interests that have nothing to do with addressing the causes or
consequences of climate change.”
Court documents revealed emails from city officials that shed
light on the real motivations behind the City’s ban on Bloom’s
technology – to stop Bloom Energy Servers from impacting its own
revenue forecast of sales of electricity from its municipal
utility.
Bloom Energy Servers are among the most effective ways to
displace less efficient centralized power plants with more
efficient distributed generation, reducing carbon emissions and
other air pollutants. By using Bloom’s technology, companies and
communities can improve air quality, decrease water consumption,
decrease reliance on diesel generators, and reduce noise in
residential areas. Moreover, Bloom’s AlwaysON Microgrid technology
provides power 24/7, keeping schools open, hospitals running, data
centers online, manufacturers operating, and grocery stores serving
neighbors.
“CEQA was enacted to advance the state’s environmental
leadership,” continued Richman. “In this case, facts were at best
misunderstood by policymakers -- and at worst, intentionally
ignored to hide the true goal of the policy -- all to the detriment
of the environment and to the citizens and businesses in the City
of Santa Clara.”
This ruling is a seminal moment as privately-owned utilities and
publicly-owned utilities grapple with the twin challenges of our
time: addressing the challenge of climate change through energy
technologies that reduce harmful emissions and the need to increase
the resiliency of our electric power supply with more resilient
power that can address the challenge of the irreversible climate
change that has already occurred. Bloom’s Energy Server addresses
both issues. Thanks to its distributed, always-on, non-combustion
process of generating clean electricity, Bloom is engaged on both
fronts, working every day to reduce emissions, provide resiliency,
and promote sustainable communities.
With the resolution now set aside, customers can purchase Bloom
Energy Servers and retain power during grid outages.
About Bloom Energy
Bloom Energy’s mission is to make clean, reliable, and
affordable energy for everyone in the world. The Company’s product,
the Bloom Energy Server, delivers highly reliable and resilient,
always-on electric power that is clean and sustainable. Bloom’s
customers include twenty-five of the Fortune 100 companies and
leaders in cloud services and data centers, healthcare, retail,
financial services, utilities and many other industries. For more
information, visit www.bloomenergy.com
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200117005096/en/
Natalia Blank Communications Bloom Energy T: 408.543.1566
Natalia.Blank@bloomenergy.com
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