How Fuel Cells Can Solve Utilities’ Energy Demand, Affordability, and Decarbonization Challenges

Today's utility leaders are challenged with unprecedented load growth that markets have not seen since the 1980s. In the United States alone, electricity demand is expected to add the equivalent of California's current power consumption to the national total over the next three years. Power providers need to prepare for data center and electrification growth while also managing extreme weather risks and ensuring customer electric rates remain competitive.

Meeting growing energy demand and maintaining reliable, resilient power and decarbonizing generation is a formidable undertaking. It requires innovation, creativity, and flexible technologies capable of addressing immediate power needs while supporting the transition to a decarbonized economy.

Navigating converging demands with fuel cells

Fuel cells can be part of a multi-pronged approach to help utilities navigate these converging demands. Using hydrogen, biomethane or natural gas as a feedstock, fuel cells create electrochemical reactions that convert chemical energy directly into electrical energy. They have numerous benefits for utilities:

• Proven Technology: Fuel cells are tested and proven. Bloom Energy has deployed over 1.5 GW with over $6 billion in project financing with companies like Duke, Southern, Exelon, including the largest commercial procurement of fuel cells in the world to date with AEP for up to 1 gigawatt.
• Scalability: Scalable and modular, fuel cells can be installed at or adjacent to customer facilities or at distribution substations, creating maximum flexibility for utility distribution engineers.
• Clean Energy: Because fuel cells utilize an electrochemical process without combustion, they reduce smog forming local air pollution by more than 99%. Bloom's high efficiency fuel cells reduce CO₂ by nearly 50% compared to the US grid without using or discharging any water.
• Time to Power: Customers are requesting new electric service on compressed time schedules. Bloom's distributed solutions enable utilities to provide clean and reliable power to critical customers in months, not years.
• Avoid Ratepayer Impacts: The use of distributed, customer sited solutions allow the cost of serving large loads to be "ring-fenced" to avoid cost shifts to non-participating ratepayers.

For utilities under pressure to support the digital economy while managing climate risks and ensuring reliable, resilient, and affordable power for their customers, fuel cells are an excellent solution.

Meeting soaring energy demand

Electrification and the emerging AI economy are driving unprecedented energy demand. According to our 2025 Data Center Power Report, data centers alone could account for 8-12% of total U.S. power demand by 2030. Lack of transmission capacity and slow regional transmission organization queues threaten utilities' ability to meet this need.

Because Bloom's Energy Server® fuel cell platforms can be deployed in months, not years, they can provide both permanent and bridge power to alleviate transmission constraints and support growing loads like those from data centers. Incredibly power-dense, fuel cells can maximize land use efficiency with up to 100MW deployed in a single acre. Bloom's solution is cost-competitive compared to other legacy thermal generation solutions making it an economically viable option for providing data center and customer power alike.

Consider our partnership with American Electric Power (AEP) as an example. AEP will use Bloom Energy Servers to provide timely and reliable power to serve the immediate needs to new data centers in their service territory. AEP plans to use the Bloom systems to supply on-time power to large data center loads during the 5-7+ year time frame that will be required to permit and build out its traditional transmission solutions to the area. The net result is that the utility retains the customer, the state avoids economic development from migrating elsewhere, the data centers can power up immediately, and the utility ratepayers are protected from cost increases.

Ensuring resiliency and reliability for customers

As utilities execute long-term grid resiliency projects, climate change-driven extreme weather like wildfires and hurricanes pose an immediate threat. Cost-effective solutions that can quickly address generation needs and ensure communities have reliable and rapid power during crises are a must-have. At the same time, utilities need affordable power that reduces overall operational expenses.

Modular and scalable, Bloom's Energy Server fuel cell platforms offer higher reliability, resiliency, and availability compared to other legacy technologies. This means fewer outages, faster recovery times, and more stable power for customers.

Decarbonizing the generation fleet

Utilities are in the challenging position of addressing climate change without compromising power reliability and resilience to withstand weather events, cybersecurity threats, and other grid outages. Our Energy Server platforms offer inherent reliability and resilience in a microgrid setting. Their modular and fault-tolerant design includes multiple independent power generation modules that can provide uninterrupted services for the most demanding critical infrastructure.

Moreover, Bloom's flexible platform can run on natural gas, biogas, hydrogen or a combination of fuels. The non-combustion process of our Energy Server platforms significantly reduces carbon dioxide and air pollution compared to traditional power generation. Our investments and innovation in heat capture and carbon capture technologies further enhance the value proposition of our core offering by providing multiple decarbonization options for our customers.

Maintaining safe and community-friendly operations

Safety and positive community relations are top priorities for utilities, especially given customer concerns about how the growth in AI data centers will impact utility bills and local communities. Bloom Energy's distributed solution with de minimus criteria pollutants, very low noise, and minimal water use, can help mitigate impacts on local communities without increasing electricity costs for other ratepayers.

Bloom fuel cells represent the cleanest presently feasible way for utilities to generate and deliver ultra-reliable electricity to large and challenging loads like data centers in response to customer time pressure - without creating stranded assets or ratepayer impacts. To learn more about how Bloom Energy can help you provide reliable, resilient, and affordable clean energy, visit our website.