What's Blooming in that Box?

This week, the Silicon Valley inventors at Bloom Box unveiled their namesake product, touting it as the answer to America's long-term electricity needs. Report on 60 Minutes here. The Bloom Box is a fuel cell which, unlike those currently on the market, doesn't require hydrogen as as a fuel and instead can directly utilize hydrocarbon gases such as natural gas (NG) to produce electricity.

I certainly anticipate its commercial success, despite the many technical and business challenges it still faces.

We need answers to many questions. For instance, how much electricity can the Bloom Box generate per therm of natural gas, compared the performance of NG-fired turbines that most large utility companies currently operate? Also, how do they propose to dramatically increase the scale of their product manufacturing, distribution and support? For most startup companies, this stage in their business development is fraught with risks.

I wish that Bloom Box's boosters would not state the benefits of their product in comparison with solar energy. Solar is not their main nemesis, although they continue to compete with solar businesses for what little public and private development funding that is available.

Of much greater consequence are the multinational energy firms, which stand to either buy them out or undermine them with competing technologies. Petroleum, nuclear and coal companies love to see renewable energy startups bickering amongst themselves. This also poses a threat to most power utilities, which resist those technologies (like solar PV and fuel cells) that enable the distributed generation of electricity.

As for Bloom Box's claims of revolutionizing the world's electricity supply, they still have to provide a convincing answer about how their boxes would be fueled. Our long-term supply of cheap natural gas is a risk. Fact is, no one has a good idea how much is left in the ground.

Relatively speaking, the sun ain't gonna run out on us. I think that solar energy combined with advanced battery technology has at least as good a likelihood of supplying us safe and secure electricity enmasse as this does.

Actually, we need both, and many more good ideas to secure our energy future. For now, we should step up our investments in renewable energies (and power storage) and gradually reduce the subsidies we give to dirty energy technologies.

The future is one of renewable and distributed power generation!