American leadership in artificial intelligence promises massive economic opportunities and transformation across industries: AI systems are poised to drive breakthroughs in drug discovery, enable critical infrastructure, and revolutionize sectors from healthcare to finance.
To drive these shifts, AI needs a massive amount of energy. By 2028, AI data centers are expected to account for 12 percent of nationwide electricity demand. Data centers’ median size will more than double over the next decade, according to our 2025 Data Center Power Report mid-year update. Some will require more than a gigawatt of power – enough for over 800,000 average American homes.
Balancing AI growth with local community well-being
Many Americans are concerned about how AI’s hunger for energy will impact them. Communities around the country are pushing back against the building of new data centers nearby, despite their potential to create jobs and boost local economies.
Chief among communities’ concerns are rising energy costs and how new data centers could drive them up further. Growing pressure on the grid also increases the risk of power outages, and communities are alarmed about data centers’ potential pollution, noise, and water and land use.
Powering the AI economy without local communities bearing the brunt of higher energy bills, power outages, and pollution is a challenge, to be sure. But onsite power like solid-oxide fuel cells can create a “yes, and” to fuel AI’s growth and support communities.
What is onsite power?
Onsite power means physically producing electricity at the location where it’s used. Fuel cells are a type of onsite power that convert natural gas, hydrogen, or biogas into electricity without using combustion.
When data centers use fuel cells, it creates several advantages for both local communities and the growth of AI.
- Lower impact on consumer energy costs. Some facilities use fuel cells to go “off-grid,” meaning they don’t connect to the electricity grid – and therefore their energy costs don’t affect local residents’ utility bills. Others use them as a primary source while maintaining a connection to the grid. Utilities can also work directly with onsite power providers like Bloom to produce energy for data centers in their service areas and “fence off” that coverage, preventing data centers’ costs from being passed on to consumers. Approaches like these can help keep consumer utility bills stable while providing reliable power for data centers to fuel AI.
- Less pollution. Fuel cells produce significantly lower emissions than traditional energy sources because they don’t use combustion. Fuel cell also reduce smog-forming local air pollution by more than 99% compared to traditional energy generation technologies. In addition, fuel cells use just a tiny fraction of the water that legacy combustion generators need.
- Smaller footprint. High power density—producing relatively large amounts of power in a given space—is a major benefit of fuel cells. Gas turbines and reciprocating engines provide up to 50 megawatts of power per acre, while fuel cells can deliver double that – up to 100 megawatts on less than an acre. This small footprint can help ease communities’ concerns about data centers’ visual impacts and the loss of open space.
- Quieter. Excess noise is a significant concern among many communities near data centers. Fuel cells are much quieter than other energy sources, operating at ~70 dBA – about the sound level of a normal conversation.
A win-win for AI and communities
By 2030, nearly 40% of data centers expect to use some onsite power and 27% say it will provide all of their electricity according to Bloom Energy’s Power Report. If this on-site power is powered by fuel cells, this will help data centers deliver on their promised local economic benefits—and AI’s broad transformative potential—without the adverse effects of higher energy costs, power outages, and more pollution and noise in American communities.
To learn more about how fuel cells provide AI data centers with clean, reliable, and affordable energy, download the 2025 Data Center Power Report mid-year update.
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Forward Looking Statements
This content contains certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “should,” “will” and “would” or the negative of these words or similar terms or expressions that concern Bloom’s expectations, strategy, priorities, plans, or intentions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the growth of onsite power generation and the role of power availability and accessibility in data center growth and location choice, and the impact of fuel cells on data center growth and the economic impact on communities, including lower energy cost impact and less pollution and noise. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties detailed in Bloom’s SEC filings. More information on potential risks and uncertainties that may impact Bloom’s business are set forth in Bloom’s periodic reports filed with the SEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the SEC on February 27, 2025, as well as subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC. Bloom assumes no obligation to, and does not intend to, update any such forward-looking statements.
