Setting a New Natural Gas Standard: Solving for Today, Looking to Tomorrow

As a company, our efforts to power a better tomorrow begin with solving the most pressing challenges today. Recently we announced plans to convert our global fleet of natural gas-based fuel cell projects to certified low-leak gas. This is a first for our industry, and we’re proud to be taking this significant first step to help transform the natural gas supply chain.

Natural gas plays a large role in meeting today’s energy demands –currently representing about a third of total U.S. energy consumption. It is also the primary current fuel source of our fleet of 700 non-combustion fuel cell projects around the world. As we develop low-cost and widely available energy solutions for a renewable, zero-carbon future, we must take the steps necessary to curb the impact of the energy we use today. We recognize that methane leakage from the natural gas supply chain is a critically important climate issue that can – and must – be mitigated.

Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide within the first 20 years. The oil and gas industry contributes more than 84 million tons of methane to global emissions every year. 75 percent of methane emissions from oil and gas production can be technically eliminated – today – with little to no net cost.

Setting the standard with certified low-leak natural gas

With our recent announcement, Bloom Energy is taking a step toward reducing methane emissions and supporting the production of certified gas both domestically and internationally. This will be made possible by building on the work of two groundbreaking non-profit organizations: MiQ (a partnership between RMI and Systemiq) and Equitable Origin.

Each organization has created robust, innovative standards to ensure that production of today’s energy remains transparent, equitable and sustainable. Together, they will begin jointly certifying natural gas production. Starting in 2022, we plan to source certificates approved under both the MiQ Standard and the Equitable Origin EO100™ Standard for Responsible Energy Development, matching our customer’s gas consumption across our entire global fleet.

With these certificates, all-natural gas used by Bloom Energy Servers will meet a broad range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria:

• Producers certifying under the MiQ Standard will be evaluated and graded for methane intensity, inspection requirements and associated company practices on an A-F scale.
• The Equitable Origin certification provides for the potential of three tiers of performance targets across five principles:
  • Corporate Governance, Transparency & Business Ethics
  • Human Rights, Social Impacts & Community Development
  • Indigenous People’s Rights
  • Fair Labor & Working Conditions
  • Climate Change, Biodiversity & Environment

Importantly, there is an opportunity, through our demand for increasingly higher levels of certification, to incentivize natural gas producers to continue to evolve their practices and further reduce social and environmental impacts over time.

We plan to work with our customers, including some initial pilot participants, to further develop transactional, registry and reporting dynamics that will ensure scalability of our program and the market generally. By educating our customers on the availability of such an important climate solution, we hope to amplify the impact of our participation across the operations of hundreds of leading organizations in the Bloom Energy customer portfolio.

Delivering on our commitment to a better tomorrow

Our decision to provide certified low-leak natural gas is just one step in our journey to provide cleaner fuels and reliable energy for all. The recent commercial launch of the Bloom Electrolyzer is one example of our ongoing commercial innovation, designed to help lower the costs and increase availability of green hydrogen, in support of a renewable future.

We also recently announced a collaboration with Heliogen that combines their technology with our electrolyzer, soon delivering green hydrogen using only concentrated solar and water. We’re well on our way to making hydrogen a low-cost, widely available energy solution. Along the way we invite leaders across industries to join us in solving today’s most urgent climate challenges.

To learn more about how your organization can advance natural gas supply chain responsibility, visit  https://www.bloomenergy.com/applications/certified-gas/.