Delaware’s manufacturing industry took a brave step into a clean-energy future Monday when Bloom Energy broke ground on a fuel-cell manufacturing plant in Newark.
Delaware officials assess Bloom Energy's potential impact in Delaware.
Delaware officials assess Bloom Energy's potential impact in Delaware.
[flashvideo src="http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom3-1" file=http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom3.xml width=680 height=680 playlist=bottom playlistsize=280 /]
In a white tent pitched in the midst of 272 empty acres where Chrysler once produced cars, business and government leaders from across the state and across the country gathered for a symbolic groundbreaking for the new factory.
When it’s completed in 2013, the facility will make “Bloom Boxes”, stacks of fuel cells that generate electricity from natural gas or biogas and air, in a process that doesn’t involve the combustion that produces greenhouse gases, and will help customers such as Delmarva Power, Google, and AT&T to meet emissions-reduction targets by consuming electricity that’s produced with the clean technology.
The ceremony was significant for Delaware in marking the rebirth of one of the state’s most important former manufacturing sites; for California-based Bloom Energy which is making its biggest expansion – and its first on the East Coast – at the Newark location, and for the University of Delaware which is using Bloom as the first tenant at its new Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) campus.
[caption id="attachment_26160" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Newark mayor Vance Funk and Gov. Jack Markell greet Bloom CEO K.R. Sridhar at Monday's groundbreaking."]
Bloom CEO K.R. Sridhar said the company had chosen Delaware over other interested East Coast states because of its educated work force, a business-friendly climate, and because of the “integrity and transparency” of Gov. Jack Markell who worked hard to attract the company to Delaware.
Sridhar, a lean figure pacing the stage in an open-necked shirt, said Markell and other state officials had shown a “can-do attitude” during negotiations over the site, and had taken a straight, no-nonsense attitude in talks.
“There were no games,” he told the capacity crowd of about 275 that included both Delaware’s U.S. Senators; Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Secretary Collin O’Mara; Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO) director Alan Levin; First Lady Carla Markell, and members of the state legislature.
The 200,000-square-foot factory will help Bloom fulfill its global mission of providing clean energy amid the search for cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels, Sridhar said.
“The mission was to find a way to provide clean-reliable energy in an affordable way to 9 billion people,” he said, referring to the projected world population by 2015.
Customers discuss Bloom Energy technology
Customers discuss Bloom Energy technology
[flashvideo src="http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom2-1" file=http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom2.xml width=680 height=680 playlist=bottom playlistsize=280 /]
The event introduced new customers including Owens Corning and Washington Gas, adding to an existing client base that include Google, Wal-Mart and Staples. Another existing client, Apple, is adding new orders for a North Carolina data center.
Gary Stockbridge, CEO of Delmarva Power, which has already agreed to buy 30 megawatts of power from Bloom’s servers, said the utility’s use of Bloom’s power will help it reach its target of deriving 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
The Bloom project is being helped by up to $16.5 million in state funding, tied to anticipated job creation. The company is getting $11.25 million on the condition that it creates 900 full-time direct jobs; up to $3.75 million to support 600 full-time indirect jobs, and up to $1.5 million for infrastructure investment.
Governor Markell said the new plant dispels any talk that manufacturing is past its prime in Delaware.
“When the Chrysler plant closed in 2008, people started to wonder whether our best days were behind us,” he said. “We refused to accept that answer.”
When he learned of Bloom’s plans to expand on the East Coast, Markell said he worked hard to make Delaware the favored location.
“They were going to build it somewhere and we were determined that they were going to build it here,” he said.
Its efforts are also getting help from surcharges to Delmarva Power ratepayers over 21 years.
The surcharges have been criticized by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a conservative leaning Dover-based non-profit think-tank, which was alone in opposing the plan when it was approved by the Delaware Public Service Commission in August last year.
David Stevenson, the Institute’s director of energy competitiveness, argued that the surcharge will have a negative economic impact on the state. In an interview with Delaware First Media before the groundbreaking, Stevenson also said Bloom’s contract with Delmarva Power may violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it did not allow other manufacturers to bid on the work.
“There should have been a competitive bidding process,” he said.
[caption id="attachment_26159" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Construction vehicles stand ready to begin work on Bloom Energy's Newark facility on the University of Delaware's STAR campus"]
The Bloom project may represent Delaware’s best hope of becoming a center for green-energy business following the failure of Bluewater Wind to build a wind farm off Rehoboth, and fresh doubts about whether Fisker Automotive will build its long-planned hybrid-electric auto factory in Newport – a project that’s now on hold.
Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, told DFM News that Fisker “is not done yet” despite the current halt to renovations at GM’s old Boxwood Road plant. “We think we are going to get there some way, somehow,” Levin said.
Regarding Bloom, Levin pointed out the estimated 1500 direct and indirect jobs created by Bloom in Newark will exceed the 1100 jobs that remained at the old Chrysler plant when it shut down for good at the end of 2008.
"Within 2 years, we'll have more [people working] on this site than when Chrysler closed. So,it’s a big plus and a huge shot in the arm for this facility getting up and moving," said Levin.
University of Delaware President Patrick Harker said the Bloom plant will prompt a two-way flow of expertise between Bloom Energy and UD, Delaware State University and Delaware Tech.
“They need talent, and we want to be the major source of talent for them,” Harker said. “It’s not just having the jobs, it’s also have the expertise of the faculty.”
Bloom Energy executives outline their Delaware plans
Bloom Energy executives outline their Delaware plans
[flashvideo src="http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom1-1" file=http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bloom1.xml width=680 height=680 playlist=bottom playlistsize=280 /]
Construction of the new plant is scheduled for completion by the end of the first quarter of 2013, and the company plans to start producing fuel cells there later in the year. The output will represent a doubling of the company’s current capacity, said Barry Sharpe, the new plant’s manager.
Sharpe said the factory will emphasize lean manufacturing processes, and is working with two departments of the University of Delaware to develop curriculum and certificate courses centered on those techniques.
U.S. Senator Chris Coons said Bloom’s fuel cells have solved a conundrum that energy cannot be clean, safe and cheap at the same time, and represent an advance on earlier fuel cells that were first developed more than a century ago.
“There’s a catalyst in that humming box that has solved the problem,” Coons said, pointing at the gray Bloom server, about the size of a parking space, outside the marquee.
Coon said he had been distressed to watch demolition machinery tearing the Chrysler plant down after it closed in 2008 but that the Bloom project marks a new beginning for the site.
“It tore at my heart,” Coons said. “Today we see a different sort of crane and a different sort of shovel dig into the earth.”
