Adobe, the company behind Flash Player and Adobe Reader, has always been a supporter of renewable energy – remember when they installed a wind farm at their headquarters in San Jose? Well now they’ve taken another huge sustainable step by installing a dozen 100kw Bloom Energy Servers (aka ‘Bloom boxes’) to handle up to one-third of the entire electricity consumption of the their headquarters, which includes three high-rises and a parking structure.

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Randy Knox, Adobe’s senior director for global workplace solutions, said the company was aiming to obtain half of its electricity from renewable sources, which was highlighted when the company installed 20 1.2-kilowatt vertical wind turbines made by Windspire Energy. Due to space restrictions, the Bloom Energy Servers will be installed on the roof of Adobe’s parking garage.

“Installing Bloom Energy fuel cells supports Adobe’s efforts to remain at the forefront of utilizing clean technologies” Knox said, noting that the company would be using methane from a landfill as a feedstock for the fuel cells. As such, the company’s Bloom Boxes will produce zero emissions, however the servers are an expensive investment for Adobe, with each one costing $800,000, meaning the company has invested nearly $10 millon on the technology.

The Bloom Boxgarnered a lot of publicity a few months back when Bloom Energy announced they could create a large fuel cell that uses oxygen and biogas to create electricity. The power is then stored in the thousands of fuel cells that each of these massive energy servers contains. Companies have been buying Bloom Boxes to diversify their energy sources, attracting big names such as Bank of America, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Enterprises, eBay, Google, FedEx Express, Staples and Wal-Mart. However Adobe’s installation of a dozen Bloom Servers will be the nation’s largest thus far.

The success has been quite a feat for a relatively new company which started after raising $400 million from some of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capitalists. The unveiling of the Bloom Servers was met with great fanfare with the event attended by the likes of Colin L. Powell and Governor Schwarzenegger, who are rapidly becoming large supporters of renewable energy.

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Via New York Times

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