You can’t fault a company for using government subsidies, politics, and politicians to their advantage. Corporations are in the business of maximizing shareholder value and whatever they do, within the bounds of the law, is fair play. Oil and gas companies have done it for a century. Now greentech companies are doing it and they are becoming adept at the game.

Bloom Energy (although debatably greentech) is a high-profile fuel cell manufacturer, and the firm is using all of the tools at its disposal — including, in this case, California’s SGIP subsidy –  to advance its business.

The SGIP (Self-Generation Incentive Program) is a subsidy established by California’s PUC to support existing and emerging distributed energy resources — providing one-time, upfront rebates for distributed energy systems installed on the customer’s side of the utility meter.  Qualifying technologies include wind turbines, fuel cells, and associated energy storage systems.