Verizon installs fuel cell systems at 3 California facilities

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) is continuing its "going green" environmental journey by installing Bloom Energy fuel cell systems at three facilities in California.

Bloom Energy fuel cell

Bloom Energy CEO & co-founder KR Sridhar with one of its fuel cells.

The fuel cells, which the telco expects to generate over 16 million kilowatt hours of clean electricity in the state each year, have been installed at two call-switching centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco and a data center in San Jose.

Its installation in these three locations is part of the telco's broader $100 million plan that it announced in April to use alternative power sources in power 19 of the company's facilities in California and six other U.S. states, including Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina.   

Upon completion, Verizon claims that the project will enable it to generate over 90 million kilowatt hours of "its own green energy annually" and "eliminate more than 15,000 metric tons of CO2 annually."

Overall, Verizon hopes that its alternative distributed-generation strategy will help it achieve its goal of cutting its worldwide carbon intensity--a measure of the carbon emissions the company produces for each terabyte of data flowing through its networks--by 50 percent by 2020.

For more:
- see the release

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