Silicon Valley is the center of the world's technology industry. It is the innovation capital of the world, and it is also where I live. Silicon Valley is not a specific town, it is a general term for the region that developed as a tech center around Stanford University and Palo Alto, California.

So what is Silicon Valley doing about climate change? The goal of Silicon Valley companies is to innovate and disrupt the status quo, and thereby make successful companies and large profits for their investors. In Silicon Valley, a start-up that achieves phenomenal success is called a "unicorn."

That's because unicorns are rare. Everyone wants to invest in a unicorn or be part of the start-up team. Companies like Google and Twitter are unicorns. The idea is that with the new value that the unicorn provides, there is a huge win-win for society as well as for the backers of the company.

So where are the unicorns that address climate change? So far, it seems that Tesla is the only household name, with their electric cars, and there is also the growing solar panel industry, including Google's Project Sunroof. So are there any potential "green" unicorns in the pipeline?

TechCrunch has a curated unicorn leaderboard of private companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more. Private means they have not gone public to trade their stock on the stock exchange, like a Google or a FaceBook. Out of the list of 168 companies, most are consumer internet, like Uber, AirBnB or Pinterest. Only one is in the energy sector, which is very disappointing.

That one company is Bloom Energy. Bloom Energy also made the June 2016 CNBC "disrupters" list. What makes them special? 

The company was founded by its CEO KR Sridhar. Bloom Energy's mission is to change the way the world generates and consumes energy. They offer on-site power generation systems that use "an innovative new fuel cell technology with roots in NASA's Mars program." Their systems are for corporate users, but they also have the ability to power hundreds of consumer homes.

The Bloom Energy Server solution helps fight climate change because it enables corporations to reduce their CO2 emissions "by 50%-100% compared to the U.S. grid" and "virtually eliminate all SOx, NOx, and other harmful smog forming particulate emissions." Thus, Bloom Energy enables some of our biggest energy users, the global corporations, to reduce their carbon footprint. Also, the solution saves these corporations money, so fortunately there is an economic incentive for them to go green.

Companies that have adopted this product include Wal-Mart, AT&T, Google, FedEx, Bank of America, and other big corporate names. Installing Bloom Energy Servers allows them to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint, but not at the cost of their bottom line.

So Bloom Energy could have a huge impact on climate change because it is motivating some of the biggest energy users, global corporations, to go green. For the sake of the planet, let's hope they continue to be very successful. The more that new companies like Bloom Energy can succeed in the "green" sector, the more profit motive there is for other companies to innovate in this area too.