Thanks GE | Green Energy News

May 8, 2005 – Vol.10 No.7

THANKS, GE.

It’s welcome, but not a big surprise that General Electric announced (with great fanfare) that they would double research spending on energy and environmental technologies and work to cut greenhouse gases internally.

GE has been fully aware of green technologies for years.

The company is a major player in hydroelectric equipment - turbines and generators.

Company lawyers ran to bankruptcy court to scoop up Enron Wind from scandalous Enron.

With running shoes still on, a similar dash was made back to bankruptcy court to buy up AstroPower.

So what’s the big deal? The deal is that GE’s environmental initiative made headlines. Now more may follow.

And what exactly will they do?

In the Ecomagination initiative the company will increase its investment in research into green technologies to $1.5 billion per year by 2010, up from $700 million in 2004. That is, the company will gradually raise their investment in green research reaching the magic $1.5 billion by 2010.

That part is easy.

But the company has also pledged to cut its internal greenhouse gas emissions by one percent by 2012 compared with a baseline year of 2004. Without doing anything GE’s emissions were expected to grow by 40 percent. Now to reduce emissions by one percent the company will, in effect, attempt to keep greenhouse gases at current levels while growing the business.

That’s the hard part. (But by comparison Xerox has announced it would attempt to cut greenhouse gases 10-percent below 2002 levels by 2012.)

GE will also launch new Ecomagination products each year.

Look for a diesel/electric hybrid locomotive. (The company already makes diesel/electric locomotives but they don’t have a large battery pack for energy storage.

Look for more solar and wind energy products, water purification equipment, more work on fuel cells (probably for the home) and new products in energy-efficient lighting.

But what’s the best part about the Ecomagination plan? They plan on doubling revenues from these products from $10 billion in 2004 to at least $20 billion by 2010. That means their marketing and sales departments will be in full swing.

GE’s power in marketing should make people and industry more and more aware of green technologies. The Ecomagination effort will help even rival companies. This is good. Visit GE at http://www.ge.com/