General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt today announced “ecomagination,” an aggressive  GE initiative to bring to market new clean energy technologies.

Ecomagination is GE’s commitment to address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water. And we plan to make money doing it. Increasingly for business, “green” is green.

Ecomagination is about the future. We will focus our unique energy, technology, manufacturing and infrastructure capabilities to develop tomorrow’s solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger materials, efficient lighting and water purification technology.

We are going to solve tough customer and global problems and make money doing it.

    Under the program, GE will:

• Double investment in clean technology R&D to $1.5 billion annually by 2010, up from $700 million in 2004.

• Introduce more ecomagination products each year. GE plans to double its revenues from products and services that provide significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers from $10 billion in 2004 to at least $20 billion in 2010 with more aggressive targets thereafter.

  These products include renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, technologies and materials that make energy production and consumption more efficient, cleaner and more efficient transportation technologies, and products and services that conserve or purify water.

• Reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve its energy efficiency. In addition to helping customers meet their environmental goals, GE has committed to reduce its GHG emissions 1%  by 2012 and the intensity of its GHG emissions 30% by 2008 (both compared to 2004). Based on the company’s projected growth, GE's GHG emissions would have risen 40% by 2012 without further action.

• Keep the public informed. GE pledges to publicly report its progress in meeting these goals.

GE is already one of the world’s largest producers of wind turbines and is heavily involved in solar power.

GE has initially identified 17 products that meet its ecomagination criteria in areas such as electrical production, transportation, consumer and industrial, and infrastructure.

Its current transportation ecomagination-class products are large scale: railroads and aircraft.

• Transportation Rail

  • Evolution Series

  • Hybrid locomotive

• Transportation Aircraft

  • GEnx aircraft engine

  • GE90-115B aircraft engine

  • LM2500+ marine engine

GE also has one of the leading research projects on advancing hydrogen as a transportation fuel. GE’s research focuses on the production, distribution, storage and use of hydrogen.

Resources:

• The GE ecomagination website

• Webcast archive of Immelt speech

• Worldchanging Perspective: Inside GE’s Power Play