GE extends environmental leadership

MANILA, Philippines - GE recently announced that it has surpassed its first Ecomagination goal to reduce its own greenhouse gas intensity, and is making progress against its other goals for revenue growth, water and technology innovation.

In 2005 GE made a series of Ecomagination commitments to be achieved sequentially in the years 2008, 2010 and 2012. The first commitment was to reduce its operational greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity 30 percent in 2008. The company surpassed this goal by reducing GHG intensity 41 percent. Greenhouse gas intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to company revenue. GE also has reduced its absolute GHG emissions 13 percent and improved its energy efficiency 37 percent since 2005, keeping on track to meet its 2012 operational commitments in these areas.

With the release of the 2008 Ecomagination annual report, GE also announced that it increased its portfolio of Ecomagination products and services by one-third, to 80; grew revenues of Ecomagination offerings 21 percent, to $17 billion; and increased its investment in the research and development of clean tech solutions 27 percent, to $1.4 billion.

“Leading by example is the essence of Ecomagination,” said Steve Fludder, vice president and leader of Ecomagination at GE. “When we made a series of bold commitments at the outset, we felt a commitment to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions was the best way to demonstrate that leadership. If we are proposing that customers around the world use GE solutions to reduce their emissions, then we should do the same. We set our first Ecomagination goal to achieve at least a 30-percent reduction in our own GHG intensity for 2008 in order to show our progress, before our 2010 target on revenues from Ecomagination sales to our customers.”

GE surpassed its first Ecomagination commitment by transforming its own operations while using its own products, and saving money at the same time. GE is seeing strong interest and similar impact with its customers across all industries to deploy Ecomagination products and services.

GE was able to achieve its first GHG-related commitment by migrating to less GHG-intensive fuels, utilization of GE’s own Ecomagination technology such as solar panels, advanced lighting products and Jenbacher engines, improving the energy efficiency of its production operations, and integrating GHG as a facility management objective.

“We said we would reduce our own greenhouse gas footprint, and we did,” said Fludder.

“Ecomagination is all about leadership and innovation. These Ecomagination solutions work for us, and they work for our customers. We use our own innovative technology and our lean six sigma process excellence to improve our energy efficiency, reduce waste and save money at the same time. This is leadership, when we ourselves embrace the same GE solutions, which we propose our customers employ to reduce their environmental footprint and operating cost. It’s a win-win.”