GE Ecomagination
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Ecomagination is General Electric's growth strategy to design and build products that benefit customers and society in an ecologically friendly way. It is based on four commitments:
- The company has pledged to spend US$1.5 billion a year on research in cleaner technologies by 2010, doubling the $700 million it spent in 2005. The new technologies include wind power generation, diesel-electric hybrid locomotives, more-efficient aircraft engines and appliances, and advanced water treatment systems. Other products in this category include less ground-breaking products such as "EarthReward" credit cards returning a small amount of profits to environmental charities, "cleaner coal" technologies, and wire coating with "fewer heavy-metal pigments". (see full list on GE's page). Although a doubling of R&D budgets in clean technologies sound impressive, this increase is consistent with a straight line prediction of global R&D budgets growth (GE total R&D grew from 2.6 billion in 2002 to 3.5 billion in 2005(GE R&D site))
- GE plans increased revenues from ecomagination products - to at least $20 billion in 2010, with higher targets thereafter.
- The company will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve the energy efficiency of its operations - including reducing the intensity of its GHG emissions 30% by 2008, and improving energy efficiency 30% by the end of 2012 (all compared to 2004). This will amount to a absolute total decrease of 1% from 2005 emissions.
- GE will publicly report its progress in meeting these goals.
