Partner Profile

General Electric Company
Location	Fairfield, CT
Goal	General Electric pledges to reduce total global GHG emissions by one percent from 2004 to 2012.
Environmental Web Site
Company Description The General Electric Company (GE) is an integrated global company organized into six businesses: • GE Infrastructure provides aviation, energy, oil and gas, transportation and water and process technologies and servicing. These include gas turbines, wind turbines, solar panels, and other lower GHG emitting technologies. • GE Industrial provides consumer and industrial products including appliances, lighting, electrical distribution and control, factory automation, sensing and security systems. These include many Energy Star qualified appliances and lighting products. • GE Healthcare provides medical imaging and monitoring technologies with associated pharmaceuticals and medical information systems. • NBC Universal provides a portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group and world-renowned theme parks. • GE Commercial Finance provides services and products, such as loans, operating leases, financing programs and equipment leasing aimed at enabling businesses worldwide to grow. This includes investments in renewable energy projects and GHG emission reduction credits. • GE Money provides banking and credit services to consumers, retailers, auto dealers and mortgage lenders in approximately 50 countries.
Reasons for Joining Climate Leaders GE membership in Climate Leaders is consistent with ecomaginationsm, a GE commitment to aggressively bring to market new technologies to help customers meet environmental challenges. The program is grounded in GE’s belief that “green is green,” that by offering advanced technology to improve efficiency and reduce pollution in cost-effective ways, we can help solve the world’s toughest problems and make money doing so. It is an extension of our broader growth strategy and grounded in one of our deepest beliefs, that when our customers win, GE wins. We see our participation in the Climate Leaders initiative as an opportunity to underscore GE’s commitment to improving the environment through our products and processes.
GHG Reductions Before Joining Climate Leaders GE first conducted a GHG Inventory in 2002 to develop an understanding of our GHG emission characteristics and to start measuring our emissions trends. A GHG inventory has been conducted every year since then. Our first major GHG reduction project was a fuel conversion at GE’s large locomotive manufacturing facility in Erie, PA from coal to natural gas. This project was conducted for a variety of reasons including the need to replace aging equipment, pending air pollution standards, economics and GHG emissions. This project demonstrated that we could reduce our emissions and that membership in a program such Climate Leaders was possible. GE launched its ecomaginationsm program in March 2005, which established our GHG reduction goal and 1-30-30 programs that form the basis of our current Climate Leaders membership. Other initiatives are listed in the following paragraphs. GE and other companies are sponsoring Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project, an unprecedented, multi-million dollar collaborative research project to identify and develop alternative and next-generation energy technologies. The research results will be shared globally with scientists, governments and other private institutions in order to accelerate the development of these technologies. Energy sources that will be researched involve a wide array of technologies including advanced transportation systems, the production, distribution and use of hydrogen and biomass fuels, geoengineering, combustion, power storage, and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The Carbon Disclosure Project is a collaboration of institutional investors representing more than $10 trillion in assets. The Project has sent surveys since 2002 to the 500 largest global companies by market capitalization and released reports summarizing corporate responses to climate change issues. GE has responded to surveys every year. GE is a participant in the Business Roundtable (BRT) Climate Resolve GHG intensity reduction initiative in the United States under which the company has established an emission reduction goal to be achieved by 2012. GE has also joined the ENERGY STAR® Million Monitor Drive, an EPA program for better computer monitor power management. GE has pledged to enable the power management features on approximately 100,000 computer monitors across our U.S. based businesses which we estimate will save 27,000 tons of GHG emissions a year. Both of the GE Consumer & Industrial Appliances and Lighting divisions have won the prestigious DOE/EPA ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award for outstanding contributions to environmental protection and energy efficiency in the manufacture of high-efficiency household appliances and lighting products.
Approach to GHG Management GE announced its own internal emissions reduction and energy efficiency commitments in connection with the launch of the ecomaginationsm campaign in March 2005, pledging for its operations to 1) reduce its GHG emissions by 1% from a baseline of 2004 through 2012; 2) reduce the intensity of its GHG emissions by 30% by 2008 on an emissions per dollar of revenue basis; and 3) improve its energy efficiency by 30% by 2012 on an MMBtu per dollar of revenue basis. GE’s plan to achieve this is called 1-30-30. For more information on ecomagination, go to http://ge.ecomagination.com. Each one of GE’s businesses with significant GHG emissions has developed a 1-30-30 strategic plan to meet GE’s goals of reducing the Company’s GHG emissions. The Company has also developed a specialized database for tracking projects and sharing Best Practices. To date, GE has identified opportunities for more than 700,000 metric tons (MT) of CO2 reductions and has executed on projects with more than 200,000 MT of reductions. Some of these examples include: Re-lamping GE facilities In our 2005 ecomagination report, GE committed to re-lamping manufacturing facilities within our Industrial businesses to demonstrate our commitment to using our own energy-efficient technology. So began a two-year plan to retrofit lighting at 84 of GE’s industrial manufacturing plants and warehouses worldwide. We have re-lamped 62 of 84 manufacturing plants within our Industrial division with new energy-efficient GE T8 and T5 fluorescent lamps, driving 62,000 MT of GHG reductions annually and avoiding 82.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity use. These sites have also generated an estimated total annual savings of $5.3 million. This energy use reduction is roughly the equivalent to removing nearly 12,000 cars off the road. Energy Treasure Hunts GE has made widespread use of the “treasure hunt” process developed by Toyota to identify energy savings and GHG reductions at 215 GE global locations. More than 3,600 projects identified 700,000 MT of GHG opportunities. Of this potential, nearly 300,000 MT of CO2 reductions have been realized or have been funded for implementation. Most important, this process has engaged more than 2,700 of GE’s employees and identified numerous projects that will impact GE’s global GHG footprint. Solar Panel Installations GE has also committed to completing several very visible projects using our own technology. In May 2007, GE’s headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut, began using GE’s own solar panels to generate electricity. In addition to leveraging against energy cost increase, this process demonstrates that renewable technology is a great hedge in the energy market. Four additional sites began installing solar panels in 2007. GE has targeted additional sites for future installations — an exciting demonstration of using our own technology. Using GE Research & Technology Capabilities GE has been leveraging the experience of our Global Research Centers to work with our businesses on reduction projects, including the elimination of 20,000 CO2 equivalent tons of SF6 (a potent greenhouse gas) at one of our facilities. eCO2 Site Certification Program GE believes in rewarding hard work. A key part of rewarding the numerous sites and facilities that have embraced ecomagination and 1-30-30, is our reward and recognition program. GE recognized 46 facilities globally for beating the 1% reduction requirement and demonstrating a 5% reduction in GHG emissions from 2004 to 2006. In addition, we also recognized 10 teams that were the “best-of-the-best” in developing the most effective, innovative and creative solutions to meeting our 1-30-30 goals. These best-in-class teams were awarded a grant for use in spreading the ecomagination message beyond GE’s walls, and into the broader community.
Progress Towards Goal Completion As GE goes forward with its implementation strategy, we will continue to undertake projects like the fuel conversion at the Erie, PA facility that began even before we launched ecomaginationsm. We will continue to achieve reductions from our participation in EPA’s Million Monitor Drive, and we will also continue to do the little things that have improved energy efficiency and have reduced GHG emissions by managing energy demand, including eliminating the use of unnecessary electricity and switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent lighting, among other projects. At the end of 2006, GE had reduced its GHG emissions from global operations by approximately 4% from its 2004 baseline.

Partner Profile

Local Navigation