General Electric Company and Ecomagination

In the year 1876, Thomas Alva Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he could explore the possibilities of the dynamo and other electrical devices that he had seen in the Exposition. Out of that laboratory was to come perhaps the greatest invention of the age - a successful incandescent electric lamp. By 1890, Edison established the Edison General Electric Company by bringing his various businesses together. In 1892, the Edison General Electric Company merged with one of its long time competitor The Thomson-Houston Company. From then on, the organization is known till today as the General Electric Company.

The world's environmental challenges presented an opportunity for GE to do what GE does best: imagine and build innovative solutions that will benefit its customers and society. Ecomagination to GE is a vision and commitment to harness their global capabilities, technology leadership and market knowledge to take on some of the world's toughest problems as well as to accelerate company growth while doing so. GE believes that through Ecomagination an environmentally driven business strategy can benefit society as well as our bottom line.To realize this initiative, GE has established several commitments:

1. Double their investment in R&D. GE is investing in tomorrow's energy technologies, to allow it to explore continuous improvement of existing products while searching for the next big breakthrough.


2. To increase revenues from its Ecomagination product. GE's ecomagination initiative is founded on a solid business strategy: to increase revenues for GE by providing solutions for customers that help improve their operating performance and environmental impact.


3. To reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. GE has pledged to reduce its emissions and improve the energy efficiency of its operations in three ways. They will reduce absolute emissions 1% by 2012, reduce the intensity of these emissions 30% by 2008, and will improve energy efficiency 30% by the end of 2012.


4. To keep the public informed about its Ecomagination initiative. This is done through websites, Ecomagination reports and to be as transparent as possible in its Ecomagination processes. GE adopts the sustainability reporting practice.

These are few of GE's Ecomagination products: