General Electric

GE’s Mark Vachon: “Gas is massive”

July 12, 2011

Mark Vachon

How’s GE’s ecomagination  going?

I put that question today to Mark Vachon, who is vice president for ecomagination at GE. He replied by talking about natural gas.

“The large macro trend of gas is massive,” he said. “Our oil and gas business will be a huge beneficiary.”

An abundance of shale gas in the U.S., and methane gas reserves in Australia present a wealth of opportunities for GE, which plays all along the supply chain for natural gas.

“We’re a massive player in gas exploration,” Mark said. “We have a water business that can deal with issues in the fracking process.” And, of course, GE sells lots of gas-burning turbines, including a new combined cycle power plant, currently available in Europe, that enables gas to be burned more efficiently and in concert with renewable energy. (See my June blogpost, GE’s big bet on natural gas)

But can you put “ecomagination and shale gas in the same sentence? Yes,” Mark said. GE will focus on making shale gas cleaner, “with technologies like zero-leak valves” and water filtration products like a mobile evaporator that is basically a truck (see below) “designed to enable on-site frac water recycling, reducing the volume of wastewater and fresh water that needs to be hauled to and from the project site.” [click to continue…]

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Golly GE: a smart way to spur innovation

October 4, 2010

Take the creativity of countless startups, the heft of a big corporation, $200 million in prize money, savvy venture capitalists, the power of digital media and the wisdom of crowds.

Put them together and you have the ingredients of GE’s Ecomagination Challenge, a promising way to speed innovation towards a smart grid, clean energy and eco-friendly homes, buildings and cars.

Promising…because we won’t see results for a while.

Unveiled with fanfare by GE chief Jeff Immelt in Silicon Valley in July, the Ecomagination Challenge has generated more than 3,000 entries and 60,000 comments and votes. This week, GE will announce the top vote-getters and next month it will announce the winners, which are selected by a panel of expert judges.

GE and its four venture capital partners–Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital Partners–have said they will invest $200 million into the most promising startups and ideas. Grants could range from $100,000, to further research a new idea, up to significant equity investments in existing startups, which would also get marketing and manufacturing support from GE. GE already has significant investments in clean tech companies like A123 Systems, which makes batteries, and Southwest Windpower, which makes small-scale wind turbines. This is an effort to find more.

How’s it going? Some of the ideas seem, to put in kindly, long shots. An electric generator powered by garlic? (See it on video here.) Rotating houses? A “Wind Turbine Electricity Generation Without the Wind.” What’s next: solar panels that don’t need sunshine?

Amidst the thousands of entries, several caught my attention, and the attention of voters:

Julie and Scott Brusaw

One is Solar Roadways, the  brainchild of a mom-and-pop couple in Idaho. Scott Brusaw is an electrical engineer, a former sergeant in the Marine Corps and a former Boy Scout scoutmaster, and his wife Julie Brusaw is a marriage and family counselor. They want to make roads out of solar panels, protected by a material similar to that used in the “black boxes” in airplanes. LEDs could be added to light up roads at night, and heating elements could be installed to melt snow, all powered by the sun. They’re even talking about putting sensors in the roads to warn drivers if animals are crossing. The Brusaws got a contract from the Federal Highway Administration to build a prototype in 2009, and he was invited to give an entertaining TEDx talk last spring in Sacramento.

Interesting, too, is Welectricity, which is described as “a social network that promotes household energy efficiency through behavioral nudges.” Think Facebook meets your utility bill. Electricity users could set up profiles, and their bills would be graphed and compared to one another. (You could send a boastful tweet when your bill is lower than your neighbors!) The idea comes from Herbert Samuel, an energy consultant from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

I was also struck by an entry called From Net Zero to Waste Zero which uses a combination of solar PV, wind and geothermal energy to design a low-cost house that lives off renewable power. (That’s an image of the house, above.) The idea comes from Sam Qin, a Canadian entrepreneur who coordinated the design of a zero net-energy house for the Canadian government during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Whether any of this is truly new–and, more important, scalable–is very much an open question. If we lived in a perfectly efficient economy, where any entrepreneurs could get a hearing at venture capital firms, and the best ideas would get funded, we wouldn’t need a competition like this. But we don’t, and that’s why new models for innovation–like the automotive X-Prize--are worth trying. If nothing else, GE’s challenge has spurred a lot of online conversation and positive buzz for GE.

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GE: Good citizen, but where’s the payoff?

July 29, 2010

“Responsible business,” says Bob Corcoran, “is good business.”

And what’s responsible business? “Make money, make it ethically and make a difference.”

Bob Corcoran

Bob is vice president for corporate citizenship at GE, a 30-year company veteran, and a good guy. We met in 2o04 when we traveled together in Ghana while I was reporting a story on GE’s values for FORTUNE. (See Money and Morals at GE.)  Recently we spoke about GE’s 2009 citizenship report, and about what GE has learned in the past five years from its corporate citizenship efforts, including its high-profile campaign around Ecomagination, which focuses the company, and its marketing, on products and services that help solve the world’s big environment problems.

Inside GE, Ecomagination is deemed a success, so much so that it has spawned a sister initiative (if you can spawn a sister) called Healthymagination, focused on profitably creating better health for more people. GE says that it expects Ecomagination product revenues to grow at twice the rate of GE’s overall revenue between now and 2015.

The logic behind both initiatives is simple, Bob noted. Big global problems demand big solutions from big companies. GE prides itself on “tackling the world’s most complex and pressing problems,” as chief executive Jeff Immelt writes in the report.

The trouble is, the payoff for GE’s shareholders have been disappointing. I didn’t realize just how disappointing until I put together this chart comparing GE’s stock-price performance to the S&P500 and to a couple of its conglomerate competitors, Siemens and United Technologies. [click to continue…]

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GE and Washington: Too cozy?

January 31, 2010

Since 2004, when I wrote a story for FORTUNE called Money and Morals at GE , I have been an admirer of General Electric and its CEO, Jeff Immelt. My admiration deepened when GE unveiled EcoMagination, its effort to solve important environmental problems. Immelt and GE also led the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of big business and big NGOs committed to getting the government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Jeffrey Immelt

Jeffrey Immelt

But–and you knew there’d be a but, didn’t you?–I’ve got a couple of questions about GE and Immelt that have been nagging at me. First, has GE become overly focused on Washington? Second, when will Immelt deliver for GE shareholders?

The first question was prompted by an aside in John Harwood’s column in The Times a week ago, about the Obama administration’s all-out effort to get Ben Bernanke confirmed as Fed chief. He wrote:

The investor Warren Buffett and Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman of General Electric, helped contact senators, a senior official said.

There’s nothing wrong with this, of course; Immelt has the right to ask senators to support Bernanke. But it reminded me that this registered Republican and his company have closely aligned their interests with the administration. Immelt serves on the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Newly-released figures show that among big companies or unions, GE was second only to Exxon Mobil in lobbying expenses during 2009, spending $21.4 million. (Other sources put the figure higher.) This isn’t a surprise–GE is a huge company (2009 revenues were $156 billion) and it has a myriad of Washington interests, including taxes, trade, energy policy and financial regulation.

But there’s more. GE’s Washington operation is a case study in Washington’s revolving door. Nancy Dorn, who runs the office, [click to continue…]

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GE’s Immelt: I thought wind was a “hula hoop”

November 13, 2009

ge-logoGE’s chief executive, Jeff Immelt, opened the Net Impact 2009 conference this morning at Cornell University and, as usual, he was thoughtful and provocative. He was bullish on GE, of course, but, after this tough year for the U.S. economy, he sounded more pessimistic than usual  about where the country and its economy are going.

The American consumer, the financial services industry and the construction industry were the major drivers of America’s long boom, going back to the 1980s. None is likely to drive  economic growth in the future, Immelt said.

Instead, he noted, growth will be most robust in the developing world–places like China, India and Brazil that have bounced back more quicly than the U.S. from the global downturn–and it’s by no means clear that U.S. industry is positioned to capitalize on that growth.

Immelt said:

There’s more growth outside the United States than there is inside the United States. We have to recognize that our destiny is connected to the emerging world. We have to repurpose ourselves as an exporter.

The trouble is, the U.S. isn’t educating as many engineers as it should be, he said. Nor are the U.S. government and U.S. companies investing as much as China, say, in energy researchjeffrey_immelt_preview and development. Public policy. also remains a big question mark when it comes to energy because, so far at least, Congress has been unable to pass regulation of global warming pollutants. Other countries are moving faster.

“There’s going to be 10 million jobs created in clean energy,” Immelt said. The question is, will those jobs be in the U.S., in China, or elsewhere?

In the audience for Immelt were more than 2,000 members of Net Impact, a great organization whose purpose is “to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world.” (Disclosure: I’m a new member of the Net Impact board.) Immelt has made GE’s “ecomagination” campaign a hallmark of his tenure as CEO and he said his focus at the company has been to marry capitalism and sustainability. [click to continue…]

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GE, clean tech and your tax dollars

October 20, 2009

271_home_img1_ge_ecomagLet me state my bias upfront: I’m am admirer of GE and its chief executive, Jeff Immelt, and the company’s ecomagination initiative. GE and Wal-Mart are, as I have written, the most influential companies in America, and it’s great that they are serious about becoming more sustainable, and working with their customers and suppliers to do so as well.

But I can’t help but be struck by the extent to which GE’s clean-energy businesses depend on federal and state tax and regulatory policy, along with grants and loans from the government. Wind energy, solar energy, nuclear power, cleaner coal, smart-grid initiatives, energy-efficient appliances, compact fluorescent light bulbs—all of these either benefit from current policy, get stimulus money or Department of Energy grants, or stand to benefit if the climate-change legislation strongly supported by GE is enacted into law, or all of the above.

This is fairly obvious, admittedly, to anyone paying attention to the energy and climate debate, but it was brought home to me vividly last week, at a GE Ecomagination Forum [click to continue…]

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GE, biomimicry, wind and nanopants

October 16, 2009

Earlier this week, I visited GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. Cool place, the home base for about 1,900 scientists, and one of four GE research centers around the world. The others are in Bangalore, Munich and Shanghai.

I wrote a column for FORTUNE’s website about GE’s venture investments (GE brings good things to startups), about which I’ll blog a little more next week. But for today, a look at how GE’s research into how nanotechnology, which is the study of matter on a molecular and atomic scale, could help drive the wind turbine industry. This technology is inspired, in part, by lotus plants leaves that are able to repel water–an example of biomimicry, which studies nature’s best ideas and using them to solve human problems. GE’s goal, as the video below shows, is to come up with nano-coatings on wind blades or aircraft engines that repel water. This technology is inspired, in part, by lotus plants leaves that are able to repel water–an example of biomimicry, which studies nature’s best ideas and using them to solve human problems.

Materials that do a great job of repelling water are called superhydrophobic. An example would be nanopants–spill a soda on them, and the liquid would roll right off. Check out this video to see how it works–the water droplets below really, really don’t like the nanocoating. My only critique: GE should have set this video to music.

You can read a blogpost from GE engineer Joseph Vinciquerra about superhydrophobic technology, “Creating anti-icing surfaces,” on GE’s global research blog.

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GE’s smart (and subsidized) appliances

July 26, 2009

New smart appliances from GE will do great things. They will save energy, reduce greenhouse gases, curb  demand for power on the utility grid, generate “green jobs” in America and—oh, I almost forgot—clean your clothes, wash your dishes and keep your ice cream from melting.

GE's smart best-in-class hybrid water heater

GE's smart best-in-class hybrid water heater

They will also be financed, in part, with your tax dollars, if, as seems likely, the company has its way. Incentives for manufacturers like GE that make super-efficient appliances are already part of the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill awaiting action in the U.S. Senate. As GE explained it, the government would provide “awards” to best-in-class appliances of $75 per dishwasher, $200 per refrigerator and $300 per water heater, paid directly to the manufacturers. As I read Section 214 of the bill (and I could be wrong, since it’s not easy reading), the government would also pay retailers who sell best-in-class appliances.

Did you know that the government was going to subsidize appliance manufacturers? Me neither.

Last week, GE executives came to Washington to talk with government officials and reporters about their smart appliances. When combined with a smart electricity meter, a smart grid and distributed renewable energy, GE’s water heaters, washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators and stoves would help enable the company to provide zero net energy homes by 2015. That’s very cool. (Here are details from GE.)

While appliances are not the most exciting or profitable of GE’s businesses—the company tried, without success, to sell off its appliance business a couple of years ago—GE does have a history of innovation in the business. GE gave us the first self-cleaning oven, the first fully automatic clothes washer and the first refrigerator that dispensed ice and water through the door (which saves energy along with wear and tear on the biceps muscle).

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A greener–and more open–GE

July 20, 2009

General Electric and Wal-Mart are the two most important companies in America, for different reasons: GE’s reputation for management excellence means that its ideas spread widely, while Wal-Mart’s size and clout put it at the center of the consumer economy. Last week Wal-Mart announced its plans for a sustainability index, generating lots of excitement, and today GE releases a citizenship report that demonstrates that the $183-billion company is becoming not just cleaner and greener, but more open.

“We just crushed our energy consumption goals,” Bob Corcoran, GE’s vice president for corporate citizenship, told me when we talked recently about the report. “We have crushed our greenhouse gas emission goals. I feel very good about that.”

He added: “I’m sitting in a building right now” – GE’s corporate HQ in Fairfield, Connecticut – “that has solar panels on the roof.”

As you’d expect from the company that popularized the precision-driven Six Sigma approach to quality, GE’s citizenship report, its fifth, has no shortage of facts, numbers and metrics. But what struck me most about the report were the insights it offers into the changing GE culture.

GE is the No. 1 U.S. wind turbine maker

GE is the No. 1 U.S. wind turbine maker

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GE & Google say: Get Smart

February 17, 2009

Imagine driving into a gas station, filling the tank and not knowing how much the gas cost–until a bill arrives at the end of the month. That’s how most of us buy electricity, it’s a crazy way to do business and, if all goes well, it won’t last.

Why? Because momentum is building behind the so-called smart grid, which, among other things, will make buying electricity more transparent. The $787-billion stimulus package signed into law today by President Obama includes $4.5 billion for a smart grid, along with tax incentives to promote solar and wind power.

This afternoon, an event called “Plug In to the Smart Grid” organized by General Electric and Google attracted a standing-room only crowd of more than 500 people to Google’s New York Avenue offices in Washington. Among the speakers were such power players as Carol Browner, the president’s climate czar (although she didn’t say anything), John Podesta, the head of Obama’s transition team and leader of the Center for American Progress think thank, and Chris Miller, a senior aide to Senate leader Harry Reid.

Washington’s renewable-energy crowd is downright giddy about the president’s push for clean energy.

“Look where President Obama has chosen to be today,” said Dan Reicher, a Google executive and former Clinton administration official who was co-host of the event, along with Bob Gilligan of GE. “He could be standing by a bridge or a highway. But he’s at the Denver Museum of Science, looking at a solar panel.”

Gilligan ticked off the advantages of the smart grid: “It enables higher penetration of renewables. It allows the utilities to operate in a more efficient manner. Most importantly, it empowers and enables consumers by giving them more information.”

Because a smart grid is essentially the application of information technology to the electricity business, Google (an IT company) and GE (an energy company) have joined together to push for better federal and state policy to enable the grid. This was their first outreach event in DC. Here are a few things I learned:

Information is power. Power over power, in this case. A smart grid will tell consumers how much their electricity costs at any given time of day, how much each appliance draws down from the grid, how their usage compares with their neighbor’s, perhaps even whether they are using clean or “dirty” power. So, for example, if consumers know that it’s cheaper to run the dishwasher or washing machine at night, many will do so. Can you think of a better way to promote energy efficiency in homes?

As Ed Lu, a Google executive (and former space shuttle astronaut for NASA), put it: “All of our work in this area is based on the premise that consumers ought to be able to see how much energy they are using.” Google’s working on a software, called the Google PowerMeter, to show consumers their consumption in real time.

Andy Karsner, the smart and outspoken former Bush administration energy official, said: “This is about full transparency and disclosure and empowerment of every consumer and small business in America. People ought to know how the biggest investment they make in their life performs, on the day they buy a new home.”

How that information will be delivered is no simple matter. It raises issues of privacy, intellectual property and security, among others.

The grid needs to get bigger and stronger, as well as smarter. Right now, there’s not enough transmission capacity to move wind power from the Great Plains to Chicago or solar power from the southwest to urban centers like Los Angeles.

“That’s going to require literally thousands and thousands of miles of new transmission, and we’ve seen very little (recently) in this country,” said Reicher.

To get major transmission lines built, the federal government will need more authority to site them, even over objections from state and local officials.

“Siting continues to be a problem,” Podesta said. It’s a lot easier to move oil and gas around this country than it is to move electricity, in part because the federal government exercises its power to get gas pipelines built.

Turning to Chris Miller, the Senate aide, Reicher asked: “Is the federal government going to end up with significantly more authority to site transmission lines?”

“Yes,” Miller replied. He said enhanced federal clout could be part of an energy bill that the Senate will take up this spring.

Karsner added: “This is not a question of the opportunity to bring solar from the southwest or wind from the Midwest. I would say it’s a necessity…If the planet could talk, it would say, stop choking me.”

Highlights from the Plug Into the Smart Grid event will be posted on Google’s DotOrg channel on YouTube (a Google property), where there’s also an interesting video about the Google PowerMeter gadget. We’ll also be looking at the smart grid during FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference, with a panel that includes the CEOs of smart-grid firms GridPoint and Silver Spring Networks as well as venture capitalist and grid guru Chuck McDermott.

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