In today’s daunting economic and environmental challenges, General Electric sees gold. Green gold. Since launching its “ecomagination” business initiative in 2005, the multinational corporation has developed several profitable technologies and services to reduce environmental impacts around the world.

Showcasing ecomagination’s successes in domains ranging from aviation to wind energy, Steve Fludder, vice president of ecomagination at GE, discussed the initiative’s progress and prospects at the Boston University Presidential Lecture on Energy and Sustainability on Nov. 4.

“Ecomagination is a companywide business strategy that is focused on bringing both profitable and environmentally beneficial solutions into the marketplace that ultimately will benefit our shareholders, but along the way will have positive economic benefit for our customers,” said Fludder, a 25-year GE veteran. In 2008, his first year at the helm of ecomagination, the initiative grew by 21 percent and represented nine percent of GE’s total revenue. 

Speaking before a packed audience at the Photonics Center Auditorium, Fludder presented the firm’s vision of a sweeping energy infrastructure transformation supported by more than 80 GE smart grid, renewable energy, water management, energy efficiency and carbon management solutions.

“We have this vision of a prosperous, greener future,” said Fludder, “and it comes about by transforming the power infrastructure, improving end-use efficiency, addressing resource scarcity that might otherwise hamper economic growth and really challenging ourselves in terms of competitiveness and investments in innovation.”
 
Noting the company’s $5 billion investment-to-date in ecomagination innovations, Fludder described ongoing GE advances in energy-efficient battery, aircraft engine, clean coal, wind turbine and smart grid technology.

For instance, GE is the leading North American wind turbine supplier, with more than 12,000 1.5 megawatt turbines installed across the globe since 2002. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to improve wind turbine reliability and lower maintenance costs.

GE is also now developing a new battery that could reduce locomotive fuel emissions by up to 50 percent and fuel consumption and costs by up to 15 percent compared to conventional freight locomotives.

“When these locomotives come downhill, there’s a tremendous amount of energy that can be captured during the braking operations,” said Fludder. Seeking to capture that energy for both quick acceleration and long-range storage, GE is now partnering with A123 Systems to build a dual battery system that combines lithium ion and sodium technology.

GE has also begun to develop smart grid technologies designed to enable more efficient transmission and distribution of renewable and other energy from power source to customers, and to provide customers with more control over their own power consumption and costs — including the ability to feed homegrown solar power into the grid. “I can see a day where every one of us will be able to sell power back to the grid and have the electric meter spin backwards,” Fludder said.

Meanwhile, GE has introduced energy-efficient technologies at several of its own plants, resulting in a 41 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2004 and a savings of more than $100 million.

“We felt we needed to do this for credibility purposes if we were proposing that our customers invest heavily in these solutions,” said Fludder.

The presentation was sponsored by the BU Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative (CEESI), a collaboration of six Colleges and Schools at BU, including the College of Engineering, which hosted the event. CEESI faculty members, many based at the College of Engineering, are leading cross-disciplinary and world-class research efforts on problems such as the smart grid, the hydrogen economy, green manufacturing and smart lighting.