9 Ways GE Executed Its Radical Green Reinvention
With Ecomagination, GE bet big on efficiency and clean energy. A decade later, it's made $200 billion, and is driving the future of the company.
In 2005, when GE's CEO Jeff Immelt announced that the industrial giant was putting significant resources into a program called Ecomagination, designed to emphasize energy efficiency and ecologically friendly products, you wouldn't have been wrong in scoffing. GE was considered one of the most notorious polluters in American corporate history, infamous for ruining large sections of the Hudson River with run-off from its factories. And a decade ago, revamping an enormous business in the quest to produce less carbon wasn't a mainstream proposition. At best, you might have said Ecomagination was a PR ploy, designed to gloss over GE's environmental record and continuing production of industrial machinery.