General Electric Aviation has broken ground on a $126 million facility in North Carolina to develop new technology and materials to reduce emissions and make GE jet engines more efficient.
North Carolina’s Buncombe County and the city of Asheville have worked with GE Aviation to accommodate production of an aircraft engine material known as Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC). GE says a jet engine constructed using CMC materials can reduce fuel consumption by 15 percent, resulting in annual fuel savings of more than $1 million for each plane. The company expects demand for CMC components to increase ten-fold over the next decade.
Earlier this month GE Capital Fleet Services launched a suite of analytical tools to help fleet managers benchmark and optimize their fleet performance.
