General Electric announced that revenues from its Ecomagination products reached $18 billion last year from the sale of more than 90 products, up 6 percent from $17 billion in revenue from more than 80 products in 2008. GE also announced a target to grow revenues for the product line at double the rate of overall corporate revenues over the next five years, increasing its proportion of company sales. The conglomerate also announced it had made $1.5 billion in clean tech R&D investment, a year ahead of its goal for 2010.
In the first five years since the creation of the Ecomagination initiative, GE has generated $70 billion in revenues and invested $5 billion in R&D.
Meanwhile, the company said it has reduced water consumption 30 percent from its 2006 baseline and reduced greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent from a 2004 baseline. GE announced a new set of five year goals: improve energy intensity from operations by 50 percent and reduce GHG emissions by 25 percent from its 2004 baseline. In 2009, GE’s GHG emissions were 5.79 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, 22 percent below its 2004 baseline of 7.46 million metric tons (which the company adjusts for divestments and acquisitions).
Although GE managed to reduce GHG emission intensity (gas emitted per unit of revenue) by 39 percent over its 2004 baseline, this is a slight increase off its 2008 levels, which were 41 percent below the 2004 baseline. The company attributed the slip to an overall decrease in sales, which overshadowed efficiency gains.
In 2009, GE used 51.6 million MMBtus of energy, down 16 percent from the 2004 adjusted baseline of 62 million MMBtus. Again, MMBtu use per unit of revenue increased slightly from 37 percent below 2004 baseline to 34 percent below 2004 baseline.
Water use reached 10.7 billion gallons, down 30 percent from 2006. The company also changed its goal of reducing freshwater consumption by 20 percent from the 2006 baseline by 2012 to 25 percent by 2015. GE attributed the large decrease in water consumption due to changes made to its largest water consuming site, after learning it was using 2.2 billion gallons more than previously estimated.