 
In March, a General Electric Co.-built wind turbine collapsed in upstate New York, shearing plans for another wind park nearby.
Suffice to say, with GE”™s Ecomagination revenues bounding 20-plus percent even in this economy, the turbines are back in motion.
As a developer submitted a plan to kick-start the delayed New York project, Stamford-based GE Energy Financial Services Inc. announced plans to take over construction of a planned wind farm in British Columbia, which at 300 megawatts would be the province”™s largest.
GE Energy Financial Services is assuming about $37 million in past obligations ”“ according to the Globe & Mail, bankrupt EarthFirst Canada Inc. had invested $100 million in the project, and last year had estimated another $250 million would be needed to complete it.
GE Energy Financial Services has also been financing projects closer to home ”“ in April, it committed $200 million to Noble Environmental Power L.L.C., the Essex-based company that is building three wind parks in upstate New York that can supply power to 110,000 homes under optimal conditions. Those facilities include the park in Altona where the turbine collapsed, a mishap Noble Environmental Power initially blamed on faulty wiring.
Late last month in Japan, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said the short-circuited credit markets have improved dramatically, adding the worst appears over with respect to the global recession.
Even as Michigan absorbed the shock of General Motors Corp.”™s bankruptcy declaration, a GE Financial Services-backed company called Danotek Motion Technologies opened a factory in Canton, Mich. that will employ 150 people making generators for wind turbines.
Wind power is a relatively small component of Fairfield-based GE”™s “Ecomagination” portfolio of products and services, designed to have a beneficial impact on the environment.
In 2008, Ecomagination revenue was up 21 percent from the year before, and the Ecomagination campaign extends to GE”™s own operations between 2005 and 2008, when the company improved its energy efficiency by 37 percent and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from its operations by 13 percent. The company cut its “operational greenhouse gas intensity” ”“ a ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to company revenue ”“ by 41 percent, exceeding a 30 percent goal it set in 2005. The 30 percent figure includes data from power plants in which Norwalk-based GE Capital invests.
In a joint venture with the energy company AES Corp., GE Energy Financial Services created Arlington, Va.-based Greenhouse Gas Services L.L.C. to trade in credits for greenhouse gases, which companies can use to comply with environmental regulations governing emissions. Google Inc. used the credits last year for a data center it is creating in North Carolina.
In a blog on a GE Web site, the president of the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute Jonathan Lash said GE is effectively making a case for a “low carbon” economy.
“While it seems to annoy some on Wall Street and Capitol Hill that GE is making money on the bet that tomorrow”™s markets will be carbon- and energy-constrained, Ecomagination”™s profitability in a down economy does seem to buttress the argument that a climate and energy secure future is about jobs, innovation, and new markets, not austerity and limits,” Lash wrote.
Underscoring that point, GE announced last week it plans to add 400 jobs in Louisville, Ky., to begin building highly efficient, “hybrid” water heaters. The device uses a heat pump to absorb warm air and transfer it to water being heated, a far more efficient method then burning fuel to create heat for the purpose. GE is investing more than $50 million in the plant, and has $17 million in incentives from state and local government in Kentucky.
