General Electric Company (GE) has launched Ecomagination in India — designed to bring to market new technologies that will help customers address their most pressing environmental challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water.
GE signed an MoU with Air India that will help the airline achieve its goal of becoming an environmentally sustainable airline. GE will supply advanced aircraft engines from its ecomagination portfolio worth $2.2 billion. GE will also partner with Air India on green building, in flight content creation, and co-branding.
In another MoU, GE India and Haryana Technology Park will collaborate to create a world standard green building project specifically in the areas of utility services like power generation & distribution, lighting, water treatment, security and sensing equipment.
The Haryana Technology Park is a Government of India approved integrated IT Park supported by Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park, New Delhi.
Finally, GE announced it would supply ecomagination-certified solar energy modules and water filtration technology to a new initiative, launched by Dynoil LLC, to increase the availability of clean drinking water in rural areas of India and in other developing countries of Southeast Asia and Africa. The use of solar energy technology to power water filtration systems will enable Dynoil, a privately held petroleum and biofuels developer based in Newport Beach, Calif., to install equipment in remote areas that lack direct access to transmission grids.
As part of the $93 million agreement, GE is providing Dynoil with 200-Watt solar modules and 5,000 water filtration units that are capable of providing 7.57 cubic meters (2,000 U.S. gallons) of water, or enough water to meet the daily requirements for 500 people.
To ensure the longevity of the project, Dynoil is forming an installation and training organization to help empower host communities.
GE’s solar modules are being built at GE Energy’s solar energy facility in Newark, Delaware, while GE’s Homespring water filtration system units are manufactured at GE Water & Process Technologies’ facilities in Canada and Hungary.
Kapil Sibal, Honourable Minister for Science and Technology, Government of India said, “We have been harnessing mother nature for far too long. The more we consume nature’s vital and valuable resources for temporary gain, the harder it gets for us to combat the consequences of the resultant phenomenon. Ecomagination is an initiative whose time has come, an initiative that will enable the business community to move away from the trodden path onto a new road of discovery and invention through the use of environment-friendly technologies. I commend GE for taking this initiative and hope others will follow.”
GE has revenues of nearly US$2 billion in India and has a target of US$8 billion by 2010. It’s targeting over US$1 billion per year in revenues from ecomagination products in India by 2010. GE also announced that it will invest up to US$150 million in “eco-related” research & development funds at its Technology Center in Bangalore over the next five years.
The ecomagination products already introduced by GE in India include products from aviation, energy, plastics and water. Some highlights include:
Rural Electrification — Through the GE Rural Electrification Program, GE Energy is providing Malavalli Power Plant Private Limited (MPPL) with 30 Jenbacher JMS320 engines, which will be used to generate combined heat and power to meet electrical, refrigeration and heating needs within rural communities. GE’s Jenbacher engines operate on a variety of alternative or specialty fuels including biogas, crop residue, municipal solid waste, landfill, coal mine methane and industrial waste gases.
Water Purification — GE developed a solar-powered fresh water purification system to assist the long-term recovery and relocation efforts of tsunami-affected remote villages in southern India. Developed jointly by GE Energy and GE Water & Process Technologies, this new system combines solar technology with salt and particulate-reducing water purification systems.
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