oday, Ecomagination is all grown up — it’s become part of the fabric of the company. (It’s also grown a capital-E, replacing the lower-case “e” when the program was launched.) As much as ever, Eco seems to align with the company’s businesses and overall strategy, as GE spun off its media and appliance businesses — and, recently, its behemoth financial services business — and last year acquired Alstom, a French multinational company in the electricity generation and rail transport markets. It is now firmly entrenched in engines, power generation, water systems and other businesses that sync with Ecomagination's focus on efficiency and emissions reductions.
The program is not without controversies. The technologies the company has put under the Ecomagination umbrella include those for fracking, tar-sands exploration and nuclear power — technologies generally not considered to be clean or green by most environmental activists and investors, but for which GE claims significant energy and water efficiencies over its competitors' products.
Meanwhile, GE has shifted its gaze beyond hardware, notably at software and services that improve operational and energy efficiency, under another marketing effort dubbed Industrial Internet. That program overlaps with Eco — its messaging touts “jet engines, trains and power plants that run dramatically cleaner” — causing some to wonder whether Ecomagination might soon fade away.
It isn’t fading. GE hasn’t yet set new five-year goals for Ecomagination, though I suspect those will come in the weeks and months ahead, but the program remains alive and well, albeit less publicly visible than it was a few years back.
On the occasion of its 10-year anniversary, I recently spoke with Deb Frodl, Ecomagination's Global Executive Director, about how far the program has come and where it is headed. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.