GE joins green bandwagon

WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol means companies doing business in the United States do not have to adhere to the stringent carbon emission reduction plans outlined by the treaty, unlike their European and Japanese counterparts. But some blue-chip U.S. companies are going out of their way to pursue greener policies that not only benefit the environment, but improve their social standing as well.

General Electric became the latest major U.S. corporation this week to join the growing number of corporations that are actively pursuing policies to decrease pollution from their products in addition to committing more funds to develop cleaner technologies.

In announcing its latest green initiative called "ecomagination", playing on the company's slogan of "imagination at work," GE's chairman Jeff Immelt said in a statement Monday that the plan underlines "GE's commitment to address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions, and abundant sources of clean water."

Furthermore, Immelt made no bones about the fact that being green is financially lucrative as well. "We plan to make money doing it. Increasingly for business, 'green' is green," or the color of money, he stated.

Under the plan, the company will be spending $1.5 billion a year by 2010 on developing new energy technologies including wind power, diesel-electric hybrid locomotives and advanced water treatment systems, in addition to producing lower emission aircraft engines. The company currently spends about $700 million annually on such technologies.

Meanwhile, GE said it aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions at its production plants by 1 percent from current levels by 2012, adding that without the initiative, those emissions were expected to increase 40 percent from current levels.

Of course, that is a far cry from what the company would likely have had to cut back if the United States had signed on to the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. The agreement calls upon industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012 at the latest. As a result, European and Japanese companies have been forced to slash their emissions levels as their governments have become signatories to the pact. There is growing fear in those countries that they will lose to U.S. businesses that will not be forced to adhere to similarly stringent regulations.

Nevertheless, many U.S. environmental groups lauded GE's decision to make greater efforts to become greener.

"This is a hugely important step by one of the world's most important companies," said Jonathan Lash, head of the World Resources Institute, in a statement. "It is particularly encouraging that GE is focusing its research on cleaner technologies and making a serious, meaningful, and accountable commitment to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change."

Others, however, were less enamored by GE's much-ballyhooed announcement.

Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis, told UPI that the company would have had to become more energy efficient and develop alternative energy technologies simply to stay internationally competitive.

"Emissions of C02...is energy that's not captured, so it's wasted," Burnett said, adding that it was in the company's financial interest to keep such losses to a minimum. In addtion, he pointed out that companies would have to seek alternatives to fossil fuels in the long run in any case, so GE was simply trying to be "ahead of the curve...so it could go to stockholders" and point out that it was already making serious investments into the future of the company's growth.

Given such financial incentives to become more energy efficient, GE is far from alone in wanting to pursue a greener image and it is actually taking greater action than many other publicly traded companies to that effect. Last week, 10 major U.S. corporations announced they would reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's climate leaders initiative.

Caterpillar, Frito-Lay, Green Mountain Energy, Melaver, Calpine, Xerox, Staples, Gap, Bank of America, and Exelon all announced their commitment to cut back on emissions from current levels by being part of the EPA's initiative which encourages companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, bringing the total number of participating corporations to 37.

The EPA said that because those 37 companies have committed to bring down emissions levels, it "will prevent more than 8 million metric tons of carbon emissions equivalent per year. These reductions are equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of five million cars."

For instance, Bank of America is pledging to reduce total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 9 percent in 2009 from 2004 levels, while clothing retailer Gap said it will reduce emission levels in the United States by 11 percent per square foot by 2008 from 2003 levels.

The company "looks forward to working with EPA...to identify and implement more energy saving opportunities," said Gap's environmental manager, Liz Muller.