Word: immelt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...emissions--opposed by congressional Republicans and President Bush--failed to make it into the energy bill. The Senate bill does require utilities to generate 10% of electricity from renewable fuels like wind or solar by 2020, but Bush wants more emphasis on tax breaks for oil and gas production. Immelt is one of a growing number of chief executives, including the heads of major utilities, who think carbon caps are both inevitable and a feasible response to global warming--a condition that nearly every scientist in the world not working for the White House believes is occurring...
...farms, the latest one off the coast of Ireland, and announced its third contract to supply smaller windmills to mainland China--where energy demand is soaring and the government aims to spend $85 billion on pollution controls, especially in smog-choked cities like Beijing, site of the 2008 Olympics. Immelt also intends to capitalize on coal-gasification technology purchased last year from Chevron, allowing GE to sell coal-fired power plants that spew fewer greenhouse gases. (GE is in discussions with coal-rich China on various "clean coal" initiatives too). Other eco-ventures include a hybrid locomotive...
...Despite Immelt's pledge that it's a new green day at GE, it would be a mistake to think the company has quit protecting its less eco-friendly interests. GE has a history of opposing environmental regulations that don't suit the firm. In 2000, superstar lawyer Laurence Tribe asked the U.S. Supreme Court, on GE's behalf, to throw out EPA standards for smog and soot (the court declined). In 2003, GE was part of an industry coalition that lobbied for revised EPA regulations allowing utilities and refineries to modernize their oldest and dirtiest facilities, in some cases...
Told of the Taylor amendment, Immelt remarked, "I wasn't even aware that's the case ... We are who we are." GE would continue to defend its interests, he added. GE has reserved the cash for the Hudson cleanup, estimated to cost $500 million, and is cooperating with the EPA on a project design, he says. Nonetheless, the dredging operation, ordered in 2002 and scheduled to start in 2006, was recently delayed by a year. And GE may still legally challenge an EPA order to perform the cleanup or sue the agency to recoup costs...
Ultimately, GE's contradictory behavior on the environment is completely rational. Selling green goods represents growth and profit. Spending money to comply with antipollution laws and paying for cleanups represent cost centers--and every GE exec knows you reduce cost and feed growth. No wonder, then, that Immelt dismisses the naysayers on either side of his green initiative--the environmentalists who grouse that GE is being hypocritical and the conservatives who complain that companies should not spend an extra cent on the environment since that wastes economic resources. "There are just some people you don't listen to," he says...