A few years ago, saying "General Electric" in a room full of environmentalists could prompt a round of boos and hisses. The company had dumped 1.3 million pounds of toxic PCBs into New York's Hudson River over the course of three decades, and then dragged its feet on cleanup efforts. But since 2005, the company has spiffed up its image, accepting responsibility for the Hudson cleanup and launching a new initiative, dubbed Ecomagination, to unite the company's green technologies, such as wind turbines and solar panels, under a single umbrella. The associated marketing campaign is not without its critics, who accuse GE of trying to capitalize on environ-mental sentiment. NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke with Lorraine Bolsinger, the GE executive in charge of Ecomagination, about green energy. Excerpts:
Zakaria: What is the solution to America's energy problem?
Bolsinger: That's an omnibus question, isn't it? There has to be a broad portfolio of conclusions. One thing that is a particular weakness is the ability of our grid to accept all these different alternatives [like wind and solar power]. It's going to take both hardware and software to fix it. With a smart meter, homeowners can make choices about how much energy they use. Or, alternatively, the utilities can reach into the homes and shut unnecessary things off—maybe it's the thermostat or the refrigerator, which might not be needed for 10 minutes at a time.
A lot of GE's green products are improvements of existing technology. Don't we need a truly disruptive technology, like a hydrogen fuel cell, to give us the necessary quantum jump?
It depends on how you think about the quantum jump. We have made a quantum leap in getting a 15 percent more efficient jet engine. However, we all know that the aviation industry is growing at 4 to 5 percent a year, so they'll gobble that up pretty quickly. So what's the next wave? I think we have to look at disruption in systems. So in other words, let's look at the total aviation system, everything from ground handling, idling on the tarmac and air-traffic management. You can get another 15 to 20 percent without bending any new metal. This is all information technology; it's all policy decisions.
So government has a significant role here.
Absolutely. These are large, regulated industries with huge infrastructures. So yes, absolutely.
GE and other companies are investing heavily in wind and solar power, but how do you solve the chief problem of these technologies, which is the intermittent nature of the energy they produce?
We're investing in battery technology because we believe there's got to be a storage solution. But frankly, we don't have a solution yet.
Why is battery technology so difficult? For a complete layman, this doesn't seem like quantum physics.
It is the classic engineering problem. You trade off weight, efficiency and cost. You can have two but you can't have three. I had an argument with my brother, who's a brilliant engineer. I told him, "I don't get it. This isn't rocket science." And he said, "You are so ignorant about what it takes to make a battery and how to dispose of it." When you talk to people close to the issue, they say it is very difficult to get extra life out of them, or to lower the cost or the weight.
What about clean coal? Is it commercially viable?
We have made a huge bet on cleaner coal because coal has to be part of the solution. It's economical from an energy-security perspective. The question is, how do you get the first 10 to 20 plants done? You know they're going to be expensive. The first 10 of anything need help. So we're never going to get to 11, 12 or 13 if we don't get those first ones started, and yet there's really no policy action on this yet.
You'd like to see a more active role from the government.
We absolutely need it. We have to have loan guarantees, some incentives. And the whole issue of liability on the sequestered CO2 has got to be worked out.
Right, because a lot of people say storing sequestered CO2 in the earth may be dangerous. There may be seepage.
Lots of people say lots of things. The folks that I've been speaking with, people in the industry who currently put in and take things out of the earth every day, like oil and gas guys—they have no concern. They say, "We take these risks every day, and we have for decades."
But it's not just the liability issue holding back cleaner coal plants?
If there's no price on [carbon], you're never going to build a plant that's 15 percent more expensive. But I think folks are going to start getting a lot smarter. They're thinking, I'm not going to own this plant for five years. I'm going to own it for 40. Do I think there will still be no price on CO2 in 20 years? No.
With regard to Ecomagination, how would you respond to the accusation that you're "greenwashing," making yourself look more environmentally friendly by bunching together existing programs and calling them all green?
You've got to look at what we're doing for our own credibility internally. We've made a commitment to reduce our own greenhouse gases and our own energy intensity, and we are exceeding all those commitments. We said we would reduce our absolute carbon footprint by 1 percent vis-à-vis our 2004 baseline, and do so by the year 2012. We just got the numbers in, [and we're already] about 9 percent down. Because of that, we saved the company about $100 million in energy costs.
Is all this moving faster than you had thought when you took the job?
Yes, it is. I was just in Australia. In November, they decided, "We're going green." Holy cow. It was unbelievable. By July 1, companies have to start doing inventory of their CO2 emissions. They're working on a cap-and-trade system, and it's going to be introduced in 2010. So companies from banks to BHP Billiton are thinking, "How do we reduce our carbon footprint?" It really tipped. And we are very like-minded with Australia.