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GE's Immelt Calls for 'Long-Term' U.S. Energy Policy (Update1)
2010-09-23 14:25:31.910 GMT
(Updates with comments from Immelt in second paragraph.)
By Kim Chipman and Rachel Layne
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. needs a national energy
policy that puts a long-term price on carbon as China and other
nations surge ahead in green technology, General Electric Co.
Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said.
"China is green, green, green, green -- four greens,"
Immelt said today during a presentation with New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman at the Gridwise Global Forum in
Washington. He cited demand, innovation funding, supply chain
and public policy as advantages for China.
Immelt helps lead the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a
coalition of companies and environmental groups that favor
stalled legislation that would establish a cap-and-trade system
based on carbon-emission credits. He's urged federal regulation
in part so manufacturers can build to uniform specifications.
"The rest of the world is moving 10 times faster than we
are," Immelt said. The U.S. is "reddish" in areas such as
demand and on public policies aimed at spurring clean-energy
technologies because policy makers get caught up in a debate on
climate, Immelt said.
While the U.S. is a "great" country, "we actually have
to have an energy policy," Immelt said. "It's stupid what we
have today."
The U.S. needs to establish a "long-term price signal" on
carbon emissions, in order for companies to provide
"appropriate funding for innovation" regardless of fuel, as
well as revive nuclear energy. Such moves would create jobs
rather than shift them overseas, Immelt said.
'Nuclear Renaissance'
"I personally believe there should be a nuclear
renaissance in this country," he said.
GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, is the world's biggest
maker of power-generation equipment, jet engines, locomotives
and medical-imaging machines. GE power-generation equipment
provides one-third of the world's electricity.
The GE Energy Infrastructure division includes gas, wind,
steam, nuclear, smart-meters and transmission equipment as well
as oil-and-gas exploration machinery.
In July, GE called for entries in a 10-week contest to
speed updates of global power grids, promising investment and
marketing help for the best submissions from a $200 million
fund. The company is spending about $10 billion on
environmentally friendly products by 2015 through Immelt's five-
year-old "ecomagination" program.
Other GE divisions include appliances, lighting, aircraft
leasing, real estate, consumer finance and lending to small and
mid-sized businesses.
For Related News and Information:
GE revenue segments: GE US <Equity> PGEO <GO>
GE earnings history: GE US <Equity> EM <GO>
Peer product comparison: GE US <Equity> PPC <GO>
For credit ratings: GE US <equity> CRPR <GO>
For top environment stories GREEN <GO>
--Editors: Steve Geimann, John Lear
To contact the reporters on this story:
Kim Chipman in Washington at +1-202-624-1927 or
kchipman@bloomberg.net;
Rachel Layne in Boston at +1-617-210-4634 or
rlayne@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Larry Liebert at +1-202-624-1936 or lliebert@bloomberg.net;
Ed Dufner at +1-214-954-9453 or edufner@bloomberg.net
