'Ecomagination' at Work: GE's Sustainability Initiative

The hydrogen production project was a part of GE's 'Ecomagination' initiative, launched in May 2005. Ecomagination, promoted as GE's commitment to sustainable development, was a large- scale program aimed at making the company a more responsible corporate citizen. It covered among other things, GE's efforts to enhance its investment in developing sustainable technologies, and increase its revenues from sustainable products, while lowering emissions and improving energy efficiency at its production plants. According to GE, Ecomagination would help the company "imagine and build innovative technologies that [would] help customers address their environmental and financial needs and help GE grow."

Notable among the others were Novartis AG, Unilever Plc., BMW AG, and energy and petroleum majors ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp., and BP (formerly British Petroleum). According to analysts, sustainability initiatives were especially relevant for large companies that had a huge impact on the economy as well as the environment.

However, they added that most large companies were only indulging in 'greenwash' when they talked about their sustainability efforts. But GE's results in the first year after the launch of Ecomagination seemed to indicate that it was one of the few large corporations that were genuinely committed to sustainability.