John Krenicki, the head of GE’s energy infrastructure unit, said at a Reuters roundtable yesterday that the next U.S. energy bill needs to give the federal government the power to build more transmission lines if the country is going to realize the benefits of wind and solar energy. “How are we going to get renewable power from the mountain states to the West coast, or to the center of the country?” John said. “We have to do in the electricity sector what was done in the gas pipeline sector to really realize the potential.” Read Reuter’s story on the transmission challenge.
John Krenicki, the head of GE’s energy infrastructure unit, said at a Reuters roundtable yesterday that the next U.S. energy bill needs to give the federal government the power to build more transmission lines if the country is going to realize the benefits of wind and solar energy. “How are we going to get renewable power from the mountain states to the West coast, or to the center of the country?” John said. “We have to do in the electricity sector what was done in the gas pipeline sector to really realize the potential.” Read Reuter’s story on the transmission challenge.
Halfway there: Building wind turbines like this one in Tehachapi, California, is part of the solution – making sure the entire country can benefit from renewable energy is the other.
Elsewhere in the energy sector, GE yesterday opened its new sales, services and technology center in Moscow. “Our new facility demonstrates GE’s long-term commitment to invest in sustainable energy infrastructure development in the region,” said Rod Christie, President of GE Energy for Central & Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS. Read GE’s announcement.
In other news, GE’s NBC Universal earned high praise for making a tough call when it came to using its reporting resources. In his recent “On the Ground” column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof asks for a “a round of applause” for NBC News for sending Ann Curry and a team of journalists to report on the genocide in Darfur.
“Granted, I know many TV journalists would love to go to cover Darfur/Congo/Pakistan as well,” he writes. “It’s not the journalists who are the obstacle, but the executives. They’re trying to maximize revenues, and it’s not obvious that the path to making money is sending crews half-way around the world to dangerous places that viewers don’t hugely care about. So NBC’s coverage is not just a tribute to Ann Curry’s doggedness in pursuit of meaningful news but also a tribute to the NBC executives that they approved the trip and put the stories on the air. I just hope that CBS, ABC – and, yes, Bill O’Reilly – are gnashing their teeth and can be shamed into doing more of the reporting that is expensive, thankless and the soul of journalism.”
Read Kristof’s column.
Last but not least, GE’s augmented reality Smart Grid web site – which allows a viewer to activate 3D animation via a computer’s webcam – received a few shout-outs from a number of design, tech and general-interest blogs. You can watch video of the site in action on these blogs:
