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From the Western U.S., where construction has just started on a massive, half-billion dollar series of wind farms, to the East Coast, where Massachusetts is rolling out high-tech gear that allows power grids to “heal themselves” by isolating outages and rerouting power, it’s been a busy week for GE’s energy teams. The Idaho Wind Partners project comprises 11 wind farms — making it Idaho’s largest wind power project with the capacity to power approximately 39,700 average Idaho homes. The project is spread across 10,000 acres of active and inactive farmland in southern Idaho’s Magic Valley, which was a predominant migration route as part of the Oregon Trail in the 19th century, and is now becoming a critical renewable energy corridor in the 21st century.

Today’s American Airlines flight 1916 from Dallas/Fort Worth to Connecticut’s Bradley International Airport just landed in the aviation history books — and marked a new era in U.S. airspace modernization. Captain Brian Will flew the 737 using a high-tech, computerized flight path known as RNP — which stands for Required Navigation Performance technology. Put simply, RNP allows planes to follow highly precise, customized, gently curving paths that eliminate the inefficient straight-line flight segments — most noticeable in stair step landing approaches — that take longer to fly, burn more fuel, churn out more emissions and can add to air traffic congestion and delayed flights. What makes today’s flight historic is that it’s the first time a U.S. flight has used a publicly available, commercially designed RNP flight path. Prior to the path becoming a permanent fixture at Bradley, the FAA had designed all public RNP paths in the U.S. Now, with a third party — GE Aviation’s Naverus business — getting the green light to publish the path, the gateway is open for widespread adoption of the technology. As GE’s Steve Fulton says in the audio interview below, “Our vision is that there are going to be thousands of these procedures required as part of the transition underway in the United States.”

Armed with a grab bag of high-tech gadgets and a name that sounds like a league of superheroes, the “Building America Team” is gearing up to battle home energy waste in a pilot program in the Western U.S. The team — which is part of a Department of Energy project — includes technologists from GE’s Industrial Solutions, Appliances, Lighting and Research divisions and partners that include major utilities, homebuilders and local communities. The goal is to slash the $1,240 per year in electricity costs that the average U.S. household pays by more than $850 per year. As GreenTech.com notes: “The test houses, part of the Department of Energy’s Building America Program, will be a mix of retrofit and new construction. The goal of the DOE program is to cut energy use by 30 percent, but GE and its partners think they can reach 70 percent if roof top solar panels are added to the mix.”

With this weekend marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ comeback battle has been in the national spotlight. On the healthcare front, efforts to improve access to primary care for those underserved has been a major focus, especially as the greater New Orleans area experienced a sharp decrease in primary care physicians in Katrina’s aftermath. Further compounding the problem, Charity Hospital — the primary access point to healthcare for the uninsured — closed permanently after being hit by severe flooding during the disaster. One way the city has been addressing this care delivery gap is by investing in a community-based primary care delivery model — with health centers based inside schools an integral part of this model. Today, the GE Foundation, which is the company’s philanthropic arm, announced a $2 million grant to the Louisiana Public Health Institute as part of GE’s Developing Health program. The funds will underwrite the work led by School Health Connection — a partnership formed after Katrina by local and state governments, universities, hospitals and others — in Orleans Parish, LA.

As part of our look at what it takes to make hospitals healthier on Friday, we used New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System as an example of one of the places that is getting it right when it comes to driving better care with increased efficiency. As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches this weekend, today we take a closer look at Ochsner, which has grown to encompass eight medical centers and more than 35 health centers since the hurricane hit. As you can see in the video below, Ochsner was on the frontlines during the disaster relief efforts following Katrina. And in the true spirit of those rebuilding New Orleans, Ochsner didn’t just survive — it drew on its systematic approach to medicine to become an even stronger, more efficient healthcare presence in the region.