Other partners in the initial rollout of the program are the City of Orlando, Florida; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport; and the University of Illinois. As part of GE’s collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund, the non-profit group is helping GE select sites and explore new ways to share best practices from the treasure hunts more widely across different industries. As Gwen Ruta, EDF vice president for Corporate Partnerships, said: “Trillions of dollars in energy savings are up for grabs in the United States” and the new partnership is “making it possible for cities and towns, hospitals and universities and businesses of all sizes to ferret out the valuable energy treasure buried in their own backyards.”

The new program comes as GE just marked the 5th anniversary of ecomagination by announcing that it is doubling its initial R&D technology investment — which was $5 billion in the initiative’s first years — by investing another $10 billion through 2015. Added Steve Fludder, GE’s vice president of ecomagination: “Extending our Treasure Hunts to external partners and helping them reduce costs and save energy is a logical next step for GE.”

The work at Continuum Health Partners’ Roosevelt Hospital relied on the same type of process GE uses internally. In the hunts, team leaders work with onsite staff to apply technology expertise and process improvement tools to identify, quantify and recommend enhancements to sources of energy waste — including electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater, compressed air and steam. The video below, taken during a GE Healthcare treasure hunt at our plant in Wisconsin last year, shows how the process works.

* Read today’s announcement
* Learn more about ecomagination Treasure Hunts
* Visit the ecomagination website
* Learn more about EDF
* Learn more about Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative and challenges
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read “How GE’s ‘Treasure Hunts’ Discovered More Than $110M in Energy Savings”
* Read “On the hunt for sunken treasure at GE” on GE Reports
* Read “Hunting for energy treasures in Cincinnati” on GE Reports
* Read “Finding energy savings in unlikely places” on GE Reports

Energizing innovation: When asked which sectors would most benefit from a more efficient EU innovation policy in terms of jobs creation and economic growth, 78 percent of respondents said the energy sector. Respondents represent an array of thought leaders from Brussels-based institutions, NGOs and businesses. The full report will be published in September. The research was conducted in April-July 2010 and combines both quantitative and qualitative data gathered through email and phone interviews.

While the “GE Innovation Barometer” highlights some positive consensus — for example, that innovation is viewed as a key driver to recovery and growth in Europe — the research also indicates some concerns among respondents that there is an inefficient culture of risk in the EU and an insufficient appetite for venture capital in funds management. At the same time, respondents flagged bureaucratic procedures as preventing players from allocating and applying resources efficiently to support innovation.

In the video below, Antoine Harary, Director of Strategy One, the research company that conducted the survey, describes the drive for innovation in Europe — and the resulting pressure in the region to effectively put it to use.

Just as GE is working with Wired magazine in the U.S., for the innovation Challenge in Europe GE is working in partnership with Science/Business, a London- and Brussels-based media company, to drive entries. European entrants will also be eligible for participation in the ACES Academic Enterprise Awards, an annual contest for European university spin-out companies judged by the Science|Business Innovation Board.

As Science/Business CEO Rich Hudson writes on their website today, GE’s new $200 million innovation challenge is “also a challenge to the whole system of R&D in Europe — a challenge that, on current trends, risks going unmet.” In the video below, shot at GE’s launch event in Munich, he adds that “Europe does a great job in creating small, little tech start-ups. It does a terrible job in helping those start-ups grow to size and global scale.”

Echoing that thought was Gina Domanig, Managing Partner for Emerald Technology Ventures, one of the four venture capital firms in the innovation Challenge.“We believe there’s not a problem necessarily with technology or invention [in Europe],” she told the Munich audience. “The problem that we find in Europe compared to North America is really… getting these businesses off the ground.” In the video below, GE’s Tore Land, gives an overview of the challenge while at the launch event in Munich.

Idea engine: “GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid” is looking for the best ideas from researchers, entrepreneurs and start-ups that will help create smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grids, and accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies. The 10-week challenge is the largest ever of its kind and is open now for submissions at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.

* Watch a video recapping the European launch of the Challenge
* Read the European Challenge announcement
* Read the GE Innovation Barometer announcement
* Read “Merging scale & innovation in GE’s $200M challenge” on GE Reports
* Read “Unveiled: $200M challenge, EV charger, smart monitor” on GE Reports
* Watch a replay of the webcast
* Watch CNBC’s interview with Jeff Immelt following the announcement
* Learn more about GE WattStation, our new electric vehicle charger
* Visit the challenge website
* Visit ecomagination.com
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read the just-released ecomagination Annual Report

Meet WattStation: As Forbes said of the new Yves Behar-designed WattStation that was introduced at the conference: “General Electric Chief Executive Jeff Immelt unveiled perhaps the best-looking electric vehicle charger yet invented,” adding that it’s “an electric charging station that could double as a piece of art.” Tech blog engadget called it “beautifully engineered” and said of Behar: “When that man designs something, we take notice.” In case you’re wondering, WattStation has a place to swipe a credit card on the bottom of its screen. Currently a full charge for a 24kWh battery would cost about $3.50-4.00 based on average electricity rates.

“There’s no lack of innovation,” Ray continued in the discussion. “The question is one of opportunity — whether you can identify the innovation and can actually bring it to life. Like I say, we [venture capital firms] are overwhelmed with the number of entrepreneurs who want to attack this problem… You could actually apply pretty elementary technologies [to the grid] and reap benefits. It’s such a one-way, pretty dumb system that we just kind of spin energy out there to match peak demand and everything else is wasted. There’s no lack of entrepreneurship or technology to bring to bear, but many times our entrepreneurs run into scale issues. They don’t know how to scale this to the type of complexity…. But I’m sure there are ideas out there and companies — certainly research labs and universities — today where we haven’t seen the idea yet. If you take the creativity that exists in the VC community and you combine it with the commercial scale and the research capability that exists in GE, good things will happen.”

Added GE CMO Beth Comstock in the video interview with TechCrunch below: “We’re a big company. We’ve got lots of sales people and lots of technologists — about 50,000 sales people, about 50,000 technologists. We live to invent and get to market. Maybe we want to acquire a good idea. Maybe we just want to license a good idea by putting it under the GE brand. But what we’re commiting to is investing in an idea and getting it to market quickly.”

Another topic that sparked interest was the idea of not just talking about the smart grid, but rather the concept of “digital energy.” In 2009 the digital energy market — which covers everything from data collection to grid optimization and automation — was estimated to be about $18 billion. However, it’s expected to explode to about $110 billion in size by 2030. When asked why the term is now so central to GE’s thinking, Beth told TechCrunch: “It’s not just about the grid. It’s about digitizing energy. It’s about making energy more efficient to make, to transport and to use. And so there are a number of different factors and I think the translation is very good for consumers, who’ve seen what digitization and what the Internet has done for their lives. And if you think about that now happening in an energy sense, hopefully it’s exciting, empowering and gives us much more potential and opportunity.”

Also in the spotlight at GE’s clean-tech showcase were a slew of ecomagination products, ranging from the new Leap X jet engine — the first version of which will be powering China’s new C919 passgenger jet — to the residential scale wind turbines made by Southwest Windpower, in which GE is an investment partner. Steve Fludder, vice president of GE ecomagination, gives an overview in the video below.

* Read “Unveiled: $200M challenge, EV charger, smart monitor” on GE Reports
* Watch a replay of the webcast
* Watch CNBC’s interview with Jeff Immelt following the announcement
* Read the WattStation announcement
* Read the ecomagination Challenge announcement
* Read the Nucleus announcement
* Learn more about GE WattStation, including preorder details
* Visit the challenge website
* Visit ecomagination.com
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read the just-released ecomagination Annual Report

Renowned industrial designer Yves Behar explains how he fused functionality with a consumer friendly form on the charger in the video above.

The thinking behind the ecomagination Challenge is that business needs to ignite “a new American industrial revolution” — one that is fueled by the best technology. And just as collaboration is what will produce the winning technologies, it’s also the foundation of the Challenge itself as GE has partnered with well-known venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and RockPort Capital in the joint investment. The evaluation committee and judges will be looking for breakthrough ideas that can help create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies. Proposals are sought in three, broad categories: Renewables, Grid and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings.

The race is on: The challenge is one of the largest ever and is open immediately at ecomagination.com/challenge. “The Smart Grid is a new platform and a new market that is just beginning to be explored,” said Wired magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson, who is serving as an advisor on the Challenge. “Great ideas on how to do this can come from anywhere, so this competition is designed to tap the widest possible range of innovators, from big companies to entrepreneurs to students.”

While the investment fund will be used for some entrants, others in the challenge will have chances to benefit from GE’s global reach, marketing know-how, and its array of global labs via a range of commercial relationships. For example, GE’s technical and commercial teams may work with some entrants to evaluate their business strategies — or partnerships may be explored so that GE can help a business scale-up and expand globally. Development opportunities include tapping into GE‘s technical infrastructure and Global Research Centers to accelerate development while growth opportunities may involve using GE’s existing customer relationships to aid a business with its go-to-market strategy. Five entrants in the 10-week challenge have a chance to receive a $100,000 innovation challenge award for outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation.

“Innovation is the engine of the global effort to transform the way we create, connect and use power,” Jeff said. “At GE we have invested broadly and deeply in digital energy solutions and see this as a substantial market for us, but we can’t do it alone. We want to work with our partners to make sure we have a comprehensive digital energy offering. This challenge is about collaboration and we are inviting others to help accelerate progress in creating a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid. We want to jump-start new ideas and deploy them on a scale that will modernize the electrical grid around the world.”

Digital revolution: As Jeff underscored in his presentation, GE currently has a strong Digital Energy offering with revenue in 2010 in this space alone estimated to be about $2 billion. GE’s portfolio covers the landscape from “turbine to toaster” via power generation, transmission and distribution, connecting into commercial and industrial markets, and connecting to consumers’ homes. But there is more work to do, Jeff said — which is a key driver of the new Challlenge. As the chart above shows, in 2009 the digital energy market was estimated to be about $18 billion. However, it’s expected to explode to about $110 billion in size by 2030. The growth in various Digital Energy sectors within the overall market is shown on the right.

The ecomagination innovation challenge and new product launches follow GE’s commitment last month to double its own clean technology R&D investment to $10 billion over the next five years. “We took on a challenge when we launched ecomagination five years ago and we have learned about the power of partnerships to deliver clean energy solutions today,” said GE CMO Beth Comstock. “The challenge announced today is about collaboration and harnessing the promise of fledgling ideas and businesses to transform our energy future. We are confident in people’s willingness to change the way the world uses energy and in the ideas that will make this possible.”

Center field: GE’s Nucleus delivers real-time energy usage consumption to PCs, and smart phone applications. The idea is that by educating consumers about energy use, it empowers them to make decisions about how and when they use energy. Nucleus will collect and store a consumer’s household electricity use and cost data for up to three years. Its the first product in GE’s Brillion suite of smart home energy management solutions that will include a programmable thermostat, in-home display, a smart phone application, and smart appliances for the entire home. Nucleus is expected to be available for consumer purchase in early 2011 at an estimated retail price of $149-$199. To view a video about GE’s Nucleus click here and to view the website visit www.GEBrillion.com.

Members of the general public will also be able to review and comment on entries and show support for the idea that they believe will have the most impact on the smart grid of the future by visiting ecomagination.com/challenge.

Fast and fashionable: On average, GE WattStation decreases electric vehicle charging time from 12-18 hours to as little as four to eight hours compared to standard charging “level 1”, assuming a full-cycle charge for a 24 kWh battery. It will be commercially available globally in 2011 and a specialized home version will be unveiled later this year. Steve Fludder, vice president of GE ecomagination, said, “Widespread electric vehicle adoption depends on having charging stations that integrate the need for quick charging with the personal need for easy functionality. GE WattStation will meet this challenge.”

Watch a replay of today’s webcast.

* Watch CNBC’s interview with Jeff Immelt following the announcement
* Read the WattStation announcement
* Read the ecomagination Challenge announcement
* Read the Nucleus announcement
* Learn more about GE WattStation, including preorder details
* Visit the challenge website
* Visit ecomagination.com
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read the just-released ecomagination Annual Report

Room to grow: Clicking the image takes you to an interactive page on GOOD’s website so you can enlarge it. We’ve also expanded the individual pieces below. In each image, the white circle is the percentage of total global electricity generated from that particular source. The information in the blue circle is the percentage of renewable energy supply for electricity from that source.

Bright idea: In the solar video on GOOD’s site, the trash cans on Philly streets automatically compact the trash using solar power, allowing them to hold five times more garbage. At GE, some of our latest solar work can be seen in what’s called “thin film solar,” which offers the potential to be lightweight and wrapped around objects.

Hot stuff: Indonesia is tied with Mexico for having the third highest use of geothermal power. The Wayang Windu power station is Indonesia’s biggest geothermal power producer, tapping into naturally occurring underground pockets of steam and hot water, with wells as deep as 3 kilometers. GE’s recent loan from its Energy Financial Services business is helping the plant double its output.

Power plants: As the algae power video on GOOD’s site notes, some algae are actually 50 percent oil. At GE, our jenbacher engines use everything from manure to landfill gases to create electricity. And our work on jet engines has resulted in the Navy’s recent biofueled flight of an FA/-18 Hornet.

All wet: GE Energy Financial Services is helping Plutonic Power Corporation build a $628 million hydroelectric project located 118 miles northwest of Vancouver. It has the potential to power approximately 75,000 homes and displace an estimated 455,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually — the equivalent of taking approximately 90,000 cars off the road.

Biggest fan: As the wind turbine video on GOOD’s site points out, many rural areas around the world still don’t have any electricity, which is why a push is on to help local communities there build mini turbines from readily available local materials. While GE is known globally for its fleet of giant wind turbines, the company recently began working with the world’s largest manufacturer of small wind turbines, Southwest Windpower, to help speed adoption of residential turbines in places like the U.S.

Learn more in these GE Reports data visualizations:
* “Visualizing your energy thirst on Earth Day’s 40^th”
* “What if electric cars filled Memorial Day traffic jams?”
* “A GOOD look at the ‘Cost of Chronic Diseases’”
* “Data visualization: A GOOD look at affording care”
* Read ecomagination stories on GE Reports

GE Appliances & Lighting plans to add some 830 jobs at the Appliance Park campus in Louisville through 2013, thanks to new products. Production of new hybrid electric water heaters is to begin in 2011, followed by a new line of “smart” washing machines in 2012 and matching smart dryers the following year.

Powering out of the recession: GE’s $600 million investment was aided by $24.8 million in tax credits that GE received as part of the economic recovery act to retrofit and retool the Louisville facility.

From reset to renew: Vice President Biden was joined on stage by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, Congressman John Yarmuth, assembly line worker Nechelle Thomas, and GE Appliances & Lighting President and CEO Jim Campbell.

First look: While at the plant, Biden was given a tour of the retooled dishwasher line.

GE’s new GeoSpring Hybrid Water Heater is the first completely new product line to be made at the factory in more than 50 years, and it’s being developed using the Shingijutsu philosophy, or Lean production system. That approach reinvents the entire manufacturing process to maximize efficiency, beginning with how the factory itself is designed.

As Jim Campbell said when the smart washer and dryer decision was announced earlier this year: “We are making big investments in new products and in energy-efficient technologies that are creating American jobs. We can’t make these products in the U.S. competitively without everyone coming to the table — unions, the Company, employees, local/state/federal officials.”

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “Re-inventing factories: The Kaizen/‘moonshine’ method”
* “Building smart washers/dryers in KY to create 430 jobs”
* “GE’s new KY deal marks a great time to be in hot water”
* “American Renewal: Immelt addresses Detroit Econ Club”

Bring it on! Click the image to read the executive summary.

As goodcleantech.com observed: “The study suggests that even though winds are intermittent and sunlight does not perpetually shine, they’re no cause of concern on whether the renewable energy sources can provide the expected percentage of energy allotted for them. To be able to achieve the goal, the WestConnect group of utilities [which were the basis of the study] in the mountain and southwest states would have to be able to coordinate operations over a wider coverage area. They would need to be able to schedule the specific amount of power they can deliver within a period of time so that generators could adjust that power based on the current weather conditions. In the future, if such a change in operational procedures could be put into effect, the study says there would even be no need for back-up gas-burning power plants.”

Tech blog sunpluggers.com noted that the report — which considered grid operations in 2017 — “is one of a number of similar studies around the country that have been examining how significant amounts of renewable electricity could be seamlessly incorporated into the power stream that flows to U.S. homes, schools, hospitals and businesses… A related study for the eastern United States, the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study, found that ‘high penetrations of wind generation — 20 percent to 30 percent of the electrical energy requirements of the Eastern Interconnection — are technically feasible with significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure.’”

The new study found that the Western grid could handle as much as 20 percent of its power from wind with little impact, but that at higher levels the lack of precise wind and solar forecasting limits the gains. Improving those forecasts is one solution — and is an active area of current government research. The study also found that up to 20 percent of renewable penetration on the grid could be achieved with little or no new long distance, interstate transmission additions. The findings follow the Department of Energy’s “20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030” report, which did not find any technical barriers to reaching 20 percent wind energy in the continental United States by 2030.”

Meanwhile, supporters of wind power — and the jobs that are generated with it — will have a chance to add their names to GE’s well-traveled, 131-foot wind blade at the annual Congressional Baseball Game, in which members of Congress (Democrats vs. Republicans), play. More than 6,000 Americans across the country signed the blade, which is nearly half a football field long and carries the message: “I’m helping to build America’s energy future.”

It arrives tonight at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. and will be stationed outside the main gates for the game through Tuesday night. The public can add their names to the petition before the game and clean energy industry reps will be available to answer questions.

* Read coverage from RenewableEnergyWorld.com and EnergyBoom.com
* Read the report’s executive summary
* Go to the NREL website highlighting the report
* Read the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study
* Read Part 3 of our series: “Wind expo: 3,000 blade signatures & a Great Lakes 1^st”
* Watch Part 2 of our series: “‘Capture the Wind’ tour: At the fair & atop the tower”
* Watch Part 1: “Capture the Wind tour: Honk if you like green jobs!”

CLEEN and mean: The blue line shows how aircraft typically descend in stair-step approaches, which take longer and burn more fuel. GE’s Flight Management System (FMS) — which is an ecomagination product — flies an optimized descent into the airport. The more direct path, which keeps the plane at a higher “cruise” altitude longer before descent, saves fuel.

In its announcement yesterday, the FAA awarded five companies $125 million in contracts, with each company investing an equal or greater amount to match. GE’s CLEEN award will help fund three technologies, with one — as seen in the illustration above — being software-driven solutions that enable commercial aircraft to fly more optimum trajectories. They’re known as Flight Management System — Air Traffic Management (FMS-ATM) technologies and they result in “lower fuel burn and cost for airlines, fewer delays for passengers, and lower emissions and noise for communities,” said Lorraine Bolsinger, president and CEO of GE Aviation Systems.

GE is partnering with Alaska Airlines to install the Flight Management System on their Boeing 737 planes in order to demonstrate the environmental benefits. GE is also working with Lockheed Martin to demonstrate how the airborne system can be integrated with the ground-based air traffic system. And GE and AirDat are working together to develop and demonstrate technology to reduce the effects of weather on aircraft fuel consumption and emissions. AirDat’s sensors gather, analyze and transmit highly accurate real-time weather data, including wind speeds and trajectory during flight.

Another part of the award will go toward work on an “open rotor” engine. As you can see in the video below, the open rotor is a startling design in which the fans are not only exposed, but rotate in opposite directions — the result is a substantial fuel saving.

A flight across the Atlantic in the late 1980s showed GE’s technology worked. But as fuel prices at the time fell sharply, the engine was never commercially launched. Now, with saving fuel a high priority in the industry, the program is in high gear, with tests currently being done at NASA.

Comeback tour: The open rotor is known as an unducted fan engine. By applying today’s advanced data acquisition systems and computational design tools, GE has improved the design to reduce fuel consumption by 26 percent and address noise challenges. Last year, GE started wind tunnel testing with NASA.

The third part of GE’s demo program will focus on a next generation combustor, which is the part of the engine where combustion takes place. It will focus on the TAPS II Combustor for GE’s new engine core — called eCore — that will offer up to 16 percent better fuel efficiency than GE’s best engines in service today. A TAPS combustor creates a leaner fuel-to-air mixture when compared to the rich fuel mixture of traditional combustor systems. The leaner mixture reduces temperature spikes, which also reduces NOx emissions that are generated during those spikes. The combustor in development builds on the version being used in GE’s new GEnx jet engine for Boeing’s Dreamliner and new 747 freighter.

* Read the announcement
* Read “FAA awards $125 million to Boeing, others to green aviation” in the Seattle Post Intelligencer
* Read coverage from the Associated Press and Flight Global
* Read “GE and NASA to test open rotor jet engine systems” on GE Reports
* Read “Jump into GE’s integrated cockpit at Paris Air Show” on GE Reports
* Learn about the Eco-Aviation conference on ATW’s website
* Read more GE Aviation stories on GE Reports

When we launched ecomagination in 2005, we had only a glimmer of what it would become for GE. Five years later, it’s both exciting and humbling to see what our employees, customers and partners have done to make ecomagination the innovation engine it is today. And as you can see in our new ecomagination Annual Report — which we’ve issued today to mark its 5^th anniversary — we’re planning to double down and commit to even more R&D and new technologies in the next five years.

High five!: The full annual report is available online by clicking here. Overall, in the first 5 years, GE invested $5 billion in clean-tech R&D and generated $70 billion in ecomagination revenues.

Our rallying cry over the last five years has been the simple mantra that “green is green” — that clean solutions can and should drive profitability and growth while being better for the planet. At the same time, a global race has kicked into high gear in the areas of clean technology and energy efficiency. This space has emerged as a major investment sector for venture capital. Renewables such as wind have taken root at breakneck speed — with more efficient solar almost within grasp. And governments are making efficiency pledges and investing in clean-tech in the hopes of gaining global talent and creating jobs. So what have we learned as ecomagination turns five?

Our biggest lesson is that vision has to be inextricably fused with measurement. Businesses can drive change, but only if big goals are set and then the progress toward them is rigorously defined and measured. Of course, revenues are an important measurement because they confirm that our offerings resonate with customers enough so that they’ll pay for them. But if you just count your revenues, you can miss this fundamental point: the clean-tech race is about raising the bar of technological performance in an economically sustainable way. And setting standards focuses and galvanizes action.

With ecomagination, a critically important innovation is the rich “scorecard” process we developed to track the performance of our R&D, products, services, and solutions on a number of levels. This process is flexible enough to cover incredibly diverse industries, since ecomagination creates, compares, measures and launches products as small as a light bulb or as big as a jet engine.

Click the data visualization to enlarge it.

Ecomagination has been strengthened by input from a variety of partners. In its early months, we looked more to partner within GE, matching internal capabilities across our businesses. But we soon came to realize the power of external partnerships. When you’re teamed with a partner who shares a common vision and commitment and complementary capabilities, a new kind of energy is created. That partner can be an NGO advisor — such as World Resources Institute or Pew Center on Global Climate Change — who have pushed us to stretch more, as they did with our own greenhouse gas emissions goals. (We started with an absolute reduction goal of 1 percent and in 2009 we ended up with a reduction of 22 percent). Or we have partners such as GreenOrder, which helps us validate our offerings on multiple levels of performance, helping ensure that the effort is credible, valuable, and stands up to scrutiny by others. Then there’s the venture capital role we are playing by investing in and working with tech start-ups.

Beth Comstock

With ecomagination, we’ve learned that sustainability is as much a change-management challenge as it is a business or scientific challenge. It’s a journey to get the right players involved and invested in moving forward. Today, teams of GE employees scour our manufacturing and other processes to make them more efficient – and these energy efficiency “hunts” have saved GE over $130 million dollars. Today, GE technologists are partnering with clean-tech start-ups to further accelerate new technologies, as can be seen in our advanced battery work with A123 Systems and our thin film solar R&D with PrimeStar Solar Inc. And today, global governments, from the cities of Portland and Rotterdam to the National Development and Reform Commission in China, are working with GE to put clean-tech to work in their communities.

Change happens when others see opportunity — and change their behavior, join in and make it their own. Ecomagination’s mantra is no longer just GE’s. And that’s just fine with us.

Advanced GEnx jet engines, more efficient locomotives, and water technologies are just a few of the ecomagination products spotlighted in the video above.

* Read today’s announcement
* Read the full ecomagination 2009 Annual Report
* Read a post by GreenOrder president Andrew Shapiro in Harvard Business Review
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read Beth Comstock’s recent post about healthymagination, another key GE initiative