What are some of the products in high demand? Start with GE Aviation. The world’s largest and most powerful commercial jet engine, GE90, has had its most successful year in 2011. Airlines and freighter operators ordered 400 of the engines valued at $11 billion (list price).

The engine’s French-American cousins, the CFM56 and LEAP engines, also had a record year. CFM International, a joint company between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma, received orders and commitments for more than 2,900 CFM56 and LEAP engines valued at $30 billion. There is a good reason for the ecomagination-qualified LEAP to be popular. The engine can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions, and lower maintenance costs. The total GE Aviation backlog stood at $99 billion in equipment and services at the end of 2011.

GE Energy’s total backlog surpassed $72.7 billion at the end of last year. The unit received orders and commitments that included the new ecomagination-qualified FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant. GE invested $500 million to develop the technology. The system helps utilities efficiently incorporate power generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar farms. It can ramp up power production on a cloudy day in minutes, twice the rate of today’s energy benchmarks.

Other GE divisions that reported multi-billion backlogs include GE Healthcare ($3.9 billion in equipment), and GE Transportation ($3.3 billion in equipment).

“We feel good about where we are,” Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and chief executive, said on a call with analysts. “Organic growth looks solid with a $200 billion backlog.”

Cape Town Express: GE Transportation will supply South Africa’s Transnet Freight Rail with 143 new locomotives.

This economic engine is motoring ahead. Today, GE Transportation said that it would sell 43 ecomagination-qualified C30ACi diesel-electric freight locomotives to South Africa’s Transnet Freight Rail (TFR). This new purchase comes on top of a 100-engine order that TFR placed with GE two years ago.

The deal supplies South Africa’s aging train park with the first new locomotives in decades. The 3,300 horse power C30ACi engines were developed specifically for TFR and contain innovative GE technology that will boost South Africa’s aging locomotive fleet and add muscle to its hauling capability.

The C30ACi locomotives are striking 130-ton orange, green and yellow steel behemoths. But they zip along the rails with agility and grace. That’s because GE engineers came up with an efficient solution to transfer power from the engine to the wheels.

Think of the diesel-electric locomotive as a power plant on rails. The diesel engine converts fuel into electricity, which then spins traction motors that drive the axles. By relying on breakthrough technology that uses alternating current (AC) the engineers were able ramp up engine efficiency and hauling capacity without any additional fuel increase. As a result, three GE locomotives do the work of four older locomotives, lowering emissions by 1,400 tons of CO2 and saving the rail operator as much as 160,000 gallons of fuel per year.

The core parts of the locomotives such as engines, alternators, and traction motors will be manufactured in GE plants in Erie and Grove City, Pennsylvania. They will provide work for hundreds of American welders, electricians, machinists and assembly workers. The locomotives will be put together at GE’s customer facility in South Africa.

This is an impressive record. However, freight volume is expected to double again over the next 25 years. In order to maintain this growth, railroads will have to invest beyond new locomotives, tunnels and bridges and other equipment and infrastructure. They will need to make their rails smarter.

GE can help. GE Transportation’s Software and Optimization Solutions unit already offers a powerful suite of digital tools such as the ecomagination-qualified RailEdge Movement Planner. It helps clients like Norfolk Southern to optimize hundreds of train schedules and train velocities so that more locomotives can use the same rail, move faster and save fuel all at the same time. For example, the system allows GE customer Norfolk Southern run more trains at higher speeds and increase the effective capacity of its network. The railroad operator estimates that an increase in velocity in its network by just one mile per hour will save it over $200 million in annual capital and operating expenses.

This week, GE’s rail software portfolio got even stronger when the company acquired the software provider RMI. In North America, RMI serves smaller railroad networks and short lines. GE plans to integrate RMI technology with its products like the Movement Planner and also use the company’s solutions and expertise to enter global markets. “A lot of the global railroads are smaller, mining-type railroads,” said Peter Thomas, who runs the GE Transportation software unit. “RMI’s products and Software as a Service model are a great fit.”

Are we there yet?: RMI’s web-based, mobile software solutions are used to manage mission-critical functions within the rail industry.

The acquisition is part of GE’s broad push into software and big data management. Thomas said that his business will work closely with GE’s new Global Software Center in San Ramon, California, to tap its talent and integrate GE and RMI software solutions.

The San Ramon center will open in 2012 and employ 400 software engineers and support staff. GE currently has 5,000 software engineers on staff and its annual software revenues are about $2.5 billion. GE expects a double-digit growth in the segment from now until 2015.

GE Transportation said that it would spend $35 million to build a new remanufacturing plant for its Evolution Series diesel engines for rail, marine and stationary power applications. The new plant will employ about 250 workers, including the 150 new hires. The company will invest another $37 million to upgrade its existing diesel engine manufacturing plant. Hiring for the new jobs will start in mid-2012.

One application of the Evolution Series engines are locomotives. GE spent eight years and $400 million to develop a better rail engine. Today, the locomotives, which are part of GE’s ecomagination portfolio, are the most fuel efficient engines in its class. Their emissions are 40% lower compared to previous GE models, but they still hold onto their titanic power. One 12-cylinder locomotive can pull the equivalent of 170 Boeing 747 jumbo jets. There are 4,700 of the engines operating in 10 countries in North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australia.

But by the time consensus arrives, it may be too late to develop the technological answers needed to tackle the changing climate, as well as issues tied to population increase and resource scarcity. That’s why six years ago GE launched ecomagination, a core business strategy whose goal has been to generate sustainable economic growth and improve the lives of the world’s 7 billion people.

Ecomagination has focused on developing cleaner sources of energy, reducing emissions and engineering green technologies that help customers save costs, grow more efficient, and gain independence and a competitive edge. So far, GE has invested $5 billion in the development of clean technologies and committed to invest a total of $10 billion by 2015.

Today there are 130 products and solutions in the ecomagination portfolio, spanning a broad range of industries: from powerful and efficient jet engines, to WattStations for charging electric vehicles, thin film solar panels, and clever home energy use monitoring technology.

Ecomagination also makes good business sense. Through 2010, GE has generated $85 billion from ecomagination products and solutions and the portfolio’s revenue grew double the rate of overall GE revenues. Ecomagination-qualified products, which have to meet a rigorous array of criteria, can be used to help customers meet their internal reduction goals. GE has lowered its own greenhouse emissions by 22% from an adjusted 2004 baseline, delivered a 30% reduction in water use, and saved $130 million in energy costs through the implementation of many strategies, including the use of GE’s own eco products.

Take a look at some of the products in the ecomagination portfolio:

 

 

Movement Planner

Business: GE Transportation

Function: Software that enables rail networks to operate more efficiently, increasing speed of delivery, cutting fuel costs and reducing emissions. For a railroad with 20,000 miles of tracks, an increase of just two miles per hour in rail network velocity potentially saves $200 million per year in capital and operating expenses. The algorithm updates in real time based on schedules and information communicated from the trains about their movements relative to one another–every three minutes, to help train dispatchers better manage their network.

Grid IQ Demand Optimization Solution

Business: GE Digital Energy

Function: Grid IQ helps utilities to better manage energy demands and generation capacity. The key part of Grid IQ is software that connects home and building energy solutions, smart meters as well as data links with each other. GE modeling projected that Grid IQ could save a utility with one million consumers and 25% consumer participation in dynamic pricing programs some $38 million per year.

Ecomagination kitchen

Business: GE Appliances

Function: Kitchen electricity use accounts for about 25% of power used by the average home. Ecomagination kitchen is a set of energy efficient appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators and ovens that reduce kitchen electricity use by as much as 20%.

EV Solar Carport

Business: GE Energy Industrial Solutions

Function: On October 2011, GE unveiled its first solar-powered carport in Plainville, Connecticut. Solar panels generate enough energy to offset the power needed to charge—with 6 Level 2 GE DuraStation1 EV charging stations—up to 13 EVs a day with enough juice left over for the parking lot’s overhead lighting.

Movement Planner

Business: GE Transportation

Function: Software that enables rail networks to operate more efficiently, increasing speed of delivery, cutting fuel costs and reducing emissions. For a railroad with 20,000 miles of tracks, an increase of just two miles per hour in rail network velocity potentially saves $200 million per year in capital and operating expenses. The algorithm updates in real time based on schedules and information communicated from the trains about their movements relative to one another–every three minutes, to help train dispatchers better manage their network.

Grid IQ Demand Optimization Solution

Business: GE Digital Energy

Function: Grid IQ helps utilities to better manage energy demands and generation capacity. The key part of Grid IQ is software that connects home and building energy solutions, smart meters as well as data links with each other. GE modeling projected that Grid IQ could save a utility with one million consumers and 25% consumer participation in dynamic pricing programs some $38 million per year.

Ecomagination kitchen

Business: GE Appliances

Function: Kitchen electricity use accounts for about 25% of power used by the average home. Ecomagination kitchen is a set of energy efficient appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators and ovens that reduce kitchen electricity use by as much as 20%.

EV Solar Carport

Business: GE Energy Industrial Solutions

Function: On October 2011, GE unveiled its first solar-powered carport in Plainville, Connecticut. Solar panels generate enough energy to offset the power needed to charge—with 6 Level 2 GE DuraStation1 EV charging stations—up to 13 EVs a day with enough juice left over for the parking lot’s overhead lighting.

 

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GE Transportation has seen strong global demand for its heavy mining equipment this year—so far growing at a double-digit pace. It has reported $2.1 billion in revenues for the first half of 2011, up 45%, and profits at $335 million, up 135%. The GE division has already announced plans to hire for 2,000 jobs in the U.S. in 2011, including 1,100 positions already filled at the Erie plant, which is currently operating at peak capacity for rail and transportation-related products.

GE will spend $95 million on the new factory in Fort Worth and create some 130 manufacturing jobs there by the expected launch in mid-2012. The 236,000 square-foot plant will manufacture and assemble electric motorized wheels powering house-sized mining trucks that top 1.4 million pounds fully loaded. These wheels can be over 13 feet tall and weigh over 100,000 pounds alone. GE invented electric wheel drive systems in 1963 and through constant innovation has remained an industry leader.

In Erie, GE will invest a total $136 million and hire 360 workers. Some $38 million will be used to increase capacity and modernize equipment used to manufacture drive systems for mining trucks, locomotives and other transportation products.

The company will also spend $58 million to build test labs for large-scale diesel engines, and invest in research and testing technology to reduce emissions and improve fuel efficiency of GE locomotives and other heavy-duty engines.
Finally, GE, which has had production facilities in Erie for more than a century, will use $40 million on plant upgrades, site beautification, and a new customer showcase center.

This is the second large investment announced in Fort Worth and Erie this year. In May 2011, GE announced plans to open a $96 million locomotive manufacturing factory. That investment is set to create 500 jobs and further 275 openings beyond 2012. Also in May, GE said that it would add 250 jobs to meet growing demand for GE goods.

* For more news from Erie, please visit Erie Times-News.

While GE Aviation’s fuel-efficient and carrier favorite LEAP engine has been getting a lot of attention recently for bringing significant cost savings and environmental benefits to the skies, GE Transportation’s Evolution Series locomotive engine has quietly been bringing similar emissions reductions, fuel savings and advanced technology to the rails. At this week’s Railway Interchange 2011, a big rail industry conference in Minneapolis, GE Transportation announced that the 4,500th Evolution Series locomotive has just entered revenue service. Those 4,500 locomotives, in use here in the U.S. and all over the world, achieve considerable environmental and cost benefits, summarized in the chart below:

GE plans to invest up to $96 million to build the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Texas. The new 900,000-square-foot facility will house manufacturing and assembly of GE’s rail and transportation-related products, including fuel-efficient locomotives like the Evolution® Series, which reduces emissions by up to 40 percent and cuts fuel use by 5 percent – the equivalent of 640,000 gallons over its lifetime.

Production on the new plant is scheduled to start by 2012.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has already expressed enthusiasm, saying “This investment will create a major locomotive manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, along with hundreds of jobs for Texans and millions in capital investment in the area.”

In Erie, Pennsylvania — GE Transportation’s home for the past 100 years — expansion is also underway. GE’s Erie plant, which employs over 4,500 people, will be hiring an additional 250 production workers. It’s yet another notch in Erie’s job-growth belt: the facility has recalled around 800 production workers since late 2010, and announced 450 new jobs since April (including the 250 announced today). The job growth is a natural outcrop of GE Transportation’s growing business — it received $938 million of orders in the first quarter, and reported $903 million in first-quarter revenues, up 18% year-over-year. Segment profits for the same period were $157 million, up 37% year-over-year.

GE Transportation’s Evolution Series locomotive.

The five agreements are expected to deliver more than $2 billion in revenue for GE, which is the nation’s second-largest manufacturing exporter, and generate more than $1 billion in exports from the U.S. Importantly, they’ll be creating or supporting jobs in both countries — including more than 4,500 U.S. jobs.

The deals include:

• A joint venture between GE Energy and Shenhua Group Corporation signed on Tuesday to develop coal gasification technologies in China, key to commercial-scale deployment of cleaner coal solutions. This collaboration is expected to generate more than $150 million in revenues over five years and $100 million of U.S. exports in services, R&D and licensing. It will also support job creation in the United States and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

• A collaborative agreement between GE Energy and China Huadian Corporation to develop distributed energy combined heat and power projects, which are expected to become the most efficient natural gas solutions for China. GE forecasts at least 50 gas-turbine generator sets being sold and installed in China in the next five years, resulting in $500 million of revenue for the partnership and $350 million in U.S. gas turbine exports from Cincinnati, Houston, Colorado and Oregon. This will support more than 2,100 jobs throughout GE’s domestic U.S. supply chain.

• A joint venture between GE Aviation and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to develop and market the new generation of avionics systems with an immediate priority on supporting development of China’s first home-grown big passenger jet. The joint venture will result in $300 million in exports from Michigan, Florida and Ohio and support at least 300 high-tech jobs in each the United States and China.

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to provide $350 million worth of U.S.-built locomotives, locomotive sub-assembly kits, service support and signaling systems for China’s railway upgrade. The export order could support 2,000 U.S. jobs

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the MOR to reaffirm both parties’ intent to collaborate on High-Speed Rail (HSR) and electric rail opportunities in North America. The partnership represents a joint investment of approximately $50 million with the potential to support 250 U.S. jobs by 2012 for the first phase of the agreement.

These agreements build on a larger-scale commitment GE has already made last November when GE announced plans to invest more than $2 billion in China through 2012 to expand the company’s R&D and innovation capabilities and create new local partnerships.

Additionally, GE has been selected as one of 10 founding U.S. companies to participate in a new U.S.-China public-private partnership on healthcare, which was also launched during President Hu’s visit and aims to bolster bilateral cooperation advancing technology in and increasing accessibility to healthcare services across China.

Clean tech: The development of coal gasification technologies, such as those in the plant above, will support job creation in the U.S. and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

Global growth: Among the agreements already in place are those for cleaner coal plants, avionics, and high-speed passenger rail in the U.S. — all of which are helping create and support U.S. manufacturing and R&D jobs.

With China experiencing one of the largest rural to urban migrations in history, a number of aviation, energy and rail agreements have been signed between GE and China over the last 14 months. During Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington this week, updates will be announced on the deals, which are designed to help one of the world’s fastest growing markets meet its infrastructure challenges in sustainable ways — and to create and support U.S. jobs, provide unprecedented access to Chinese technologies and markets, and generate a new wave of growth for GE.

In terms of jobs, the deals will support nearly 4,500 in the U.S., including those along GE’s U.S. supply chain. The lynchpin of the latest aviation partnership is the formation of an avionics joint venture between GE Aviation and China’s AVIC, first announced in November 2009, which marks a significant milestone in the growing aerospace relationship between Chinese industry and GE Aviation since the mid-1980s. There are already about 150 GE employees working at our Grand Rapids, Michigan engineering facility to help develop the central avionics nervous system that will power China’s new C919 narrow body commercial jetliner, of which more than 2,300 are expected to be made during the 20-year lifetime of the program. (Meet some of the engineers on the Michigan project in a GE Reports video.) The partnership will support and maintain at least 300 high-tech jobs locally in each country.

In energy, efforts center on helping China’s tackle its growing need for power, which is expected to double in the next 10 years. The energy deals, by expanding U.S. exports, create or support thousands of U.S. jobs. As Bloomberg News notes in its story this morning, one involves the potential sale of 500 gas turbines — derived from GE Aviation jet engines — that will allow China to use local sources of gas in the most efficient way across dozens of decentralized locations. That agreement will create or support 2,100 jobs in the U.S. economy as GE uses a wide range of U.S. subcontractors for equipment from companies in Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Oregon. The turbine deal with Huadian Engineering Group represents a $350 million export opportunity for GE.

At the same time, GE and Shenhua are forming a coal gasification joint venture to sell and develop gasification technology and advance the deployment of “cleaner coal” solutions in China. This new company would combine GE’s expertise in industrial gasification technologies with Shenhua’s expertise in building and operating coal gasification facilities. The collaboration will support hundreds of engineering, services and R&D jobs in GE’s gasification headquarters in Houston, in Greenville, South Carolina and at the GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. The new research agreements have been forged amidst a backdrop of a growing GE R&D presence in China that is tapping into the country’s homegrown scientific talent via GE’s Global Research Center located in Shanghai and new regional lab sites announced in November.

In the rail partnership, GE and China’s Ministry of Railways are already working together to develop high-speed passenger rail technology for the U.S. market — and to find ways to help China upgrade its rail system with GE locomotive and railway signaling technologies. The passenger rail cooperation agreement alone is an investment that could sustain or create approximately 250 jobs in the U.S. by 2012 in the first phase of the agreement. GE Transportation CEO Lorenzo Simonelli told Bloomberg that GE will also be signing deals that “may bring in $1.4 billion and add or preserve 2,000 U.S. jobs, including an order for 500 exported locomotive kits and related services valued at $350 million.”

As GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt underscored when many of the collaborations were first announced, “new global sales will be a direct result of these collaborations, safeguarding and growing U.S. jobs.” In its story, Bloomberg notes that GE’s China sales are rising at about 20 percent annually and should grow in the “high double-digits” in 2011.

* Read a Q&A about the avionics deal
* Read a fact sheet about GE’s China deals
* Read about GE’s advanced coal technologies
* Learn more about the high-speed rail goals
* Read the “ABCs of IGCC Technology” on GE Reports
* Read more China stories on GE Reports