Greening of GE

GE started a big ecomagination advertising campaign. I think that proactively spending to be a net cleaner of the environment by buying up carbon emission permits (where they are for sale) would be more effective than their research spending at abating pollution. But of course, the image is more important to them than the results.

If GE wanted to reduce internal pollutants at lowest cost, it would have an internal tax on GE polluters and provide cash to corporate abaters. The pollution permit trading scheme would decentralize the decisions about what abatement projects to fund out to the individual profit and loss units. That is good public policy for the world if it decides to cut carbon emissions. It is also good public policy for countries, states or cities that want to cut the maximum emissions for the least social dislocation.

China and India have probably reached the tipping point in many of their cities where their inhabitants are rich enough to want a cleaner environment even if it has some associated increases in the cost of doing business. US reached that point in about the 1940s and has been getting cleaner ever since.

I think the campaign may be a flop. It sounds to me like Echo Machination and is a little too reminiscent of HP’s Invent! campaign. But they are the masters of their sound and image and they are probably right on the winning emotion if not on the details.

For two takes on “echo think” (fka group think), read this novel-length fictional account, Rigged by Ross Miller, my former boss and czar of risk management at GE R&D. There is another article in today’s FT (trial/subscription required after first two paragraphs).