3/23/07, 5:29 pm EST

Assignment Ten Finalist: Kavitha Vignarajah on General Electric

Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

General Electric

by Kavitha Vignarajah
Age: 28

In the early days of the green movement, eco-warriors routinely staged boisterous demonstrations against corporations engaging in environmentally-unfriendly practices. Discovering that this strategy brought them no closer to their primary objective— a cleaner planet— environmentalists changed tack, focusing instead on working with their former adversaries.

As a result of these partnerships, one such penitent offender, General Electric, has, thanks to the leadership of Jeff Immelt and his “Ecomagination” vision, emerged as the gold standard of assimilating eco-friendly solutions into savvy business initiatives. GE’s approach to cleaning up its act is three-fold: cutting manufacturing waste, producing greener goods for consumer use, and supporting alternative fuel research (GE has designed solar cells used in several lower Manhattan buildings and is actively involved in the Global Climate and Energy Project). In reference to the latter, Scott Donnelly, Senior VP of GE Global Research commented, “The challenge before the world is to find energy systems that will meet rising demand and at the same time lower greenhouse gas emissions.”

In an age where pretensions to environmental awareness are often used to gloss over egregious abuses (e.g. GM has made overtures towards hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles while aggressively marketing gas-guzzling Hummers and Escalades), GE has embraced the eco-ethos wholeheartedly; so much so that the EPA bestowed upon it the Sustained Excellence Award (2006). Kathleen Hogan (EPA) stated that GE was a “true [model] for improving energy efficiency across the country”.

How do these policies affect GE’s bottomline? Positively. Cognizant that future environmental regulation will necessitate eco-friendly products, Immelt successfully positioned GE as a market leader in the sector, thereby countering former President George H. W. Bush’s notoriously misguided and myopic argument that environmental awareness is detrimental to profit margins. It’s as if someone finally saw the light— shining from an energy efficient fluorescent light bulb.