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Nine years of investments in efficiency and environmental sustainability have been good business for General Electric GE -0.57%, even as the conglomerate prepares to take a major global role in one of the dirtiest of fuels: coal.

 

In a public “letter on sustainability” released Monday, GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt hailed nearly a decade of what the company calls its “Ecomagination” program — an effort to direct research dollars into improving efficiency and limiting the climate-harming pollution given off by its heavy industrial products like jet engines, power turbines, and locomotives.

 

The program has been a great success, the company said, alongside corporate efforts to cut GE’s own power, water and fuel use.

 

Yet thanks to GE’s impending takeover of most of the energy assets of France-based Alstom — a deal championed by Mr. Immelt that drives toward a critical goal of his corporate legacy — the company could soon be a major global player in the business of coal-fired power plants, a major producer of the pollutants believed to cause climate change.

 

Alstom is a global leader in the market for steam turbines for coal plants, according to analysts who follow both companies. And GE executives said one advantage of the Alstom acquisition would be to give GE access to the substantial business of service for steam turbines at existing plants and new installations in areas where Alstom was expecting business to grow, like China. (GE executives also say the company could see an advantage in “combined cycle” power plants, which typically generate electricity from a gas turbine, whose exhaust heat is then used to power a steam turbine for greater efficiency.)

 

A GE spokeswoman said there is no contrast between the company’s green goals and its new focus on wringing earnings out of Alstom’s steam turbine business.

 

“GE believes diversity and competition among fuels is necessary to drive innovation in energy,” spokeswoman Megan Parker said in an email. “Ecomagination works to develop technologies and solutions, across all aspects of our energy businesses, that help our customers be more productive and efficient.”

 

GE has poured more than $12 billion into research and development of products in its Ecomagination portfolio, the company says. In 2013, GE racked up $28 billion in sales of products in the portfolio, which includes everything from its new GEnX jet engines to LED lighting, digital X-Rays and wind turbines.

 

The company is “focused on minimizing our footprint while maximizing our impact — helping to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges in infrastructure, transport, healthcare and energy,” Mr. Immelt said in his letter.

 

One example: GE has been working to refine cleaner methods of generating power from coal since Ecomagination’s 2005 launch, Ms. Parker said. At the time, executives including Mr. Immelt said that they saw great promise in “gasification,” gas is produced from fuels like coal.

 

After absorbing Alstom, GE will still be the leader in gas turbines, too.

 

 

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/