GE's Mark Vachon: Ecomagination & Natural Gas Can Work Together

How'sGE's ecomaginationgoing?

I put that question today to Mark Vachon, who is vice president for ecomagination at GE. He replied by talking about natural gas.

"The large macro trend of gas is massive," he said. "Our oil and gas business will be a huge beneficiary."

An abundance of shale gasin the U.S., andmethane gas reservesin Australia present a wealth of opportunities for GE, which plays all along the supply chain for natural gas.

"We're a massive player in gas exploration," Mark said. "We have a water business that can deal with issues in the fracking process." And, of course, GE sells lots of gas-burning turbines, including a new combined cycle power plant, currently available in Europe, that enables gas to be burned more efficiently and in concert with renewable energy. (See my June blogpost,GE's big bet on natural gas)

But can you put "ecomagination and shale gas in the same sentence? Yes," Mark said. GE will focus on making shale gas cleaner, "with technologies like zero-leak valves" and water filtration products like amobile evaporator(pictured above) that is basically a truck (see below) "designed to enable on-site frac water recycling, reducing the volume of wastewater and fresh water that needs to be hauled to and from the project site."

不管喜欢与否，天然气是当今能源业务的重要故事。这对GE很好。考虑到我们的国内供应，这可能对美国有好处。对于气候而言，这是否是好事是一个悬而未决的问题。如果燃烧更清洁的燃气厂取代了肮脏的燃煤电厂，它们将为气候解决方案带来有意义但渐进的进步。如果廉价，丰富的天然气会导致低碳可再生能源的发展，或者阻止对新的清洁能源业务的投资，那就是一个问题。很有可能，这两者都会做到。

I met Mark near the U.S. Capitol, where he was headed for meetings on energy security with House leader John Boehner, among others. He has overseen GE's ecomagination portfolio for Jeff Immelt since last October. Ecomagination products include efficient aircraft engines and locomotives, appliances, and LED and CFL light bulbs as well as GE's gas, nuclear, renewable energy and smart-grid businesses; they'll generate $20 billion to $22 billion in revenues this year, Mark estimates. The 52-year-old exec, who has been with GE for 28 years, was previously President & CEO of GE Healthcare's $9 billion Americas Region. He still lives in Milwaukee, where the healthcare business is based, but because one of his jobs is to make ecomagination more global, he has traveled this year to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Israel, Europe, Australia and China, and he's soon headed to Brazil.

So if the gas business is booming, where are the challenges in the ecomagination portfolio?

Nuclear's an obvious one. The son of a nuclear engineer, Mark believes in the technology but says, post-Fukushima, that "it's very clear, at least for the moment, that we're in a hiatus." But, he added, "the nuclear industry is very good at learning from its mistakes."

Wind, too, faces short-term issues, he said: "It's clearly challenged over the next couple of years." Without clean-energy mandates or tax subsidies, wind struggles to compete with cheap natural gas. And there's uncertainty about those subsidies, particularly in the U.S. where Congress is looking to manage budget deficits.

This past spring, GE made a major commitment to solar PV, drawing on technology developed at the National Renewable Energy Lab. Mark said the company will site a manufacturing plant in the U.S. to make the panels.

Does GE remain committed to ecomagination despite the gloomy policy environment in the U.S.? After all, Immelt put his reputation on the line by becoming a vocal advocate for climate regulations through theU.S. Climate Action Partnership. That didn't end well.

"Business has to step up and act," Mark said, nothing that GE plans to buy 25,000 electric cars for its own fleet.

"We are not going to wait for policy," he added. Good thing.

[Editor's Note: Mark Vachon will be a featured speaker at the 2011 GreenBiz Innovation Forum.See herefor more information.]