General Electric Invests in Renewable Energy
The 2GreenEnergy mantra “It’s business” is played out in this interview with General Electric’s Energy Infrastructure CEO John Krenicki on the company’s investment in renewables. As with most such interviews, the content here is extremely broad, general, and at times evasive; I find it funny when I see someone on camera answer a direct question in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the query. But to be fair, I suppose that’s part of the skill-set of the CEO of any Fortune 25 company: staying on-message.
It’s important for us all to understand that a company with the global footprint of GE has (apparently profitably) invested billions of dollars of resources into solar and wind. The wind business that they bought from Enron for $300 million did $6 billion in high-margin revenue last year. That gets a lot of attention from Wall Street.
And let’s not forget that all this is being done in the context of renewable energy that comes with a price tag that is significantly above that of energy from fossil fuels. So exactly when will the price of renewable energy fall to the point that it’s competitive with fossil fuels — and coal, etc. can become a thing of the past? A friend of mine recommends this 83-pager on wind power that purports to answer that question. But I can see from its synopsis that it boils down to this: with natural gas demand factors falling and the supply factors skyrocketing, renewables will not be directly cost-competitive for some time.
Of course, here is the real problem that advocates for renewables face: customers of fossil fuel-based energy are not paying anywhere near the true costs. When we buy a tank of gasoline, the manufacturer simply passes the cost of cleaning up the mess on to future generations — and they’re so powerful that no one even thinks of taking them to task. What would happen if we were to close that loophole? What if the price of a gallon of gasoline rose to include the cost of the healthcare to deal with the lung disease that is caused by burning it, and to include the cost of pulling the CO2 and other garbage out of the atmosphere?
The answer is obvious: We’d have a level playing field on which electric vehicles and renewable energy would be rightly perceived as the bargain of the millennium. And that, in very short order, would be the end of internal combustion engines and the oil companies in very short order. But as long as the oil and coal companies retain the power to defecate on the health of future generations and nothing happens to change the way we deal with them, renewable energy will continue to fight an uphill battle.
That’s great that GE continues to push into the energy market, but they still won’t give their employees (like my father at NBC) discounts on their PV panels, like they do for GE washers & dryers. And last time I checked, the rooftops on all the NBC-Universal buildings around here (sunny Burbank) are quite barren. Even if GE drops NBCU from their portfolio, they should still have PV up everywhere, if nothing more than as greenwashing.
There is a nuclear technology on which more research should be done.
It is possible to make nuclear reactors which use thorium for fuel instead of uranium. For safety, they can be operated in sub-critical mode so that run-away is impossible. They can also be designed to run in a critical mode, but to stop reacting if the temperature becomes excessive. Either approach makes them much safer than our current uranium reactors.
Thorium reactors generate far less nuclear waste than uranium reactors and the waste that they do generate decays very quickly so that it need not be stored for thousands of years. Also, thorium reactors can be designed to burn the waste from uranium reactors thereby solving the existing nuclear waste problem.
For more information, do a google search on “thorium reactor.”
I am not an expert on this subject. However, from what I have read, it is a technology which should be researched and considered since it could possibly provide power safely and perhaps also more economically than wind and solar.
There are lots of technologies that make sense for replacing the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. But, when push comes to shove, the so called environmentalists cave and will reject their own pet technologies when they are close to home. I believe that the ultimate motive behind the green technologies is to collapse the political and cultural system that is in place and replace it with a totalitarian big brother knows best governance. Free
market principles are an anathema to the green folks.
At the same time, I do believe that alternative energies will replace the current sourcing long before we run out of fossil fuels. The market will determine the sweet spot. We should remove all governmentsubsidies from all energy generation schemes.
The government did not subsidize the development of automobiles, airplanes, telephone, electric light bulbs etc.
Our human ingenuity and venture capitalists will fund any and all inventions that will be profitable.
GE has to get more involved in the hottest sector of growth in the world. They would be remise if they didn’t. For 30 years GE stock grew at 10-16% but in the past 7 years they have been pulled down by the economic problems of the world. They do some solar PV and Wind but need to step it up.
I see two challenges with renewables, particularly with solar PV. The first is one of scale. Big business wants to see how it can continue to make money out of the people by keeping systems big and selling the product. The man in the street (me) wants to have small rooftop type systems so that he/she can fuel his/her electric car for “free” after the cells are paid for. These strategies will always be in conflict.
The second is one of control. Once a person has PV on their roof, and/or a wind turbine on their property, then the energy companies have no control over those people. They may not acknowledge this, but if it is in my mind, then you know it is in theirs.
To me, they key is this – if you have money to invest do you invest it in becoming self-sufficient and purchasing PV cells, or do you invest it in the stock market (GE or other) and let other people make money out of your investment while it returns a portion to you?
I like Craig’s points made in the video about business today, but they apply to any business, not just green ones.
There is a problem with solar PV on rooftops which is not being addressed.
A roof does not last forever. Eventually, it has to be replaced. Having a solar water heater, solar heat for the house, or a PV system greatly complicates having the roof replaced, as I discovered the hard way many years ago. A re-roofing job will generally require removing the solar energy equipment and replacing it after the work has been done.
Before installing a solar energy system, be sure to consider the complications which WILL result when the house has to be re-roofed. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a solar system should not be installed, but rather, that it would be unwise to install it before taking everything into consideration. If a decision is made to instal a solar energy system, it might be wise, before beginning, to ensure that the roof is in good condition, or perhaps to instal a metal roof that will have a very long life.