Goals Gone Wild

GE's green division makes money, makes plans

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt gushed about his company's green successes at a second-anniversary celebration for the "ecomagination" unit yesterday, noting that it had sales of $12 billion last year, has back orders for $50 billion more, and will "blow away" the original goal of $20 billion by 2010. Hooray for innovation! We're ignoring the bad feelings about nuclear power and labor just for a second here so we can smile! It's Friday, for Pete's sake! In tandem with several other big-name partners, Immelt also revealed 11 new greener products and services, including the world's first diesel-electric hybrid locomotive and a global alliance with BP to develop 10 to 15 hydrogen power projects. Charles Zimmerman, vice president of Wal-Mart -- which will use GE's LED bulbs in refrigerated cases at over 500 of its stores -- spies an official tipping point: "People will look back 20 years from now and see what GE, BP, and Wal-Mart did at this point in time and will say, 'That's when it happened.'"