General Electric set out a series of ambitious goals for itself when it kicked off its Ecomagination campaign back in 2005, setting revenue projections for a green product line, establishing targets for reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions, and slashing the amount of emissions associated with every dollar of revenue by 2012. Today GE released the annual report for 2008, the first benchmark year in the plan it drafted four years ago. (GE set benchmark goals for 2008 and 2010 leading up to the big 2012 target.) So far, the company says overall it’s on track to meet its goals for 2012, but at least one big hurdle remains: Turning its green product line, the Ecomagination portfolio, into a major moneymaker during an economic downturn.

GE came close to its 2010 goal of spending $1.5 billion on clean technology development last year, investing $1.4 billion (up from $750 million in 2005), but the revenue side could prove more difficult. The company said in a release today that its goal of bringing in $25 billion in sales revenue from Ecomagination products by 2010 represents “a stretch target” in the current economic climate. Calling it a “stretch” gives GE a bit of an out for next year, but the company insists it’s going to stick with the game plan and shoot for $25 billion. GE reports that revenue from products in its Ecomagination portfolio grew 21 percent last year to $17 billion, up from $14 billion in 2007.

On greenhouse gas emissions, GE says it has reduced intensity — the ratio of emissions to company revenue — by 41 percent since the 2004 baseline year, beating its own target of a 30 percent reduction in 2008. GE set out to reduce overall emissions by only 1 percent by 2012, but in 2008 it says they dropped 13 percent from 2004, suggesting that goal was somewhat modest. The company says it has also been able to boost energy efficiency more and faster than expected; GE aimed to improve energy efficiency by 30 percent by the end of 2012, but says it has already achieved improvements of 37 percent compared with 2004.
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