Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, offered an interesting rundown of the economy, Obama and alternative energy at the annual Business for Social Responsibility conference in New York. In many ways, his reading means GE is well positioned for the strategic opportunity it saw — call it the great greening — even with a tightening of regulation. According to a post by Fortune’s Marc Gunther:
The GE chief executive didn’t put it exactly this way, but he made clear that the meltdown on Wall Street and the election of Barack Obama will bring an end to a couple of decades of nearly blind faith in free markets and deregulation. (Heck, even Alan Greenspan has admitted that.) Going forward, stronger government intervention will be a fact of life, here in the U.S. and around the world.
But Immelt, a confessed Republican, didn’t see that as a roadblock going forward. “Clean energy is a combination of technology and public policy,” Immelt said. “I think this is imminently solvable. It creates jobs. There’s not a lot of downside.” Immelt, like many others, thinks alternative energy will be the cornerstone of this administration’s economic plan — one reason GE is putting half of its $6 billion R&D budget into alternative energy and clean water technologies. (That alternative energy sector also includes nuclear).
The science of climate change is “pretty much irrefutable,” he said. What’s more, GE’s business of selling products that help solve environmental problems is growing, from about $5 billion when EcoMagination was launched to about $17 billion today.
So in a sense, the Obama win — if interpreted correctly by Immelt — is a win for GE’s strategic opportunity in alternative energy. Which raises the question about how other companies are positioning for this new environment too.