May 1st, 2009
From Green Right Now Reports
GE Global Research said this week it will create an Ecoassessment Center of Excellence to study ways of assessing and managing the environmental impact throughout the full lifecycle of its products.
The new center is expected to evaluate products for their environmental impact beginning with the raw materials used in early stage research through every step, ending with the disposal of each product at the completion of its useful life. GE said a dedicated, multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers will systematically develop better, more energy efficient ways to design and manage products.
“As part of GE’s Ecomagination initiative, we have always said ‘green is green.’ With our, Ecoassessment Center of Excellence, it’s really more like ‘green is green is green,” Bill Flanagan, who leads GE’s Ecoassessment Center of Excellence, said in a statement. “GE can make money by providing clean technology solutions, while also reducing the environmental footprint of developing those solutions. It’s a win-win-win equation.”
Ecomagination is GE’s program for developing clean technology and product solutions. As part of the initiative, GE said it will double its level of investment in clean R+D from $700 million in 2005 to more than $1.5 billion by 2010. Since the program launched in 2005, GE has increased the number of environmental products from 17 to more than 80.
GE said Flanagan and his team have several projects and activities underway, which can be viewed on GE’s technology blog, From Edison’s Desk. Highlights include:
- A pilot project with GE Healthcare’s global design organization to explore the use of life cycle assessment and eco-design tools for a sophisticated piece of medical equipment.
- A look at the lifecycle assessment process, including the importance and value of mathematics and computation in performing a product assessment.
- An assessment of the environmental impact of biofuels. The entry discusses a few different projects that have provided researchers with key insights.
