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GE Plants and Warehouses Lead ecomagination Charge

CLEVELAND, OH — Over the next two years, 148 GE Industrial manufacturing plants and warehouses worldwide — 110 in the Americas, 36 in Europe and two in Asia — will undergo extensive lighting retrofits that could cut annual lighting energy costs at each facility an average of 50 percent.

Based on extensive energy-savings analysis conducted at 65 of the 148 facilities, the retrofit will allow each location, on an average annualized basis, to reduce energy consumption by 1.4 million KwH and realize approximately $86,000 in energy-cost savings. Estimates for the completed 148-facility retrofit include reducing energy consumption by 210.5 million KwH and saving $12.8 million in energy costs, annually, when compared with the older lighting.

Another forecasted environmental benefit tied to the 148-facility retrofit is the production of 155,700 fewer metric tons of CO2, which equates to the ongoing elimination of pollution from nearly 30,000 average-sized cars or the good that comes from planting over 70-square miles of trees.

"This initiative is the epitome of ecomagination," says John G. Rice, a vice chairman of GE and president and CEO of GE Industrial, a business that consists of Consumer & Industrial, Plastics, Advanced Materials, Security, Equipment Services, Sensing, Inspection Technologies and GE Fanuc. "It's a story of how environmental awareness can become contagious ... a world-class lighting ecomagination testimonial in the making."

Rising Energy Costs Spur Initiative
In August 2004, before GE launched its ecomagination environmental initiative, Jack Fish, vice president of global manufacturing, GE Consumer & Industrial, one of eight GE Industrial businesses, asked his team to devise a plan for cutting energy costs by 20 percent. He wanted to counter forecasted energy price increases that were sure to affect the profitability of GE Consumer & Industrial's Appliances, Lighting, Lighting Systems and Electrical Distribution operating units.

Conversations with plant managers and Lighting executives kept returning to lighting retrofits, which the Lighting unit had been promoting externally among customers as the fastest way to slow down energy meters, and thereby cut wasteful spending on energy.

"An overall cost-of-light calculation used by the Lighting business sealed the deal," notes Fish.

The calculation points out that as little as 4 percent of the overall cost of light may be attributable to the cost of lamps. Eight percent is commonly traced to installation and maintenance, while the majority, as much as 88 percent, relates to energy consumption. (These percentages are approximations. Actual costs will vary based on local electricity and labor rates, the nature of the facility, the type of lighting installed and other factors.)

"Very few GE Consumer & Industrial plants were using energy-efficient linear fluorescent lamps," reports Fish. "We simply weren't taking our own good advice. Now, though, we're on track to achieve a 50-percent reduction in lighting energy consumption at these plants. That's two-and-a-half times our initial savings target."

Word of Savings Travels Fast
Initially about 50 GE Consumer & Industrial plants were identified for retrofits. Soon thereafter, however, due to the same performance attributes that attract energy-conscious customers to GE lighting products and solutions, interest in the plants initiative mushroomed across GE Industrial locations globally.

The retrofit now encompasses Consumer & Industrial, Plastics, Advanced Materials, Security, Sensing, Inspection Technologies and GE Fanuc. In many of the plants targeted for retrofits — 10 plants are converted as of January 2006 — older technologies such as standard high-pressure sodium or standard metal halide lamps are the previous lamps of choice.

Primary to each upgrade are six-lamp T8 High Bay linear fluorescent systems featuring UltraMax® electronic ballasts, which cut watts used by over 50 percent — from 465 watts per fixture at the ballast to 220 watts per fixture at the ballast. This energy-saving choice also dramatically upgrades the quality of light. With the new T8 lamps, the color-rendering index (CRI) climbs to 80 from 22 CRI for standard high-pressure sodium lamps or 65 CRI for standard metal halide lamps. The horizontal foot candle measurement — how wide light spreads out as it's projected from a fixture — more than triples.

In addition to the projected reduction in energy consumption by 210.5 million KwH and the $12.8 million in energy-cost savings enabled by the 148 retrofits, based on the averages established through GE's energy-savings analysis at 65 of 148 locations, GE plans to pursue an accelerated tax deduction incentive allowed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This document contains "forward-looking statements"—that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," or "will." Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. For us, particular uncertainties arise from the behavior of financial markets, including fluctuations in interest rates and commodity prices, from future integration of acquired businesses, from future financial performance of major industries which we serve, including, without limitation, the air and rail transportation, energy generation and healthcare industries, from unanticipated loss development in our insurance businesses, and from numerous other matters of national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different than those expressed in our forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements.

GE Consumer & Industrial spans the globe as an industry leader in major appliance, lighting and integrated industrial equipment, systems and services. Providing solutions for commercial, industrial and residential use in more than 100 countries, GE Consumer & Industrial uses innovative technologies and "ecomagination," a GE initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that help customers and consumers meet pressing environmental challenges, to deliver comfort, convenience and electrical protection and control. General Electric (NYSE: GE) brings imagination to work, selling products under the Monogram®, Profile™ GE®, Hotpoint®, SmartWater™ Reveal®, and Energy Smart® consumer brands, and Entellisys™ industrial brand. For more information, consumers may visit www.ge.com.

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