A charming aphorism like “A dollar saved is a dollar earned” probably sounds old-fashioned to the modern ear. In the world of manufacturing, however, where gains from efficiency can be substantial, the observation stands as an enduring truth. Today’s great industrial game, while still concentrating on financial savings, is very much directed to emissions savings, and all the ways to reduce energy inputs. How to approach that, exactly?
GE Vernova sets its ambitions and accountability for its ongoing decarbonization push through its Sustainability Framework. The four pillars of the Sustainability Framework are the center of its mission: electrify, which acknowledges the company’s role in helping the world gain access to electricity; decarbonize, which highlights GE Vernova as a producer of energy technology aiming to lower carbon intensity to the grid; conserve, a commitment to lowering its own carbon output in global operations; and finally thrive addresses the need for a safe and supportive work environment not just for the company’s own employees, but across its network of suppliers. “Thrive really encompasses all four of the pillars,” says Tran Che, director of sustainability and human rights at GE Vernova. “We’re creating technology that electrifies and decarbonizes, while being mindful of the factory floor for how we conserve our resources, all as we keep the safety of people and their rights in mind.”
Jessica Lough, who leads the Climate Strategy and Operations team at GE Vernova, says the company actively cultivates a sustainability mindset as part of its ongoing efforts in efficiency and decarbonization. “This begins with the people who actually work in manufacturing facilities, who are there every day, thinking about how to make their work more sustainable.” Lough says the company is aggressively tracking more than 100 efficiency and sustainability projects worldwide, ranging from upgrading building insulation to the more widespread adoption of heat pumps. “Manufacturing is a very intensive process for carbon, for waste, for water,” she says. “Being in tune with those processes, understanding them — that all takes place on the manufacturing floor, and that’s where this journey to sustainability really begins.”
As an energy manufacturer, GE Vernova aims to continuously wring out inefficiencies not just from the products it makes for customers, like turbines, but in the facilities that make the turbines. Every little bit counts, especially with 100 manufacturing sites operating across the globe.
“When we look at decarbonizing the manufacturing floor, making our manufacturing processes more efficient, we are going to include a focus next year on addressing our electricity usage,” says Lough. In celebration of Earth Week this year, she notes, at least 80 of the company’s manufacturing locations participated in a kaizen,giving employees a chance to “put on their sustainability hats,” and that resulted in a number of great projects, from broader use of LED lighting to better doors and other building features. Individually, these efforts represent modest gains. But when you add them all up, and repeat the process each year, real gains can be made.
This month, more than a year after it became a standalone company, GE Vernova released its second Sustainability Report, which records the company’s first full year of sustainability performance against its framework goals. In a commitment to transparency, the company has even brought in a third party to check those numbers, according to Che. “We received limited assurance,” she says, “on our greenhouse gas inventory — Scope 1, 2, and 3, category 11.” (Scope 3, category 11 emissions are the expected lifetime emissions of relevant products sold.) “What this means is that an external auditor has reviewed our carbon numbers to make sure there aren’t any material errors. This serves as an essential step toward more rigorous verification.”
In his letter introducing this year’s report, Chief Sustainability Officer Roger Martella writes, “Our emphasis reflecting our first year as GE Vernova’s sustainability performance focuses on our proud legacy of manufacturing. We have some unique history here. Thomas Edison started the first electrification revolution ~135 years ago in Schenectady, NY. Today, one of our most important — I’d argue one of the world’s most important — factories sits there. Our employees build critical generators to provide dispatchable power for the planet under the same roof as the largest wind turbines made in America and exported to other countries.”
The four pillars of GE Vernova’s Sustainability Framework are not restricted to the factory floors of the company’s manufacturing facilities. According to Che, GE Vernova extends its philosophy of a safe and healthy work environment to all its suppliers, so that they too are encouraged to uncover efficiencies and lower the carbon footprint of the equipment they produce.
Che says the company’s overall goal to ship more than 150 gigawatts of new power capacity by 2030 — whether that’s new nuclear, natural gas, or wind capacity — will be achieved in part by bringing everyone together into the same sustainability protocol, from the company’s internal research center to its own workers and suppliers. “We believe in safe and decent work for everybody,” says Che. Her view is that global electrification itself is one of the most basic tools to advance human prosperity, and human rights, and that GE Vernova is in a unique position to carry that message out to the world.
Click here to read GE Vernova’s 2024 Sustainability Report.