Next week the 197 signatory nations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will convene in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP27). It’s the largest gathering of governments, businesses, NGOs, and civil society groups coming together to tackle the climate crisis and push forward on goals to protect the planet.
GE is no stranger to the challenge. Through its work in renewable energy, gas power, small modular nuclear, the grid, software, and aviation, the company is helping to build the world that COP27 envisions. Below are 27 ways GE has — in just the past 12 months — advanced the energy transition to drive decarbonization and innovated a future of smarter, more sustainable flight.
1. An airport in India that runs entirely on hydropower and solar.
2. United completes the first passenger flight with one of its two engines using 100% sustainable aviation fuel.
3. Gas turbines that will help Malaysia transition from coal to natural gas and can make it possible to reduce carbon emissions by up to 67%.
4. Software designed to help manage the grid of the future.
5. A Singapore service center that helps keep electricity flowing to homes and businesses in Asia.
6. Digitizing factories to help make manufacturing more efficient and more sustainable.
7. More efficient AC substations to enable power transmission from an offshore wind farm near New York that will help power 500,000 homes in that state.
8. Canada’s plan to diversify its energy mix by bringing its first small modular nuclear reactor online by 2030.
9. A natural gas plant in Brazil that aims to enable more renewables and help the country remain self-reliant when hydropower runs low.
10. Predictive analytics software that helps energy providers foresee problems and head them off.
11. Airbus and CFM International plan a flight demonstrator for the RISE program to develop a jet engine that would be 20% more fuel-efficient than the most efficient jet engine in use today.
12. A DOE grant to retrofit gas turbines to increase their capacity to run on higher percentages of carbon-free hydrogen.
13. A battery energy storage system that advances local PV solar.
14. A Pacific Northwest pumped-storage hydropower project that will enable more real-time energy trading.
15. A pilot project in New York State designed to demonstrate the viability of hydrogen for plants around the world.
16. A digital suite that helps utilities monitor their renewables fleets.
17. Hydrogen gets one step closer to real-world testing in commercial aviation.
18. The DOE and GE work together to bring down the cost of carbon capture and reduce gas plant emissions.
19. A partnership with NASA and Boeing to develop and test a hybrid electric plane by the mid-2020s.
20. Software designed to provide airline pilots with tailored insights for reducing CO2 and fuel consumption.
21. Gas turbines in Poland that are helping the country make the coal-to-gas transition.
22. Qatar Airways orders the GE9X engine, the world’s most powerful jet engine and 10% more fuel-efficient than its predecessors, for its freight operations.
23. Small modular nuclear reactors draw interest from Sweden and the Baltic states.
24. Aeroderivative gas turbines to help Australia move away from coal and build out the Asian Renewable Energy Hub.
25. Software that uses “digital twins” to manage a future with more distributed energy resources.
26. Two KLM flights that used 39% sustainable aviation fuel in their fuel-efficient GEnx engines.
27. Heavy-duty gas turbines to help China transition from coal to meet its aggressive decarbonization goals.
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