I would be remiss if I didn’t draw attention to a major announcement today by General Electric Co., one of the world’s largest companies by revenue with a $385 billion market capitalization.

Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, launched a cleantech initiative called “Ecomagination.” Essentially, the company has decided to devote a tremendous amount of resources to the cleantech market, coming out with products that are cleaner and more efficient.

“We will focus our unique energy, technology, manufacturing and infrastructure capabilities to develop tomorrow’s solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger materials, efficient lighting and water purification technology,” said Immelt.

“We will establish partnerships with our customers to tackle the most pressing environmental challenges and double our research spending to develop the products and services they need. And we will use these technologies to improve our own energy efficiency and environmental performance.”

Specifically, GE will double its annual R&D spending on cleaner technologies to $1.5 billion (U.S.) by 2010. It will reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions by 1 per cent by 2012, keeping in mind that by taking no action the company’s greenhouse gas emissions would have risen 40 per cent over that same period.

A company like GE jumping head first into cleantech, in such a defined and high-profile way, gives a huge shot of credibility to the space and will hopefully inspire other corporate giants to follow. And as Immelt made clear: “We plan to make money doing it. Increasingly for business, ‘green’ is green.”

This is a big deal, and one can feel the momentum building from here. As more companies embrace the same philosophy one can only hope they’ll try to one-up each other. I’ll spare my own analysis of the situation and point you to two blog entries that encapsulate the significance of today’s announcement. Check out Rob Day’s Cleantech Investing blog, or Joel Makower’s Two Steps Forward blog for great commentary.

Day makes an interesting point of fact. He says total venture capital spending in the cleantech space has been between $1 to $1.5 billion annually, and that this is what GE alone is planning to spend. “An indicator,” he says, “of how big a deal the GE announcement is.” 

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