Welcome to the GE Ecomagination Challenge, a $200 million innovation experiment where businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students share their best ideas on how to build the next-generation power grid – and just might get funded.
We’ve teamed up with some of the best-known venture capital firms, including Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital, to help back the most promising ideas.
Will you join us? Please enter the challenge, submit your ideas, vote for the most promising teams and help us change the way the world uses energy in powerful new ways. Who knows? One of the ideas selected could be yours. There are three categories for submission:
Challenge 1: Create - Renewable Energy ...
Challenge 2: Connect - Grid Efficiency ...
Challenge 3: Use - EcoHomes/EcoBuildings
Greentech Media has an article on this:
As part of the second phase of the ecomagination initiative, Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, also announced that the company will be doubling its R&D investment in clean energy technologies over the next 5 years, to $10 billion between 2010 and 2015.
"Conservation is absolutely key," said Immelt. "The whole movement around clean energy did itself a disservice by making it seem fancy. As I look at the future, one of the things I see is to do simple things simply and get down the learning curve fast."
Eventually, Immelt sees a future where compensation for utilities will have to be changed from the current model, where selling more kilowatts equals more profit. For any company, including GE, that wants to stay ahead of the curve, now is the time to invest, because "it's going to change in like, 15 minutes one day," he said. "I guarantee that's going to happen."