By Rich Anderson
May 24, 2010

The Northeast Regional Meeting of the Mayors Water Council assembled May 12 for a seminar and tour at General Electric's Global Renewable Energy Headquarters in Schenectady (NY). Water Council Co-Chair Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton made welcoming remarks and introduced Steve Bolze, President and CEO of GE Power and Water.

Bolze gave an overview of GE's renewable energy business and the company's global commitment to provide alternative energy to meet the needs and challenges of communities and businesses in the 21st Century. Of particular interest to the mayors was Bolze's focus on integrating renewable energy in water treatment services.

Bolze stated that as much as 25 percent of the world's electricity production is facilitated via GE's technologies including: thermal electricity generation, renewable energy, gas engines, gasification, and nuclear energy. He made the connection between energy production and water, and suggested that the limiting factor for new energy production could be water shortages that could curtail energy production.

Wind power, he stated, is the number one new power source in the USA since 2009. It is also the second largest growth business sector for GE. China, he stated, is the number one installer of wind power today. This is so largely because US policy does not easily accommodate change from conventional energy production to alternative forms.

Bolze described advances in water treatment technology pioneered by GE that are available to local government and industry. Advanced membrane treatment technologies can effectively remove minute contaminants to protect drinking water quality. A combination of advanced membrane treatment and chemical treatment methods can realize the clean water goals of zero-liquid-discharge from industrial and municipal treatment facilities, but it is driven by cost. He stated that technology solutions exist today to achieve 70 percent water reuse (the wave of the future). However, getting to that level of water reuse requires a national policy shift to provide incentives and newly defined goals. The US is lagging in this respect. For example, Israel, a particularly water poor nation, currently reuses 85 percent of their water today and has a 2016 goal to boost it to 90 percent. Saudi Arabia, another water poor nation, currently reuses 11 percent of their water but has established a 65 percent reuse goal by 2016. Spain also has a policy to increase water reuse to 40 percent by 2015. But the US has no similar policy goal.

The GE Global Renewable Energy Headquarters is a $45 million remodeling of a 100-year-old building designed to be LEEDS certified. GE has brought 600 new, high-paying engineering jobs to the campus. It is part of the $300 million of private investment in the Schenectady downtown revitalization effort started in 2004 when Stratton took office as the mayor.