Continuous Improvement
With a focus on lean, we are making progress to succeed in our goals
message from our chief sustainability officer
"We approach ESG with the same spirit of humility, transparency, and rigor as our businesses, with a focus on where we need to improve performance, address gaps, and enhance programs. Continuous improvement is core to lean management and drives us to focus our attention on what we need to do better to succeed in our goals."
ROGER MARTELLA
Chief Sustainability Officer, GE
Climate change
In 2020, we set a new goal to achieve carbon neutrality within our own operations (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) by 2030. In 2021, we articulated GE’s ambition to be a net zero company by 2050, including not just GE’s own operations, but also the Scope 3 emissions associated with the use of our sold products. We are collaborating closely with our customers, suppliers, policymakers and other companies to turn net zero engineering challenges into business opportunities.
Aviation
Healthcare
Renewable Energy & POWER
2021 Human Rights Report
A strong sustainability and human rights program is critical to our mission. Respect for human rights is also professionally and personally important to our employees, communities, customers, investors, and business partners. We strive for transparency with our stakeholders to hold ourselves accountable and to drive continuous improvement.
Product safety and quality
Lean is foundational to how we work at GE. Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost (SQDC)—in that order—help us deliver for our customers and build a world that works. These are not simply four metrics that we are regularly reporting on, but instead are our desired set of shared instincts. At no point will an improvement in quality, delivery or cost be done at the expense of safety. All of the GE businesses are committed to creating safe and effective products that meet the needs of our customers and are doing this through continuously working to improve product quality.
Aviation
GE Aviation has a strong product safety focus, including a voluntary Safety Management System (SMS) aligned with the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) SMS framework.
Healthcare
GE Healthcare is committed to creating safe and effective products that meet the needs of our customers and their patients and help health care providers solve the clinical, operational and economic challenges they face every day while improving patient outcomes.
Renewable Energy & Power
Safety and quality are paramount in the design, manufacturing, testing, servicing, and monitoring of our energy products around the world.
Product stewardship
Product stewardship represents the responsibility borne by GE for the environmental and safety impacts of our products across their lifecycle. Product stewardship focuses on managing the energy, water and materials that are deployed in the production, use and disposal of a product, along with managing product safety, at all stages of the product life cycle.
ESG issues assessment
Core to the efforts to ensure GE succeeds in its sustainability programs consistent with stakeholder expectations, in 2021 GE engaged in a broad internal and external stakeholder assessment for GE Company and the Aviation, Healthcare, Renewable Energy and Power businesses. The results of these assessments are helping to guide ESG and sustainability priorities and strategies with the benefit of input from our employees, customers, investors, NGOs and other stakeholders.
Policy engagement and thought leadership on climate action
GE’s focus on sustainability is to innovate technology to lift up the quality of life for people everywhere. While our focus is on technology and innovation, we know that strong policy, engagement and partnership are critical to success of these shared goals.
Environmental justice
Beginning in 2019, GE enhanced its Brownfields Program to prioritize cleanup and redevelopment of idle contaminated properties in EJ communities. Using EJSCREEN (developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (released by the Council on Environmental Quality), GE reviewed its full inventory of more than 100 owned, underused properties in the U.S. to identify those 53 parcels that are located in EJ communities. Local EJ community leaders have shared one of their most pressing needs is financial investment to remove obsolete buildings and infrastructure. In response, GE has committed more than $40 million to demolish its obsolete structures in EJ neighborhoods. Outside the U.S., GE is also screening its underutilized properties to target cleanup and redevelopment investments in disadvantaged communities. Several potential properties were identified for action in 2021.
