Water Inventory

GE annually collects water data for those sites consuming more than 15 million gallons a year. This includes water used for potable, process and sanitary purposes, as well as once-through cooling waters from freshwater sources. Two GE sites withdraw salt/brackish water for once-through cooling purposes. This salt/brackish water use is excluded from our water inventory and is not included as part of our water reduction goal. Instead, we focus on freshwater sources, with the rationale that salt/brackish water employed for once-through cooling purposes poses less of an apparent environmental impact than freshwater. We adjust the data each year to reflect acquisitions and divestments.

Water Use Inventory Process

The GE water inventory follows the principles of the World Resources Institute/World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WRI/WBCSD) “Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, Revised Edition” (2004) (the “Protocol”). For its operational inventory, GE follows the “control” approach and includes freshwater use from Criteria Sites over which it has operational control. Criteria Sites are those sites that used a total of 15 million gallons or more of water per year in the 2006 baseline year and/or any subsequent year in the inventory. GE limits its water use data collection to Criteria Sites to maximize data collection from its largest water-using sites while minimizing the data collection effort. We used historical data to develop reporting criteria for the water inventory with a design goal of capturing at least 90% of our total freshwater consumption in the annual inventory.

GE created an Eco Inventory Survey intranet-based database in Gensuite^®, which is GE’s proprietary Web-based EHS management system, to collect the necessary water use inventory data. GE included 104 Criteria Sites in its worldwide water inventory for 2010. The Eco Inventory Survey database is integrated with GE’s greenhouse gas and energy inventory process.

GE’s original 2006 water inventory included 101 Criteria Sites. The change in the number of facilities from 2006 to 2010 is the net of those facilities removed from the inventory because of divestment, closure or consolidation with other facilities, and those facilities added to the inventory because they were acquired, they were newly established, or they newly met the reporting criteria.

The Eco Inventory Survey database allows each site to enter the quantity of water withdrawn in consistent units from each of the following source categories:

• Public/Commercial
• River/Canal
• Lake/Ocean
• Onsite Groundwater Wells
• Other

These data represent the total facility water use for all purposes. The site then enters the quantity of the total water that is withdrawn for once-through cooling purposes. The Eco Inventory Survey is programmed to calculate the total facility water use by totaling the water withdrawn from each source category and to calculate the quantity of once-through cooling water. The combined quantity of potable, process and sanitary water use can be calculated by subtracting the once-through cooling water use from the total water use. The Eco Inventory Survey is also programmed to report water use data from the database as total water use, water use by source category, and once-through cooling water use by business, site, country and region.

Quality Assurance

GE is continuing to work toward increasing the accuracy of its water use inventory. It has modified its Eco Inventory Survey database to simplify it and to eliminate issues that have tended to introduce errors in the past. In addition, GE has developed numerous guidance documents and an internal guidance Web site and has provided extensive training on the inventory and on the use of the Eco Inventory Survey. Finally, GE has performed extensive data quality reviews on the water use inventory including side-by-side comparisons of water use data for 2009 and 2010 to identify and understand the reasons for significant differences (changes in production, changes in processes, water use reduction projects, etc.). A number of data quality issues were identified, analyzed and corrected, where necessary, through this process. We have taken the approach that, for specific circumstances, if a significant deviation in water use emerges in a given year, a third-party environmental engineering consulting firm will validate restated water use values.

GE Energy Financial Services

GE Energy Financial Services invests in power projects in a number of ways: equity, lease and debt. Water use from these power projects is not included in GE’s water use inventory and is not addressed by GE’s water reduction goal. These investments are separate from GE’s normal manufacturing and service operations.