Mark Vachon, vice president of GE’s successful Ecomagination program is calling the political battle between economy and environment “nonsense.” “There’s this theory that you have to pick one: economics or environmental performance. That’s nonsense. Innovation is the way you can have both,” said Vachon. GE started the Ecomagination program in 2005 and has since invested more than $5 billion renewable energy, efficiency and smart grid technologies. The company saw such a powerful business case for clean technologies, it plans to double investments in the sector to $10 billion by 2015. According to Vachon, the $85 billion in revenue from cleantech has doubled the performance of the rest of the company’s portfolio.

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