Hard for GE to Look Green as They Fight Smog Rules

John Fialka and Kathryn Kranhold write in today's WSJ about GE's credibility gap. The company is fighing stricter standards on smog, while they push their image as a 'green company.' One ad shows a GE locomotive pulling a train through a rainforest and smokefree eden. They say the EPA's push to get smog limits of 1.3 grams per horsepower per hour's operation is too much, that they can't meet the target. They say 1.9 is the best they can do for the , 'ecomagination' locomotives. GE bases its estimates on the 1997 standard, not the more ambitious goal for 2007.

Yet the president of the Engine Manufacturers Assn called the 1.3 standard a 'stretch goal." It is meetable, and unlike GE, he's not fighting it. Electro-Motive Diesel of LaGrange IL said they'll definitely meet the goal with their engines.

GE has orders for $20 billion of their so-called green locomotives. The marketing of 'Ecomagination' was brilliant, and defly portrayed GE as the greenest, coolest and best-run company. My guess is that they will quietly comply and move beyond this.