In a video message, Agostino Renna, President and CEO GE Lighting EMEA, lists speed, simplicity, customer-centricity and accountability as key areas of focus for 2013.
The world's future is in cities – more and bigger. In 2011, for the first time, the majority of Chinese lived in cities. This fact represents a milestone in the most massive, and still ongoing, rural-to-urban migration in mankind’s history. The pattern has repeated around the world. How can we make growing cities work for their habitants? For answers, we should look to one of the best laboratories we have for testing new ideas about urban sustainability, design and infrastructure – the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games starting 29 August.
Lighting engineers from CEE have played a major role in contributing to the 2012 Olympics to become the first ever “sustainable Games.” Tonight a new decorative lighting will be inaugurated by thousands at the river banks and through BBC by millions. Read more at the next piece of our series about the CEE region and the Olympics which GE is one of the 11 Worldwide Partners of. A recent roundtable in Budapest co-hosted by the President of the Hungarian Olympic Committee and GE, one of the key infrastructural suppliers of the Games, showcased some of GE’s Olympics related projects with a link to CEE.
The latest of GE Lighting’s cost conscious and environmentally friendly lighting solutions were showcased at Light+Building 2012 in Frankfurt, Germany, the world’s biggest trade fair of its kind. The main theme was energy efficiency and after months of busy preparations at the GE Lighting EMEA Headquarters, our team was there in force.
We presented our lighting solutions on the three most important application areas where light has an impact on us: our health, our safety and our shopping decisions. Our office lighting, roadway/street lighting and retail applications bring about greener and more ergonomic offices, safer cities and environments, and enhanced shopping experience.
Five kindergartens and six other local institutions of Újpest, a district of Budapest, and designated schools and kindergartens of the towns of Nagykanizsa and Hajdúböszörmény can make substantial savings thanks to 1,300 pieces of energy efficient light sources that were donated by GE Lighting. The donation was the result of an initiative of Zsolt Wintermantel, mayor of Újpest, who wanted leaders of the district to start cooperating more closely with local companies in order to speed up further development.
Energy saving, quality of light and new EU regulations supporting sustainability are key challenges and opportunities that municipalities and retail shops face when they invest in upgrading lighting systems. The GE Lighting’s Global Technology Center in Budapest developed an innovative, ceramic based solution that offers many of the advantages of LED technology in a more cost effective manner.
On January 24th, GE and the US Embassy partnered in organizing a stakeholder dialogue in Sofia on today’s challenges in sustainable energy, water and process technologies, efficient lighting and affordable healthcare. Some 170 representatives of the state administration, businesses, local authorities and NGOs gathered to talk about how the economy can benefit from GE’s technologies and solutions in the future. The event took place at a time when the Bulgarian government was in the process of redefining its national priorities towards innovation and growth.
Replacing the incandescent light bulb is no joke. Commercialized by Thomas Edison more than a century ago, the light bulb ranks with the printing press, electricity, and penicillin as one of the great inventions that changed the world. But its huge success also became a weakness. Lighting now represents as much a fifth of a household’s energy consumption.
Since Edison invented the first light bulb in 1879, the technology has gone through over one hundred years of developments. As Zoltan Vamos, lighting technology general manager at GE Lighting EMEA explained, modern light sources can achieve 80 percent higher energy efficiency compared to incandescent light bulbs. Hungarian engineers involved in a project of the Central Hungary Operational Program (KMOP) have managed to push this achievement even further.
At GE Lighting, we have a mix of energy efficient industry leading lighting technologies both LED solutions as well as green traditional technologies. I showcase here one of our magnificent applications, the recent inauguration of the Hungarian House of Parliament in Budapest using Ceramic technology which we design, manufacture and manage in CEE for global applications.
