GE Receives 2006 Energy Star® Sustained Excellence Award

(HIT)-The U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have awarded GE Consumer & Industrial the "Sustained Excellence Award" for its outstanding commitment to creating high-performance household appliances and lighting products that help reduce energy spending and protect the environment. GE will be officially recognized at a March 21 ceremony in Washington D.C. This is also the third year GE has been recognized as an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year.

"Partners like GE are national leaders in energy efficiency," said Kathleen Hogan, director of EPA's Climate Protection Partnerships Division. "The ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence winners are true models for improving energy efficiency across the country. They have shown year after year that energy efficiency is good for business and helps consumers save important resources, all while protecting the environment."

GE has aggressively supported the ENERGY STAR program through broad consumer and customer education and has participated in national and regional events promoting ENERGY STAR products to consumers, customers and homebuilders.

"GE's energy-efficient products also play a key role in our ecomagination^SM initiative," said James P. Campbell, President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Consumer & Industrial. "This initiative, which launched in 2005, focuses on harnessing GE's imagination to bring new technologies to market that help solve challenges like reducing green house gas emissions and stretching increasingly limited energy resources."

Investment in Energy Efficient Technology

From 2002-2005, GE invested more than $350 million to develop and bring to market high-efficiency appliance products. A broad range of GE Monogram, GE Profile, GE, and Hotpoint brand clothes washers, refrigerators, dishwashers, room air conditioners, dehumidifiers and water products are ENERGY STAR qualified. In 2005 alone, GE invested approximately $60.4 million in ENERGY STAR appliance models, resulting in 164 new ENERGY STAR appliance products — up 26.2% over 2004.

As for lighting products, of all screw-in Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) GE sold in 2005, 99% were ENERGY STAR qualified, which means that they use GE bulbs use up to 75% less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. Over the course of their rated lives, all ENERGY STAR qualified screw-in CFLs that were sold by GE in 2005, alone, will reduce pollution and save consumers money:

• 9.6 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide will enter the air, which is like removing more than 1.6 million cars from the road for a year
• collectively, consumers will save more than $1.3 billion dollars in electricity costs (at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour)

Currently GE Consumer & Industrial offers nearly 400 appliance and close to 100 lighting products that are ENERGY STAR-qualified, including:

• 140 ENERGY STAR qualified dishwashers. The new ENERGY STAR qualified GE Profile™ dishwasher with SmartDispense™ technology holds an entire 45 fluid ounce bottle of liquid or gel detergent and dispenses just the right amount for each wash. If all Americas used an ENERGY STAR qualified GE Profile dishwasher, more than 20 billion gallons of water would be saved per year — enough to fill more than 25,000 Olympic swimming pools.
• 201 ENERGY STAR qualified refrigeration models. Innovations like dual-evaporator technology improve energy efficiency and food freshness. ENERGY STAR qualified GE refrigerators use 40% less energy than conventional models sold in 2001, and about 50% less than models manufactured before 1993.
• 24 ENERGY STAR qualified clothes washer models. The new GE frontload washer uses as little as 10 gallons of water for a small load and 15 gallons for an average-size load, which saves up to 23 gallons per load, or 61% water. Over the course of its life, the GE frontload washer will actually pay for its self in water and energy cost savings.
• 58 ENERGY STAR qualified consumer lighting products. GE works closely with major retailers to drive awareness of ENERGY STAR qualified Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) and is a staunch supporter of the ENERGY STAR Change a Light, Change the World Campaign. According to ENERGY STAR, if every American home exchanged the five most frequently used bulbs with ENERGY STAR qualified bulbs, one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases would be kept out of the air — the annual emissions of 8 million cars — over the course of the bulbs' lives.
• 39 ENERGY STAR qualified commercial lighting products.

For more information, consumers may visit www.ge.com.