NPR’s “Morning Edition” program last week featured an informative interview with Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, emphasizing GE’s support for trade as an engine of economic recovery and emphasizing the need for government policies that foster U.S. competitiveness.

From “GE Calls For More Exports To Aid Economy“:

Immelt tells host Renee Montagne that the U.S. consumer can’t be the “sole engine of economic growth” in the same way they’ve been over the past two decades. “And for this economy to recover fully, it’s got to be led by business investment, and it’s got to be led by exports,” he says.

Trade deficits and the erosion of the manufacturing base in the U.S. are among the things that have to be fixed, he says. Immelt says the government will also have to focus on improving exports. …[snip]

Immelt says: “In the places where you have relatively high labor costs, they’ve got to be more productive.” The labor in any facility, he says, has to be able to compete on a “global basis.”

Immelt says the government can take steps to help improve productivity. “My sense is that there should be a real definitive desire to make the country more competitive and to try to make sure that we can export more because that’s where the growth is going to be.”

So that’s the big policy picture. Then there’s what the company itself is doing, as described in a GE news release from Friday, “GE To Open Advanced Manufacturing Technology & Software Center in Michigan“:

FAIRFIELD, Conn.–26 June 2009– The General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) today announced that it will open an advanced manufacturing technology and software center in Michigan. The center is expected to grow to more than 1,100 GE employees over the next few years.

The Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center will include a GE research and development facility that will be part of GE’s Global Research network. It will house scientists and engineers who will develop next generation manufacturing technologies for GE’s leading renewable energy, aircraft engine, gas turbine and other high-technology products. Such work will include development of composites, machining, inspection, casting and coating technologies for GE’s Aviation and Energy businesses.

GE is constructing the new, $100 million facility as Visteon Village site in Van Buren Township, Wayne County, about 25 miles from Detroit. News coverage…

• Reuters, “GE sets Michigan research site, calls for renewal“
• Detroit News, “GE to bring high-paying jobs“
• Bloomberg, “GE to Open Michigan Center, Add at Least 1100 Jobs“

Very good news and excellent corporate leadership.

A story in today’s D.C. Examiner, “‘Smart grid’ technology may soon hit the suburbs“:

An electricity use monitoring pilot program dubbed “smart grid” may be coming soon to the Maryland suburbs.

Local electric utility Pepco filed a proposal with state regulators last week to put between 2,500 and 3,500 “smart meters” in homes in Bethesda and Fort Washington. The meters record how much and when electricity is used each month and can communicate with Pepco to indicate power outages.

The pilot program would also include sensors on circuits at two substations that have a history of power outages. Pepco said the sensors would allow the utility to identify, isolate and fix the problems more quickly.

Good, but is that all “smart grid” is? Smarter home meters and sensors at substations?

Obviously there’s more. The Department of Energy has a publication, “The Smart Grid: An Introduction.” From page 10:

The electric industry is poised to make the transformation from a centralized, producer-controlled network to one that is less centralized and more consumer-interactive. The move to a smarter grid promises to change the industry’s entire business model and its relationship with all stakeholders, involving and affecting utilities, regulators, energy service providers, technology and automation vendors and all consumers of electric power.

A smarter grid makes this transformation possible by bringing the philosophies, concepts and technologies that enabled the internet to the utility and the electric grid. More importantly, it enables the industry’s best ideas for grid modernization to achieve their full potential.

It takes until page 10 to get to that? And Dr. Smith and the robot from Lost in Space is the illustration?

Clearly, we need some refining of defining. But for now, here’s the Department of Energy’s smart grid section at the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. Eneregy Secretary Chu delivered the keynote address this morning at the DOE-NARUC National Electricity Forum on the smart grid and stimulus bill. (We’ll link later.)

General Electric is prominent in smart grid technology and deployment, and has an animation-heavy website with lots of info, “Ecomagination.” GE’s Smart Grid Technology ad, which ran during the Super Bowl, is great.

President Obama creates the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, saying:

Put simply, I created this board to enlist voices to come from beyond the Washington echo chamber, to ensure that no stone is unturned as we work to put people back to work and get our economy moving.

Within this group, you’ve got leaders of manufacturing and leaders of finance. You’ve got labor and you’ve got management. You’ve got people who work in small businesses and people who work in large businesses. You’ve got some economists and some folks who think they’re economists. (Laughter.) By the way, these days everybody thinks they’re an economist. (Laughter.) We will meet regularly so that I can hear different ideas and sharpen my own, and seek counsel that is candid and informed by the wider world.

On the manufacturing side, Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO of General Electric, and Jim Owens, Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.

A welcome announcement…

Given the great news coming from Areva and Northrop Grumman (see below), there’s a very timely story in The New York Times, “Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival“:

WASHINGTON — After three decades without starting a single new plant, the American nuclear power industry is getting ready to build again.

When the industry first said several years ago that it would resume building plants, deep skepticism greeted the claim. Not since 1973 had anybody in the United States ordered a nuclear plant that was actually built, and the obstacles to a new generation of plants seemed daunting.

But now, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 21 companies say they will seek permission to build 34 power plants, from New York to Texas. Factories are springing up in Indiana and Louisiana to build reactor parts. Workers are clearing a site in Georgia to put in reactors. Starting in January, millions of electric customers in Florida will be billed several dollars a month to finance four new reactors.

The Newport News Daily Press story we linked below has lots of detail, too.

As interest has grown in the United States to build more nuclear plants, which generate concerns about waste but do not emit pollutants, a new process has been put into place to make them easier to build. A key part of the process is approval for standardized designs that can be matched easily to plans for a specific site and utility operator.

AREVA has already spent $200 million on the design and certification of the EPR reactor.

The main players vying to get their designs approved are AREVA, General Electric, Westinghouse and Mitsubishi. Dominion Virginia Power, which runs a nuclear plant in Surry County, is far along toward building a new reactor at North Anna outside Richmond. Dominion has chosen the design and is buying parts for its reactor from GE Energy, which will be a major competitor for AREVA Newport News.

The AREVA plant in Lynchburg is one of four in the country that manufacture nuclear fuel rods, and AREVA operates another one in Richland, Wash.

The deal is a coup for Newport News, which finds itself in the enviable position of adding large numbers of engineering and advanced manufacturing jobs amid a troubled economy. Canon announced in May that it was investing in a $625 million expansion of its Newport News plant and adding over 1,000 high-paying jobs.

Consider the possibilities, Virginia as the nation’s leader in nuclear power. Perhaps the Areva/Northrop Grumman news will give a boost to uranium mining in the southwest part of the state, as visionaries recognize the big picture of American energy security.

Looks like it was a big night last night for Popular Mechanics, as the magazine/Internet/multimedia juggernaut commemorated its annual Breakthrough Awards, presented to great innovators. Any ceremony that celebrates aeronautics pioneer Bert Rutan is AOK by us.

We also applaud Popular Mechanics’ consistent emphasis on energy issues in its reporting, or as in last night, its awards. As major consumers of energy, manufacturers in the United States are intent on conservation and improving efficiency.

Case in point — Breakthrough winner, Richard Bourgeois and GE’s low-cost electrolyzer:

FUTURISTS PROMISE that hydrogen will replace fossil fuels someday. There’s just one problem: Today, 95 percent of the world’s available hydrogen is extracted from natural gas. Getting hydrogen from water, the greener alternative, is too expensive to be practical. Or it was, until a recent innovation by engineer Richard Bourgeois and his colleagues at a General Electric research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y.

Bourgeois’s prototype electrolyzer cuts the equipment cost of using electricity to grab hydrogen from H2O. The key was replacing tooled metal with a moldable, high-tech GE plastic called Noryl, saving on materials, manufacturing and assembly. The result? A kilogram of hydrogen — the energy equivalent of roughly a gallon of gas — that costs $3 instead of the current $6 to $8. “I could imagine a small box that sits on-site making hydrogen for a factory,” Bourgeois says. “Eventually, even filling stations may make their own hydrogen.”

Popular Mechanics covered the evening’s events in its blog here, and the Breakthrough recipients are all great stories. Stories that evoke a “gee whiz” response, as well, like this account (also energy-related) from MIT:

Working with colleagues Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang, Belcher genetically altered a virus, the M-13 bacteriophage, inducing it to grab a pair of conductive metals — cobalt oxide and gold — from a solution. As the viruses rearrange themselves, they form highly aligned organic nanowires that can be used as a lithium-ion battery electrode — one so densely packed it can store two or three times the energy of conventional electrodes of the same size and weight.

So congratulations to all these great innovators, and once you’re done taking a look at their accomplishments, head over to GE’s new blog, too!

UPDATE: I just realized, I failed to credit Glenn Reynolds for directing our attention to the awards.

Reynolds has done a fine job in mentioning Popular Mechanics, nanotechnology, and, well, other stuff, so kudos, salutes, and thanks!