Siemens is one of the biggest electronics and industrial engineering firms in the world, and their sales show that environmentally friendly products and services are increasingly important to consumers. They see their sales in this area rising and expect to generate nearly $40 billion in revenues in 2011. Last year, they made almost $27 billion, which comprised about one fourth of their overall revenues for the year.

With revenue numbers like this, the company is going to invest more funds in research and development to further expand their growth, despite the fact that the current target for 2011 is a whopping 10% annual growth for their cleantech portfolio. This kind of big name, big money boost underscores the attention being given to greening up our current way of living. Siemens covers everything from power generation to buildings, from transportation to water purification. To see a boost across their cleantech portfolio can bolster our confidence level that companies are getting the green bug.

And that is good news for us here in the US, especially in Boulder, CO where Siemens has plans to establish the first US wind turbine research and development competence center, adding one more to their list of centers in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and England.

Perhaps cities like San Jose, CA will see additional boosts to their green plans with companies like Siemens pumping so much money into cleantech R&D. And I expect US coal plants fishing for FutureGen money would be interested in the work Siemens did with Sargas on CCS technology. Other projects in the works include a new plant for manufacturing wind turbine gears, and development of advanced desalination technology to cut the current energy consumption of plants by about 50%.

These kinds of moves on the part of Siemens have helped reduce customers’ CO2 emissions by 114 million tons during 2007, and the company expects to see a savings of 275 million tons in 2011 – a jaw-dropping amount – across its cleantech portfolio. Such a dominant stance in cleantech industries will require other companies to step up their own R&D, and perhaps encourage new start-ups, a boon to all of us. We’ll have to keep an eye on the map to see how this growth on Siemens’ part will alter the landscape of cleantech.

Via Cleantech

Comments (2)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Write comment

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

Add Comment