Three years in on GE's Ecomagination program and so far, so good, seems to be the company's conclusion.

In 2005, GE coined its own program, and expression, Ecomagination, heading out to fulfill a number of environmental goals in 2008, 2010 and 2012. It’s also a label for GE products with an eco-friendly profile.

Today GE announced the progress between 2005 and 2008, pointing out that it has met the first goal on greenhouse gas intensity. GHG intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to company revenue. The goal was to reduce the intensity by 30 percent. GE now claims it has reduced it by 41 percent, and at the same time reduced the absolute GHG emissions by 13 percent since 2005. This is on track with the company's 2012 commitments.

How did it do it? Turning to GE’s own eco-friendly products was apparently a good start.

“If we are proposing that customers around the world use GE solutions to reduce their emissions, then we should do the same,” said Steve Fludder, vice president and leader of ecomagination at GE, in a statement. “We set our first ecomagination goal to achieve at least a 30% reduction in our own GHG intensity for 2008 in order to show our progress, before our 2010 target on revenues from ecomagination sales to our customers,” he continued.

According to GE, it has been able to migrate to less GHG-intensive fuels and also use its own technology such as solar panels, lighting products and Jenbacher engines.

Progress on the ecomagination commitments also includes an increase in clean research and development by $750 million (up to $1.4 billion) since 2005. This can have an effect on more companies than GE itself. In fact, the whole ecosystem of cleantech companies and investors could benefit from it (see Rob Day’s blog post from 2005 on What does ecomagination mean for venture investors)

The Ecomagination group at GE is trying out a lot of different things when it comes to R&D within cleantech. Grid efficiency, carbon reduction and water are some of the most important areas. And it seems that GE’s work on getting consumers to think about the environment when investing their hard earned money in new products is getting easier, surprisingly fast.

In an earlier interview with Greentech Media, Steve Fludder said that consumer behavior and demands have changed when it comes to eco-friendly products.

“Something has happened in the mind of consumers. Climate change has to be addressed. We have to be more responsible stewards with regard to natural resources," he said. "Scale begets cost-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness begets wider adoption but on top of that people are emotionally engaged. ... The power of this may surprise us all."