Over the coming decades, all industries will be transformed by converging technological trends that dramatically alter how companies do business. This will undoubtedly lead to many current jobs becoming obsolete. However, technological change will also create countless new roles that companies will need to fill.

We’re future-gazing and fast-forwarding to 2040, where we’re looking at the most in-demand jobs in the offshore oil and gas industry.

Virtual Reality Trainer

Significant advances in virtual reality technology mean that almost all technical employees are now able to be trained remotely, dramatically reducing costs for operating companies. In the past, many employees were previously trained on-site. Today, however, employees take part in virtual reality workshops that perfectly replicate the environment of working in an oil field.

These sessions are led by Virtual Reality Trainers, who form the backbone of all major companies’ training programs. Having been early adopters of virtual reality gaming during their teenage years, they combine traditional teaching skills with the ability to operate seamlessly in a virtual reality environment.

Underwater Drone Supervisor

In 2040, installing subsea equipment is the preserve of semi-autonomous robots. However, due diligence (and legal requirements) mean that all work performed by robotic workers must be supervised by human beings. To save costs and reduce risk, this is performed remotely by engineers, who use cameras mounted on underwater drones to inspect the work and ensure everything is up to standard.

Data Cleaner

Data is enormously valuable to all companies, and almost all mechanical components are digitized, with real-time information used to make instantaneous business decisions. However, the value of the data is only as high as its quality, and many companies still struggle with imperfect data sets. Teams of Data Cleaners have the important (if unenviable and time-consuming) job assessing the quality of data produced, and fixing the inconsistencies that they find.

Haptic Engineer

Haptic technology is now widely used, particularly in touch-screens that apply forces and vibrations back to the user. For most people, this is merely an everyday and unnoticeable part of their interaction with technology. However, in oil and gas, having high quality tactile electronics is extraordinarily important. There are few genuinely “hands-on” day-to-day jobs in the industry today, but engineering specialists are still kept on hand in case of technological failure. The use of high-responsive haptic equipment allows them to deal with problems remotely as if they were present in real life.

3D Graphics Designer

The widespread adoption of virtual and augmented reality has led to a huge surge in demand for 3D graphics designers, making them as necessary to any business as IT managers and accountants were in previous decades. Almost all workers spend large parts of their day in virtual digital environments, and companies are increasingly prioritizing the hiring of high-quality designers to make these environments as pleasant and attractive as possible.

Robotics Manager

The Robotics Manager is one of the few people in an oil and gas company who is still able to get his hands dirty every day. While the widespread adoption of robotic technologies has changed the industry beyond recognition, even the most expensive robots still experience wear and tear. Most of the Robotics Manager’s day is spent monitoring his charges to ensure everything is working correctly. However, bosses are comforted by his extensive knowledge of how each robot functions, meaning that he or she can quickly pick up their tools and fix any hardware problems or breakages that may occur.

Biotech Installer

Since the 2020s, the offshore industry has enthusiastically adopted wearable technology to monitor employee performance and health. However, companies have now started to look even further and have begun fitting employees with biotechnological upgrades to improve their performance and monitor all vital signs. To make biotech available to its sizeable workforce, the offshore industry has recently begun to employ biotech installers. This role combines many skills that would have previously been associated with physiotherapists and surgeons. While installers are not fully qualified doctors, they have received extensive training, and are employed by companies for non-urgent and non-invasive installation procedures.

Looking forward from the present day, it’s clear that oil and gas will soon be unrecognizable. While we can look at current trends to make predictions for the future, there are likely to be countless events that change the industry in ways no one can currently imagine. However, one thing is certain — change is the new normal, and the offshore industry must be prepare to adapt.

(Top image: VR and haptic technology will part of the oil and gas engineer’s portfolio. Image credit: Getty Images)

This piece first appeared on the io’s Powerful Thinking blog.

Dan Jackson is CEO of io oil & gas consulting, a GE and McDermott venture. For more information about io oil & gas consulting, visit www.iooilangas.com. To read more from Dan Jackson and the team, follow io on Twitter @io_oilandgas.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Data can help channel private-sector investment and incentivize reforms, creating a positive cycle for development.

A small American energy company is looking to expand into the developing world. It has limited resources to scope out the relative risk of foreign markets, so it relies in part on a trove of indices gathered by the international community. In the emerging and developing markets of the 21^st century, that kind of easily available data can help drive critical foreign investment decisions.

As the head of the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation, I am acutely aware of how data on the policy and institutional environment can shape investment decisions. At MCC, a small federal agency committed to reducing poverty through economic growth, we are highly selective about where we work. Each year, MCC produces a scorecard on low and lower-middle income countries worldwide using third-party indicators that measure a country’s commitment to democracy, open markets and investing in its people. These scorecards largely determine where hundreds of millions of federal dollars will be spent each year.

At the dawn of the 4th Industrial Revolution — the theme of the recent World Economic Forum in Davos — the world is producing and curating vast amounts of information. Harnessing that data and applying it in new ways could have tremendous implications for the future of businesses and people across the developing world. While the challenge and opportunity of harnessing Big Data is dizzying, there are a number of low-hanging fruits to support development.

Rankings and indices compiled by leading NGOs and multilateral organizations like the World Bank, the Brookings Institution and Freedom House have already become a key resource for some global investors. But more businesses could take advantage of this type of existing data to help shape and influence decision making.

Just as MCC uses these indicators to direct aid toward countries with the highest potential to use it effectively, small and medium-sized businesses could reference these straightforward indicators as measures of risks and opportunities that factor into their market entry decisions. At the same time, as more businesses turn to this type of data, governments in the developing world will be more likely to use them as a roadmap for guiding their legislative and policy agendas —recognizing that performing better across these categories not only improves the lives of their people, but is also critical for attracting private investment.

Consider Cote d’Ivoire. The country was failing 15 of 20 indicators on MCC’s scorecard only three years ago, including control of corruption. The government came to us and set its sights on passing the MCC scorecard through a concerted effort to improve its performance in specific policy areas. Cote d’Ivoire now passes 13 indicators and was recently approved to receive MCC funding. Over roughly the same period of time — between 2012 and 2014 — foreign direct investment jumped 40 percent.

By incentivizing these data-driven reforms, MCC in turn helps open new windows for private-sector investment. In fact, companies tell us they follow MCC and its scorecard because our presence in a developing country helps lower their risk while creating direct procurement opportunities. In 2010, Pike Electric, a North Carolina energy provider, submitted a bid and won an MCC contract for $17.9 million as part of our compact with Tanzania. This was Pike’s first MCC contract and its first time working in Africa. They are now considering a contract in Ghana, where MCC is seeking to help reform and revitalize the energy sector.

Within a specific national market, the right data can also help governments — and investors — assess the most promising sectors. Before supporting any project, MCC conducts an analysis that pinpoints the most binding constraints to growth, such as public health, poor transportation infrastructure or the lack of energy access. This in-depth analysis helps MCC, other donors and national governments determine where their investments can unleash the greatest enablers of growth. And it helps private investors know where the biggest opportunities lie.

For example, time and again MCC’s constraints analysis identifies the lack of access to electricity as one of the most binding constraint to growth in countries across Africa. That is why MCC is a leading contributor to the U.S. government’s Power Africa effort, with a particular focus on supporting countries willing to undertake difficult reforms to their power sectors. Such a commitment is at the heart of MCC’s partnership with Ghana, which will receive $500 million in grant assistance over five years to transform its power sector and put it on a path to solvency and sustainability. These reforms are building a more attractive environment for private investment: we expect our Ghana compact to catalyze about $4 billion in new private investment and economic activity in the coming years, including a major investment from GE and Endeavor Energy.

More than ever before, private investment in developing countries will drive growth and help lift millions of people out of poverty. The right data can help identify opportunities and reduce risk for businesses and also incentivize the types of reforms governments need to make to unlock their economies.

(Image credits: Getty Images)

Dana J. Hyde is CEO of the U.S Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation. A former State Department and White House official, she has more than 20 years of experience in law and public policy, with expertise in economic growth and resource management in the United States and around the globe. 

All views expressed are those of the author.

GE is breaking up with compact fluorescent lamps.

This year, GE will cease production of its coiled compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for the  U.S. market and instead focus its consumer lighting efforts on LED lamps. Few people will mourn the end of the CFL era. Introduced in the mid-1980s, CFLs enjoyed a spurt of popularity after Oprah Winfrey endorsed them in 2007. The bulbs briefly accounted for about 30 percent of U.S. light bulb sales. But the bulbs, which heat gas rather than a filament, were never really beloved, and last year accounted for just 15 percent of sales. Consumers complained CFL light was too harsh, didn’t work with dimmers, flickered and took too long to warm up and light a room.

But the bulbs served an important purpose. Starting in 2012, U.S. regulations demanded that incandescent light bulbs – the kind that Edison invented – needed to use 30 percent less energy to meet minimum efficiency standards. That ruling instantly made incandescent lights almost obsolete.

Edison filed his patent application for a light bulb in 1879. It was granted in January 1880. Image credit: GE Reports

Over time, incandescent bulbs were replaced by three options — CFLs, LED lights and GE’s energy-efficient soft white bulbs, a type of halogen lamp most closely resembling the old bulbs. LED lamps were the most efficient and gave the best light, but they were prohibitively expensive, costing $40-$50 in 2012.

The reason GE can make the shift from CFLs to LEDs today is because LED prices have dramatically declined since GE engineer Nick Holonyak (see video below) invented the first red-light LED in 1962. Today, a 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb sells at Sam’s Club for $3.33 — a price point that helped LED sales grow 250 percent last year. LEDs now account for 15 percent of the 1.7 billion bulbs sold annually in the United States. GE expects that by 2020, LEDs will be used in more than 50 percent of U.S. light sockets.

The government is as anxious as anyone to get rid of CFLs. By next year, many of those bulbs will no longer qualify for the coveted ENERGY STAR rating, which introduced a new lighting specification in January. “These LED lightbulbs are starting to replicate what the electrical filament has done for over 100 years — providing that look and warm ambience that people are used to,” says GE Lighting chief operating officer John Strainic. “The time for LED is now.”

GE and Walmart have worked together for more than a decade to pioneer new applications for commercial LEDs and have a rich history of collaborative innovation. “By working with GE to maximize energy efficiency in its stores, Walmart has been able to realize a substantial cost savings in electricity, as well as support the company’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gases,” says Laura Phillips, senior vice president for sustainability at Walmart. “We are excited that GE is now offering our customers a LED light bulb option for their home, which will ultimately help them save energy.”

The shape of the incandescent light bulb stopped evolving nearly 80 years ago. Image credit: GE Reports

LEDs provide the old-fashioned comfort of incandescent lights, but also give us new connectivity capabilities with the latest energy-saving apps, Strainic says. As LED bulbs become more of a consumer electronic using chip and digital technology, they are well-suited to smart-home apps that help homeowners save energy and money by shutting off lights remotely from their smartphones or setting bulbs to dim and let them operate at 80 percent capacity. “We are seeing a complete transformation of the lighting business as we move to intelligent-lighting solutions for cities, offices, hospitals and schools,” Strainic says. “LED is a platform that can replace every other light source that we have developed over 130 years.”

LED lamps use solid-state parts that use electroluminescence from tiny light-emitting diodes. When electricity is applied to an LED, light is emitted from the interface between two different semiconducting materials. LEDs already illuminate everything from gas station signs to flat-screen TVs to retina screens on iPads. With a 22-year life span, a single LED bulb can light a child’s bedroom desk lamp from birth through college graduation.

The shift to LEDs fits with GE’s broader digital transformation. In October, GE unveiled a new division, Current, which integrates its LED, solar, energy storage and electric vehicle businesses with the cloud-based Predix platform to identify and deliver cost-effective, efficient energy solutions for commercial, industrial and municipal customers.  

“We’ve been transforming the lighting sector since GE’s inception,” said Beth Comstock, FE vice chair for innovation. “Once again, we are at the forefront of growth and innovation – redefining our consumer business model by transitioning from CFL to LED and delivering new product innovations like Bright Stik and Current by GE.”

Thanks for the memories. Norman Rockwell painted a series of ads for GE light bulbs. Image credit: GE Reports

GE will work with its retail partners, including Walmart and Sam’s Club, to manage the shift to LED. The bulbs come in many styles, including chic candle lamps and retro bulbs evocative of Edison’s filament bulbs.

GE announced its breakup with CFLs with a “Dear John” letter to the coiled bulbs. “I never imagined this day would come — but I’ve found another. Someone who helps me see my world in a whole new light. You don’t want to hear this, but I need to tell you … I’m in love,” GE wrote in the letter, addressed “Dear CFL.” “I’m in love with LED!” It’s a bittersweet breakup, but one GE believes will lead to a brighter future.

GE’s Brick Stik LEDs. Image credit: Current

GE released its fourth-quarter results two weeks ago, capping a pivotal year when the company sold much of its lending business and embraced software to become the world’s largest digital-industrial company. The company also improved its operations, growing revenue at a faster clip than peers and fattening margins.

CEO Jeff Immelt said he would keep the company on the same course in 2016. He projected modest EPS growth, riding atop the company’s booming Aviation and Power businesses. He will be managing costs in businesses like Oil & Gas and Transportation, where growth is lagging.

Immelt had no new specific plans for mergers and acquisitions. The company will seek to finalize its exit strategy from GE Capital and integrate Alstom’s  assets into GE’s Power, Renewable Energy and Energy Management businesses.

GE maintains it will return $26 billion to investors in the year, $18 billion in the form of buybacks and $8 billon to the dividend. Take a look.

Despite declining prices, oil producers and consumers haven’t shown much inclination to change their behavior. Here’s why.

Global stock markets have been in a tailspin. And the sinking price of oil received at least some of the blame.

Just last month, the cost of a barrel of crude reached a 12-year-low of US$27, down from more than $100 a little more than year ago. And that may not be the end of it, according to some in the industry.

Plummeting oil prices have raised fears of a worldwide recession, even though countries are still reporting growth in jobs and income. Are there other factors driving oil prices globally?

If prices are going down, suggesting flat or falling demand, why do producers keep adding supply to the market? They should be curtailing production, according to economics 101. But the oil market doesn’t always seem to follow the rules.

Swelling Supply

In fact, even as prices have fallen, the amount of oil being pumped has actually increased. And supply is poised to rise even further, thanks to the lifting of sanctions against Iran, leading the International Energy Agency (IEA) to warn that markets could “drown in oversupply.”

Global oil supply averaged 96.9 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2015, up from 95.4 million a year earlier. Demand, meanwhile, was almost 2 million barrels lower at 95.1 million and is expected to decline in the current quarter, even as supply is likely to increase, according to the IEA.

It’s this glut of crude oil in the global economy that has led to the sharp declines in oil prices. The additional supplies have ended up in storage tanks, because consumption has barely budged. And oil revenues of producing countries have consequently dropped very sharply, in tandem with price.

This leads to two more questions: if prices have fallen so much, why doesn’t demand increase? And if demand and revenues are down, why don’t producers just turn down the taps?

Inelasticity of Demand

It’s actually not a surprise that demand hasn’t changed much, because oil use in the short run is determined by factors that cannot be changed quickly.

Economists look at the responsiveness of demand to price changes in relative terms and refer to this as the elasticity of demand. If a price decline of one percent, for example, leads to an increase in the volume sold of less than one percent, it means demand is not elastic. This is the case with oil consumption.

In other words, the demand for oil in the short run is not that affected by changes in price. A consumer driving a gas-guzzling SUV in excellent condition will not trade it in right away just because prices rose. Or if you are a manufacturer and your equipment is still in good condition, you cannot adjust it to use less energy or buy different machines quickly.

The inelasticity of demand also means that the total revenue the seller receives will not rise when prices fall. On the other hand, if a one percent price decline were to lead to a more than one percent increase in the volume sold, then total revenue would rise as a result of the price cut.

When prices are rising, inelasticity of demand works in the favor of the seller. An increase in price leads to a lower volume of sales but higher revenue. That is, the relative decline in volume is less than the rise in price, resulting in more money taken in by the seller.

Thus, the current situation reflects a highly competitive market and a weak response from customers in the short run. The current global rate of economic growth, the state of technology and things like the weather determine the demand for energy more than price.

At the same time, producers and individual nations keep trying to increase revenue by producing and selling even more oil. With demand inelastic, the price decline does not generate enough of an increase in sales volume to raise revenue for any seller.

Fiddling With the Taps

This brings us to the other question: why don’t producers pump less oil?

If demand is inelastic in the short run, would withholding supply in hopes prices will rise lead to more revenue? It turns out that this depends on the share of global output the supplier controls.

It turns out that if a major player or cooperating group of sellers account for a share of total sales greater than the elasticity of demand, then cutting back on supply can improve its current revenue, even if sales volume declines. This is because the cutback is able to generate a price increase that is large enough.

Of course, this cutback generates even larger benefits or a “free ride” for other sellers who do not cut back. Other suppliers happily sell at the higher price. This may be one reason it is hard to get cooperation to raise the price.

Right now oil producers are not cooperating with each other as much as they have in the past, such as in the 1970s. Back then, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) controlled more than half of the global supply of crude. When they cut production, prices rose and all its members benefited.

Today, that kind of cooperation is much less likely, as oil-producing countries don’t appear interested or even able to work together to raise prices – let alone do so unilaterally. They have varying foreign policy interests and economic structures. The biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, is even accused of purposely trying to keep prices low to run upstart American producers out of business.

And those U.S. producers, which ramped up production in recent years in large part because oil prices were above $100, still haven’t backed down, perhaps encouraged by the move by Congress to allow U.S. oil exports for the first time in four decades.

What’s Next

Still, the relationship between demand elasticity and percentage of market share implies that all it would take is two or three major suppliers working together to restrict supply sufficiently to raise prices by enough to increase their total revenue.

For example, Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation each control about 10 percent of supply. If they both agreed to cut back, it would probably stop the skid in prices and improve their total revenue. It would also improve revenues of countries and producers who did not cut back.

While this would work in the current environment, producers may be thinking long-term and waiting out the lower prices in hopes of either pushing U.S. marginal suppliers into bankruptcy or reversing the trend toward fuel efficiency.

But these trends work both ways. For example, the OPEC-generated price increases in the 1970s caused changes in the energy efficiency of capital equipment in the years that followed. All sectors of the economy bought more fuel-efficient machinery and insulated structures. And this reduced demand for oil.

That is, in the long run, the price elasticity of demand is higher because consumers are more responsive to price changes. If prices go up, consumers and businesses eventually find ways to cut back. If prices are low, demand will eventually rise commensurate with the reduced cost.

Meanwhile, as long as supply continues to rise and demand remains inelastic or unresponsive, the price of oil is likely to continue its slide.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This article was first published on The Conversation.

Marcelle Arak is Professor of Finance Emerita, University of Colorado Denver.

Sheila Tschinkel is Visiting Faculty in Economics, Emory University.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

The latest-generation Boeing 737 MAX, powered by a pair of advanced LEAP-1B engines, made its maiden flight last Friday in Seattle. The flight lasted 2 hours and 47 minutes. “The flight was a success,” said Captain Ed Wilson, chief pilot for the 737 MAX program. “The 737 MAX just felt right in flight, giving us complete confidence that this airplane will meet our customers’ expectations.”

The LEAP is the world’s first jet engine to include 3D-printed fuel nozzles, engine shrouds made from tough, lightweight materials called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which can operate at extremely high temperatures, and nickel-alloy compressor blades grown from a single crystal.

Top image: The 737 MAX powered by a pair of LEAP engines during its maiden flight on Friday. Image credit: Boeing Above: The LEAP-1B program completed 300 hours of tests on GE’s flying testbed in 2015. Image credit: CFM

The engine draws heavily on GE’s and Snecma’s experience in advanced aerodynamics, materials science and environmental design. The CMCs, for example, were originally developed for GE’s most efficient line of gas turbines. GE calls this cross-pollination of technologies across different industries the GE Store.

The  737MAX during Friday’s takeoff from Renton Field near Seattle. Image credit: Boeing

As a result, the LEAP will provide double-digit improvements in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions compared to today’s best engine from CFM International, the GE and Snecma (Safran) joint company that developed the LEAP. It will also deliver “dramatic reductions” in engine noise and emissions, according to CFM.

One the two LEAP-1B engines for the first 737 MAX at an engine testing facility. Image credit: CFM

CFM began ground testing in June 2014 as part of the most extensive ground and flight test certification program in the company’s history. To date, the total LEAP development program has logged more than 8,000 hours and nearly 17,000 cycles of ground and flight testing. In 2015, using a modified 747 test bed, the LEAP-1B completed nearly 300 hours of testing — all told, more than 50 flights.

The first flight of the Boeing 737MAX. Image credit: Boeing

As of today, some 62 airlines and customers from around the world have ordered 6,144 LEAP-1B engines to power 3,072 MAX aircraft family from 62 customers. The engine orders are valued at more than $85 billion at list price.

The test flight took place on schedule. The delivery of the first Boeing 737 MAX is set for 2017.

The LEAP is the first jet engine with 3D-printed fuel nozzles. Image credit: GE Reports/Adam Senatori

Takeoff from Renton Field. Image credit: Boeing

Landing at Boeing Field. Image credit: Boeing

Boeing test pilots Craig Bomben (left) and Ed Wilson coming off the plane. Image credit: Boeing

Instead of living in fear of uncertainty in oil markets, we must think creatively and collaboratively to change the future of the industry.

I won’t be the first oil executive to tell you that we live in a time of great uncertainty. The most visible indicator of that uncertainty is today’s low oil price and the impact that is having on our industry: on investment, on jobs, on our employees, their families and communities.

Sometimes I worry that we get overly distracted by this output. Not because it isn’t important; it undoubtedly is. But because we can’t change it. I believe we must all look more broadly at today’s challenges and focus on this moment as an opportunity, or catalyst for change.

The energy industry is transforming at an unprecedented pace. Demand is still growing as more and more people come online. Conversations around sustainability and the energy mix remain a priority. These are the things we as an industry need to be focusing on. These are the conversations of the present — and the future — that will help us to control our destinies, rather than living in fear of the unknown.

Below, some ideas to consider:

1. Reframe the conversation. As I have progressed in my career, I have learned that the way we talk about what we do and why we do it can very frequently change what we do, and how we do it. When we move on from “the environment” to “my/our role,” we reframe the conversation from externalities impacting us, to how we can impact the rest of the world. Not only does this help us regain control, but most importantly it helps us ask the right question of others, most notably our customers: What can I do to help? Then we can take the steps we need to take, in partnership, to offer the right solutions.

2. Upcycle our toy boxes. As engineers and technologists, it is all too easy for us to get distracted by the “shiny new toy.” We want to tackle the biggest challenges with the best, newest kit. But today we need a new type of thinking, borrowed from our creative friends. We need to adopt the mindset of upcycling and failing fast: taking what we have and making it better, delivering something faster and more affordable that meets today’s needs. We must learn to fail fast so we can recalibrate, rebuild and improve.

3. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. Today’s environment must lead to more industry collaboration more joint innovation. Only by collaborating can we pre-test thinking with our customers and retool appropriately, to make sure that we are constantly improving and finding the solutions they need, at speed. I am very proud of our collaborations, and particularly our most extensive to date — the Powering Collaboration program with Statoil. But the more collaboration you experience, the more you want. Only by collaborating can we truly grow the nexus of those things that are in our power to change.

4. Practice what you preach. At GE Oil & Gas, we know we are often asking for our customers to think in new, unexpected ways. We are asking them to rethink how products are manufactured, ordered and interpreted. We are focused on being closer than ever to them, especially at the earliest stages of product development, to ensure we deliver smarter, better than faster for them. But we also need to continue to be committed to utilizing new approaches ourselves. That is why we have put in place approaches like FastWorks and Contemporary Project Management — to improve our pace and transparency as we “fail fast” and pivot. Through connected Brilliant Factories, we are utilizing our own data and analytics tools to modernize the manufacturing process and provide predictive and remote support and troubleshooting.

5. Think outside the old siloes of expertise to get the best advice. Today, the CIO role looks almost nothing like that of 10 years ago. Today, we have developed our own cloud-based platform, in order to improve the working of the world’s industrial technology. Today, we are accessing the thinking of 50,000 experts across our business. And today, we take alternators from aircraft engines to improve motors in oil pumps, and new metal materials from gas turbines to improve aircraft efficiency. Transferable technology will continue to accelerate new parts, techniques and applications from across a range of industry. The traditional siloes of expertise are gone, likely never to return.

Times like these call for courage to prioritize and make difficult decisions. If we focus effectively, volatile times can act as important catalysts to add creativity in unprecedented ways, fundamentally altering our business and beyond. Let’s grab this opportunity and forever change the future of our industry together.

(Top image: Courtesy of GE)

Lorenzo Simonelli is President and CEO of GE Oil & Gas.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Over the last several decades, companies have used tools like Six Sigma and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to squeeze the most out of their factories. But in hard times that may not be enough. “When you have a factory that’s already hitting on-time delivery in 95 percent of cases, what you can do with ERP is limited,” says Anup Sharma, chief information officer at GE Oil & Gas.

One reason why Sharma’s business stayed profitable in 2015, despite the doldrums afflicting the energy industry, was because his company embraced the cloud and predictive analytics. (It started the new year by signing deals valued at $700 million.) “ERP is built on best practices pulled from multiple industries,” he says. “With our system, I don’t have to shut things down to change direction. Our factories are like hospital triage. We know which patients need to be cared for right away and who can wait a little for a cast. This kind of responsiveness is what our customers need, especially right now.”

GE refers to the interrelated technologies that enable this responsiveness the “digital thread.” It runs from suppliers through GE’s “Brilliant Factories” to finished machines working in the field, where it helps customers predict unplanned downtime. One of the GE plants that implemented it is the Florence, Italy, facility that makes huge bespoke compressors for customers like Qatar’s RasGas, a liquefied natural gas producer that generates 45 percent of the country’s GDP. RasGas then uses the technology to optimize its LNG production plant. “It’s now part of Qatar’s critical infrastructure,” Sharma says.

Top: GE Oil & Gas first introduced the digital thread at its factory in Florence. Image credit: Getty Images Above: The digital thread connects the supply chain and production to service and field operations. Image credit: GE

The digital thread unspools from Predix, a cloud-based platform GE developed at its software headquarters in San Ramon, California, for the Industrial Internet. Predix is similar to iOS or Android, but built for machines. The platform allows developers to mine industrial data and write apps for everything from MRI scanners and jet engines to entire production facilities like offshore platforms and factories. The software supplies insights to operators who use them to make the machines run more efficiently.

At the Florence factory, for example, technicians placed dozens of sensors on massive lathes, boring, milling and grinding machines on the shop floor and inside the inventory room. They monitor heat, vibrations, engineering tolerances and other factors. The data flows into the cloud for analysis and sends back insights that allow experienced human operators to make the best production decisions. “The algorithms send back five to 10 parameters that really make an impact,” Sharma says. “The information is so good it’s basically like allowing an airplane mechanic to fly a plane.”

GE workers in Italy make massive power modules like the one above, which was designed for the Gorgon natural gas field in Australia. Image credit: GE Oil & Gas

Sharma says that this combination of “domain expertise” – the deep human knowledge of manufacturing and machines – and software analytics is what makes GE unique. “By empowering decisions where they need to happen, the digital thread allows us to guarantee quality and improve yields.”

The system, for example, gathers information from both new and old machines and allows the workers to select the best time for maintenance without disrupting production. The company also draws on 30-years of reliability information stored in a separate database. “We don’t shut things down when we need to change something on the assembly line. It would make Henry Ford scratch his head.”

GE Oil & Gas has 13 such Brilliant Factories around the world. The one in Florence allowed GE to add a whole new production line to a plant that was already very competitive without building a new production hall or adding a new shift, potentially saving millions of dollars. “It’s helping them to squeeze more out of their facilities,” says Stephan Biller, chief manufacturing scientist at GE Global Research who helped develop the digital thread. “I can go in and see what happens if I take a machine out. The factory will re-optimize itself instantly and the system will tell me what the consequences or adding or taking away resources are.”

Sharma says that the digital thread begins and ends in the hands of the customers. “We can use it to optimize suppliers, manage the design phase, handle production and installation, and then monitor operations,” he says. “The opportunities are endless. We’ve just scratched the surface.”

The commune of Carros in the south of France straddles a leafy valley tucked away a short ride from Nice and the beaches of the French Riviera. Like much of Provence, the medieval town of 11,000 swells every summer with tourists seeking tans and sipping rosé. But it may soon become a magnet for people interested in the sun for a different reason.

The town holds the world’s first smart solar grid, a system that could one day allow cities to generate more renewable energy closer to customers. “This is a prototype for an end-to-end system from the consumer to storage to the distribution grid, back to transmission,” says Laurent Schmitt, smart grid strategy leader at GE Grid Solutions.

Above: Carros sits on the far edge of France’s transmission grid. That made it the perfect place for GE’s and ERDF’s digital grid project. Top image: Port of Nice

The GE business and French distribution grid operator ERDF, which spent the last four years building the grid, picked Carros because of its remote location on France’s transmission grid. Despite its proximity to Nice, Carros relies on a single electricity supply line. This drives up the risk of outages, especially in busy July and August, when demand shoots up. A local business park is another factor that taxes the line.

Ironically, solar panels would seem like the obvious solution to add more power. But in the past they just caused more problems, and often had to be shut down because they generated more electricity than the grid could carry. “This really created a complex problem that ERDF wanted to solve,” Schmitt says. “If we get it right here, we’ll have solid proof that we can do it elsewhere.” He believes the smart grid market will be worth 50 billion euros by 2020.

The team began by modernizing the existing grid with software and automatic switches, placed solar panels on more than 500 buildings and installed a centralized 1-megawatt battery to store and release excess electricity. The result is a smart grid that can be more flexible and efficient in sending power to the grid.

GE estimates a smart grid like the one in Carros could cut generation costs by 20 percent by reducing the need for building up excess power generation capacity.

One piece of GE software, called distributed energy resource management system, allows operators to mesh consumption information from smart meters with load forecasts, status updates from the grid and weather reports.

The software, for example, allowed the operators to offer a subsidy via text message to a local coffee roaster if the company fired its ovens when neighbors’ solar panels were generating excess electricity. “We load up, and the coffee roaster roasts their coffee at a cheaper price because they get a subsidy from the grid operator to consume during this period,” Schmitt says. Grid operators used the same incentive to make residents turn on water heaters during solar peaks.

When local business cannot soak up all the extra electricity, that’s where the battery and more GE software come in. Engineers coupled the battery with charge management technology that charges or drains batteries based on electric demand on the grid.

Solar panels in Carros can send power to the grid or charge batteries. Image credit: GE

At the town’s business park, 15 customers with installed solar power also became an “islanding” zone — generating and storing enough power to be disconnected from the grid at certain times. Schmitt says islanding will be especially useful in emerging economies where grids are unreliable.

Although the market for battery energy storage is still minuscule today, it could reach 10 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2020, GE says. Storing power from renewables such as solar and wind and feeding it into the grid will drive most of the demand.

GE estimates a smart grid like the one in Carros could cut power generation costs by 20 percent by reducing the need for building up excess power generation capacity. It will also cut the district’s carbon footprint.

A worker standing inside a battery storage. Image credit: GE

The project is just one of many globally where GE is testing innovative ways to improve grids. Worldwide, electricity demand is expected to rise by up to 70 percent by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, creating a $12 trillion market. Rising demand in India, China, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia will drive much of the growth. In those markets, coal will still play an important role, but renewables are expected to represent one-quarter of the energy mix by 2050.

That puts the electricity industry on the verge of a global digital revolution that is leading to a whole new idea in power generation: distributed energy. With renewables in the mix, it starts to make sense to have smaller, cleaner plants serving smaller communities. Just like in Carros, the idea is to generate some electricity locally to reduce stress on the grid, cut energy costs and increase flexibility.

From contact lenses that double as computer screens to roads in France paved with solar panels, the past week brought a grab bag of breakthroughs, including a mushroom burial suit that turns bodies into composts. Here’s the haul.

Honey, I Shrunk Google Glass

Image credit: The University of South Australia

Scientists at the University of South Australia’s Future Industries Institute developed a polymer film coating that turns contact lenses into computer screens. Its applications could range from biometric sensors to computing. “We’re talking about anything from a simple sensor that can measure the amount of glucose in your blood through to actually creating electronic displays so rather than having something like a pair of glasses that’s acting like a computer, you can actually generate images directly on your contact lens,” says Drew Evans, one of the researchers and an associate professor at the university.

Wattway On The Highway

Top and above images credit: Joachim Bertrand, Wattway

Engineers in France plan to pave over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) of roads with a solar panel surface that’s just a quarter of an inch thick (7 millimeters) and strong enough to handle heavy trucks. One kilometer of this solar pavement can reportedly generate enough electricity to power the public lighting system for a town of 5,000 people. Called Wattway, the pavement was developed by Colas, a transportation infrastructure company, and INES, France’s National Institute for Solar Energy.

New Therapy Stops Lou Gehrig’s Disease In Mice

The ice bucket challenge raised $220 million for ALS research. Image credit: Getty Images

“I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for,” first baseman Lou Gehrig said in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939. His bad break was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive disease of the nervous system. It kills motor neurons, preventing the brain from controlling muscles throughout the body and leads to death. Gehrig passed away in 1941 and treatment for the ailment remains elusive. But researchers at Oregon State University just reported they “essentially stopped the progression” of ALS in mice, “allowing the mice to approach their normal lifespan.” The key is a compound that helps deliver copper to cells with damaged mitochondria, the tiny biological battery packs that supply them with energy “We are shocked at how well this treatment can stop the progression of ALS,” said Joseph Beckman, lead author on this study.

Breaking Sweat To Fix The Body

The new sensor can become part of “smart” wristbands or headbands “that provide continuous, real-time analysis of the chemicals in sweat,” the team reported. Image credit: UC Berkeley, photo by Wei Gao

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a wearable sensor that can analyze the chemical composition of sweat and beam the results wirelessly to a smartphone. “The idea is to have this thumbs-up or thumbs-down device that will give real-time information: it could provide an alarm that you need to take some medication, or that you’re getting dehydrated and need to drink some water,” researcher Ali Javey told Nature. Scientists around the world, including at GE, are working on wearable, wireless body sensors to detect and prevent medical issues and disease.

This “Mushroom Death Suit” Turns The Body Into Compost

Jae Rhim Lee in her mushroom death suit. Image credit: Jae Rhim Lee and Mike Ma

The iconic Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser asked to be buried naked under a tulip tree “to become humus myself.” Designers Jae Rhim Lee and Mike Ma could make such wishes commonplace. They developed a “mushroom death suit” that turns the body into compost. They call it the Infinity Burial Suit; the first prototype was embroidered with thread infused with spores of special “infinity mushrooms” that can cleanse toxins from the decomposing body.

SuitX, a company in California, has built a robotic exoskeleton that weighs just 27 pounds and allows wearers to cover a mile in an hour—a 4-minute mile pace for such machines. As futuristic as the suit is, it’s been a long time coming.

Homayoon Kazerooni, founder and CEO of SuitX, says the suit, called the Phoenix, has the potential to help people with spinal cord or stroke injury, or those suffering from neurological disease, to walk again. “We can’t really fix their disease,” Kazerooni told Technology Review. “We can’t fix their injury. But what it would do is postpone the secondary injuries due to sitting. It gives a better quality of life.”

The exoskeleton uses processors and controllers attached to motors at the hips and knees to drive the foot supports. Its backpack batteries can last eight hours. Users control the suit with buttons built into a pair of accompanying crutches. It will costs around $40,0000.

Engineers have been working on machines that can help people walk, work and even fight for decades. They imagined that factory workers and soldiers outfitted with an exoskeleton could easily lift and carry heavy tools and equipment without growing tired.

GE’s Hardiman could lift 1,500 pounds. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE engineers began making their own suit in the 1960s – the Hardiman. The research was funded by the U.S. military and the exoskeleton’s purpose was to give its wearer superhuman strength. It had 28 joints and two grasping arms connected by a complex hydraulic and electronic network. It allowed the wearer to lift up to 1,500 pounds.

Hardiman GIF courtesy of Kevin Weir, Flux Machine.

The era’s technological limitations, though, demanded that the Hardiman was born weighing 1,500 pounds. That much weight, combined with stability and power-supply issues, stopped the exoskeleton from ever moving out of the experimental stage.

GE engineers also built a walking truck. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Work on exoskeletons continued into the 1980s and ’90s, with focus on power assist and physical therapy suits. The technology began evolving rapidly at the start of the 21st century with projects like Cyberdyne’s assistive wearable machines, Honda’s body weight support assist and the University of California, Berkeley’s Lower Extremity Exoskeleton.

There’s still a lot to be done. No matter which models are eventually adopted by the people and industries that need them, it is clear that the technology is rapidly advancing and will eventually become a useful mobility and human augmentation tool. Be prepared to be awed: Iron Man, and Iron Woman, are coming.

This is a prototype of GE’s Pedipulator. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE engineers Ralph Mosher and Art Bueche with Walking Truck and Hardiman models in 1966. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Flux Machine also animated the walking truck.

The water-energy nexus presents a growing challenge for many parts of the world. We need collaboration among the public and private sector to come up with creative solutions to resource scarcity.

Few people realize the important role water plays in our daily energy use, or the energy required to heat, treat and supply water. Powering one 60-watt bulb for 12 hours a day over the course of a year can require 3,000 to 6,000 gallons of water — enough to fill a large tanker truck. Meanwhile, the electricity used for water treatment can be as much as one-third of a city’s energy bill.

Most companies’ value chains are heavily dependent on water and energy resources. Automobile manufacturers, for example, create products that rely on metals, chemicals, oil and gas, which are among the most energy- and water-intensive industries. Others, including technology and telecommunications companies, are major customers of — and suppliers to — those industries. Almost everyone has some skin in this game.

Looking ahead, the global population growing from 7 billion to 9 billion over the next 25 years will make the challenge of meeting demands for both water and energy more acute. Currently, more than 650 million people lack access to clean water, and a billion do not have electricity.

In a joint GE/WRI report, we highlight several countries and industries that are among the first to face the challenges of finding reliable supplies of water for energy production or supplies of energy for meeting water treatment needs. They include electric power producers in China and shale gas developers in the United States, who are looking at alternative options (such as waterless technologies, water reuse and brackish water) that will allow them to be less dependent on increasingly stressed freshwater sources. The report also highlights efforts in the Middle East and North Africa to increase efficiencies and tap renewable energy sources in desalination plants.

Risks and solutions emerging in these regions suggest that we should be thinking creatively and collaboratively to meet future needs. Industries will have to overcome daunting commercial barriers. Water and energy are not typically priced to reflect their true scarcity, value or costs. Coordination and investment across energy and water infrastructure is often lacking. Commercial and public-private partnerships will be needed. The report offers three ideas for catalyzing such partnerships to meet the water-energy challenge.

• Focus first on cost-effective solutions that reduce or shift demand. Investing in a supply-side solution such as seawater desalination can be as much as four times as costlyas water reuse or other resource productivity options. Rather than trying to increase the supply of limited freshwater or fossil fuel resources, energy and water utilities can work with energy- and water-intensive industries to test and prove partnerships that boost efficiency and scale alternatives. Collaborations among energy producers and users, for example, can help scale technologies such as solar PV and wind power that require only negligible amounts of water. When a large group of commercial energy users gets together and outlines the types of renewable energy products they want to buy, their energy suppliers will listen. Similarly, companies and cities can make better use of otherwise wasted water and energy. The energy content of municipal sewage can be two to four times greater than the energy required to treat it, and GE demonstration projects with Chicago and other cities are turning that waste into electricity — enough to power entire treatment plants. Similar wastewater projects in Chinese cities are showing that sludge can be converted into valuable products such as vehicle fuels and organic composts.
• See water and energy through women’s eyes.Involving and empowering women will be essential to meeting the water and energy needs of 9 billion people. In developing countries, women spend 25 percent of their day collecting water and 40 hours per month collecting fuel for their families. They are in charge of water and energy decisions at the household level, and their views must be included at the resource planning level as well. Companies such as Unilever and Coca-Cola are already involved in gender-empowerment initiatives that support economic development and stewardship of local water supplies. Partnerships can help finance women entrepreneurs, create local centers to supply clean water and inform communities via text messages when clean water is available. These are important steps toward recognizing the role women can play in creating, shaping and scaling solutions to water and energy challenges.
• Find ways to value water and price carbon in all future investments. Managing water and energy risks will benefit from a full view of their costs and value to the business. Factoring the cost of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions into future investments is an increasingly common business practice. More than 1,000 companies report that they are pricing carbon internally or they plan to within the next few years. Some, including several major oil and gas companies, are coming together at an industry level to work with governments on carbon pricing approaches. However, oil and gas companies are among those lagging on transparencywhen it comes to water risk. Assessing water risk and valuing water can be more complex but just as important as anticipating future energy and carbon costs. There is less experience with the practice to date, but a review of 21 water-related valuation studies highlighted many reasons a company should assess the value of water. Among them was managing water risk — something the World Economic Forum now ranks at the top of its list of global risks. There are frameworks emerging and opportunities for companies to work with others to understand the value of water relating to reputation and operational continuity.

Water and energy demand are deeply linked. Business leaders must pay attention to the risks and interdependencies that these twin challenges present. We need to acknowledge that multiple industries and stakeholders have important roles to play. We need them to work together on research, demonstration, and business model innovations at the water-energy nexus. Only then will we create a future in which humanity can thrive.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This piece first appeared in Harvard Business Review.

Kevin Moss is the Global Director of the Business Center at the World Resources Institute.

Debora Frodl is Global Executive Director at GE Ecomagination.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

The oil embargo of 1973 was a miserable period when American towns banned Christmas lights to save electricity, billboards urged citizens to “turn off the damn lights” and filling stations dispensed gasoline by appointment only. The crisis got everyone thinking seriously about innovation and energy efficiency. One result: the massive and efficient jet engines that power the world’s longest commercial flights today.

Starting on Feb. 1, Emirates launched the world’s longest passenger flight between Dubai and Panama City. A westbound Boeing 777-200LR powered by a pair of GE90 engines covers the 8,950 miles that separates them on a single tank of gas in 17 hours and 35 minutes. But that record may soon topple. Qatar Airways just announced plans to launch a 9,034-mile flight lasting 18 hours and 30 minutes between Doha and Auckland in New Zealand. That route would also use a Boeing 777. Finally, United said it would start the longest flight originating at a U.S. airport between San Francisco and Singapore. If approved by regulators, it will be the world’s longest scheduled route flown by a GEnx-powered Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

Qatar Airways just announced plans to launch a 9,034-mile flight lasting 18 hours and 30 minutes. Above: A Qatar Airways’s 25th Boeing 787 powered GEnx engines. Images credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

These new efficiency benchmarks have their origin in the oil shock. NASA, in particular, began a quest to develop an energy-efficient engine for commercial aircraft known as the E3 (E-cubed) program. GE joined early on and developed a new generation of high-bypass turbofan engines starting with the GE90. It has since added the GEnx for the Dreamliner and 747-8, and the GE9X engine, which is currently in development.

To reduce weight, GE equipped the engines with light, carbon-fiber composite fan blades. To this day no other engine maker has engines with composite fan blades in service today. (The design for the GE90 was so fetching that one blade is now on display inside New York’s Museum of Modern Art.). “This was a huge, expensive and risky project,” says Shridhar Nath, who leads the composites lab at GE Global Research. “We planned to replace titanium with what is essentially plastic. We were starting from scratch and we did not know how carbon fiber blades would respond to rain, hail, snow and sand, and the large forces inside the engine.”

The GEnx engine has 18 fan blades made from lightweight carbon fiber composites. Image credit: GE Aviation

But it paid off. “The engines essentially opened the globe up to incredibly efficient, twin-powered, wide-body planes,” says David Joyce, president and CEO of GE Aviation.

The latest engine in the GE family, the GE9X, will power Boeing’s next-generation 777X long-haul jets. Lightweight carbon composites allowed engineers to design an 11-foot fan that can suck a maelstrom of 8,000 pounds of air per second inside the engine. The air will flow into the combustor, where it meets parts made from ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), another breakthrough material developed by GE scientists.

An Emirates flight between Dubai and Panama City is the current world-record holder, lasting 17 hours and 35 minutes. Image credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

Carbon fiber composites work with cold air at the front of the engine. But CMCs, which were originally developed for massive gas turbines for power plants, operate in the engine’s hot section, at temperatures where even metals grow soft. The extra heat gained by the ceramics gives the engine more energy to work with and makes it more efficient.

A jet engine turbine blade made from CMCs. Image credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

CMCs also have twice the strength and just a third of the weight of their metal counterparts. This allows designers to make parts from them thinner and much lighter, further reducing the weight of the engine. Says GE researcher Krishnan Luthra, who spent two decades developing the material: “I thought it would be the Holy Grail if we could make it work.”

The next-generation ADVENT adaptive cycle jet engine will have a low pressure turbine with blades made from CMCs. GE aviation already tested them in a working turbine. Image credit: GE Aviation

The LEAP-1B jet engine, which powered Boeing’s 737 MAX plane on its maiden flight in January, is using parts made from CMCs. Image credit: Boeing

To attract the trillions of dollars needed in infrastructure investment to fuel global growth and create jobs, we need better information about what’s working and why.

There are many varying estimates of the global infrastructure gap, but one thing they all agree on is that it is large and it is not closing on current policy settings. Whether it is McKinsey’s estimate of $57 trillion, or PwC’s of $78 trillion in infrastructure needs — leaving an expected infrastructure deficit widely estimated at around $20 trillion to 2030 — it is clear that for the world to meet its growth potential, this gap needs to be addressed.

Beyond providing a needed boost to global growth, McKinsey’s analysis suggests that an increase in infrastructure investment equivalent to 1 per cent of GDP could translate into an additional 3.4 million direct and indirect jobs in India, 1.5 million in the U.S., 1.3 million in Brazil and 700,000 in Indonesia.

So what is holding back increased investment in infrastructure? The answer isn’t necessarily the same for all markets. In the more developed markets, the barriers are primarily public discomfort with privatized or partly privatized models, and a desire by governments to be seen to be making savings in a post-crisis austerity environment. Austerity, regardless of whether it has proved the right economic policy for governments in the circumstances, has undoubtedly made the development of large infrastructure projects more difficult.

In the emerging markets, the question is more about skills and capability — those skills generally around planning, project selection and matching the right form of funding to the project. Are countries planning far enough ahead to have a logical progression through their infrastructure aims and desires? Are the right projects prioritized? And of those prioritized projects, are private-public partnerships or private structures applied to the correct projects? That’s the capability gap.

Then there are longer-term planning issues such as land acquisition, permitting and sustainability — where the rights of the people need to be preserved while still allowing progress. There are also issues of economic capability. Countries that lack developed capital markets struggle to provide long-term finance and the currency-exchange protections that investors require. Without solutions to these issues, attracting long-term foreign investment in infrastructure is going to be challenging.

So what are the priorities to address this infrastructure challenge? To improve public and private collaboration we need to learn from successes — what has worked well previously, and why? How can this success be expanded across the globe to close the gap in infrastructure needs?

We need to focus on new, more targeted approaches to build knowledge and capability in developing and emerging markets that will ultimately help expand the pipeline of quality, bankable projects. These approaches need to draw on existing expertise from multilateral development banks, international organizations and the private sector. They also need to incentivize governments to better understand their own capabilities and better access appropriate expertise from around the world.

We need a much sharper focus on more efficient utilization of existing assets, moving this issue from the sidelines into the mainstream. We need to focus on the data gaps that exist and that are important to the private sector. One obvious area of data weakness is in relation to the operational record of infrastructure assets as not only an investment, but also whether they provided the expected benefits to the people and the economy.

This knowledge would then allow us to present infrastructure as an asset class, opening new sources of debt and equity finance. If we cannot provide better data on expected risks and returns, greenfield investments in infrastructure will remain essentially a niche activity for specialized project teams — rather than a realistic investment prospect for funds managers seeking the stable, long-term returns that infrastructure investment can provide.

The G20 recognized the need for new approaches to lift quality public and private infrastructure investment, with this recognition underpinning the Hub’s establishment. The Hub will work closely with both the public and private sectors to build the pipeline of infrastructure projects available for investment across the world, in both G20 and non-G20 countries. We are also working closely with established multilateral development banks (MDBs), as well as newer arrivals, to ensure our work complements their efforts. It is great to see so many countries joining with the Chinese to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and we look forward to seeing it provide a more streamlined approach to investment, achieving timelines closer to private sector norms.

The Hub is different from most of the MDBs in that it is not a project financer, nor will it advise on specific projects. It is genuinely independent and impartial to funding source. The Hub will operate as an open platform, focused on finding the best available global infrastructure knowledge and adapting it for local application in developing, emerging and advanced markets.

Our target is to provide help where it is both needed and where it is requested, but also where it will make a difference. Some emerging markets may want help with specific areas in their procurement chain. Some of the more developed countries may want to understand how other countries are implementing quite technical innovations. The Hub’s knowledge network can assist to link up examples of best practice with those who are seeking it.

There is tremendous energy in both the public and private sectors to fill the global infrastructure gap. With the right knowledge, we can harness that energy.

(Top image: Courtesy of Grigorev_Vladimir, iStock Editorial)

Chris Heathcote is the inaugural CEO of the Global Infrastructure Hub, established by the G20 as part of a new initiative to lift quality public and private infrastructure investment.

All views expressed are those of the author.

When the Czech writer Karel Capek started working on his science-fiction play R.U.R., he asked his brother Josef what he should call the humanlike machines at the center of the play. Josef, who was a poet, thought of robota, the Czech word for forced labor, and told Karel to call them robots.

Since Josef Capek coined it in 1920, robot has become one of the hottest words in any language that adopted it. Yet despite all the talk about robotics, robots today can automate only a small fraction – about 5 percent – of the dull, monotonous work they could be used for. “There are robots welding cars and helping with other repetitive tasks, but manufacturers still can’t economically or practically automate most tasks in an assembly line,” says Jim Lawton, chief marketing officer of Rethink Robotics.

Top image: Sawyer (left) and Baxter, Rethink Robotics’ two collaborative robots. Above: Baxter at work at Du-Co Ceramics. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

The company wants to change that reality with its smart collaborative robots like Baxter and Sawyer that can easily work with humans and adapt to real-world variability and imperfections. “We want to help companies build the factories of the future by revolutionizing how automation is deployed and freeing workers to use their minds for more interesting work,” Lawton says.

Rethink Robotics got several big backers last year. GE Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions and a group of other big names have invested in the company, which was founded by the Australian roboticist and former MIT professor Rodney Brooks in 2008. “Advanced manufacturing is an important area of focus for GE, both as an investor and a manufacturer,” says GE Ventures CEO Sue Siegel. “Rethink Robotics is paving the way for a new era of manufacturing in which robots work safely with humans and help companies to improve their production.”

Czech poet Josef Capek coined the the word robot after robota, the Czech word for forced labor.

Manufacturing robots aren’t typically the friendliest of fellows. Powerful electromechanical arms lift, spin and weld partially built car bodies. Precise robotic lathes and drills effortlessly transform metal blocks into complex parts. It’s an awe-inspiring thing to see a modern automated manufacturing facility in full swing. There’s only one thing – don’t get in the robots’ way or you could be seriously injured .

That’s why Rethink Robotics introduced Baxter in 2012. Baxter is leading a new category of smart, collaborative robots designed to safely and intelligently work right next to people. “Freeing the robot from its cage was just the beginning of a major leap forward in how manufacturers use automation,” Lawton says.

The real breakthrough with Baxter lies in how it tackles tasks. The red robot is 3 feet tall without its pedestal and weighs some 165 pounds. Workers can wheel it around the shop to where it is needed. Baxter has two agile arms and animated eyes, which indicate to nearby humans where it is working. When one of its two swinging arms encounters an unexpected object, say a person’s hand, the machine immediately stops moving.

Unlike traditional robots, it learns by training, not by programming. Workers can switch Baxter’s arms to a “zero G” mode, grab the robot by its wrists and simulate the task Baxter will be doing. “The team at Rethink Robotics really simplified the human-machine interface so anyone can program the robot,” says Roland Menassa, the Advanced Manufacturing Center leader at GE Global Research. “This is fundamental for advanced, flexible manufacturing. With Baxter, automation can be as redeployable as sending an email.”

A Baxter at work. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

GE is exploring Baxter’s applications in healthcare. But there are already hundreds of them working in American factories. Menassa says that the majority of repetitive assembly-line jobs are composed of tasks that add little value. “People are walking back and forth to grab parts and put them inside a product,” he says. “With Baxter stepping in, they can apply their brain and their time to more useful and interesting work.”

One company that already embraced Baxter is Vanguard Plastics Corp., a family-owned custom injection plastics company with 30 employees based in Connecticut. The robot’s job is simple and mind-numbing. It picks up plastic medicine cups coming from injection molders on a conveyor belt and drops them into a bagger.

Baxter is helping workers at Praxis Packaging box products. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

Baxter has bagged over 800,000 cups in a month and a half, but he could be soon helping out elsewhere. “You can teach somebody to program Baxter in about 15 minutes,” says Chris Budnick, Vanguard’s president.

GE’s Menassa says that the ease of programming combined with Baxter’s mobility allows manufacturers, from mom-and-pops to GE, to embrace advanced, automated manufacturing and quickly retool and react to market demand. “Baxter allows you to introduce automation at a very low entry point,” he says. “If a traditional big robot that is bolted to the floor fails, the whole system stops. But if Baxter fails, a human can step in and you never incur downtime.”

Vanguard’s Budnick says that advanced manufacturing is key to his company’s future. Most of Vanguard’s human workforce has been around for more than 10 years. “I have a personal responsibility that we continue to exist and that they have jobs,” he says. “If we are not driving our productivity, our jobs will be taken by Asia or Mexico.”

Mildred Martinez, Vanguard’s shipping manager, says that when she “saw Baxter for the first time, I got scared. I said, oh my God, this robot is going to take away an operator. But after I worked with him, I said well, maybe he is going to help us.”

Eight hundred thousand cups later, Martinez doesn’t see Baxter as a robot. “I see him as a person,” she says. “I feel good with Baxter here, I’m very happy. He’s doing a good job.”

Many clouds have a silver lining. Poncho, the irreverent weather app from Betaworks, just teamed up with GE to help you find it. “Our thesis is that people don’t necessarily want to know what the weather is—they want to know whether they should wear boots or flip-flops outside, whether they should take a cab or walk,” says Betaworks’ James Cooper. “We combine that information with something funny. We’re trying to make weather entertaining.”

Make that energizing. Starting today, Poncho users will begin receiving personalized “bad hair day” and other punny alerts they’ve subscribed to bundled with insights into how we can improve the world and harness adverse atmospheric phenomena to generate renewable electricity.

“Poncho has a sassy angle to it, but we are still talking about important topics,” says GE’s Deb Frodl. You can read about power from the sewer here.

“Poncho has a sassy angle to it, but we are still talking about important topics,” says Deb Frodl, global executive director for GE’s Ecomagination program. “This collaboration is a fun new approach to drive a conversation around business and resource efficiency with younger audiences who care deeply about these types of issues.”

That’s no joke.

Over the last several decades, companies have used tools like Six Sigma and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to squeeze the most out of their factories. But in hard times that may not be enough. “When you have a factory that’s already hitting on-time delivery in 95 percent of cases, what you can do with ERP is limited,” says Anup Sharma, chief information officer at GE Oil & Gas.

One reason why Sharma’s business stayed profitable in 2015, despite the doldrums afflicting the energy industry, was because his company embraced the cloud and predictive analytics. (It started the new year by signing deals valued at $700 million.) “ERP is built on best practices pulled from multiple industries,” he says. “With our system, I don’t have to shut things down to change direction. Our factories are like hospital triage. We know which patients need to be cared for right away and who can wait a little for a cast. This kind of responsiveness is what our customers need, especially right now.”

GE refers to the interrelated technologies that enable this responsiveness the “digital thread.” It runs from suppliers through GE’s “Brilliant Factories” to finished machines working in the field, where it helps customers predict unplanned downtime. One of the GE plants that implemented it is the Florence, Italy, facility that makes huge bespoke compressors for customers like Qatar’s RasGas, a liquefied natural gas producer that generates 45 percent of the country’s GDP. RasGas then uses the technology to optimize its LNG production plant. “It’s now part of Qatar’s critical infrastructure,” Sharma says.

Top: GE Oil & Gas first introduced the digital thread at its factory in Florence. Image credit: Getty Images Above: The digital thread connects the supply chain and production to service and field operations. Image credit: GE

The digital thread unspools from Predix, a cloud-based platform GE developed at its software headquarters in San Ramon, California, for the Industrial Internet. Predix is similar to iOS or Android, but built for machines. The platform allows developers to mine industrial data and write apps for everything from MRI scanners and jet engines to entire production facilities like offshore platforms and factories. The software supplies insights to operators who use them to make the machines run more efficiently.

At the Florence factory, for example, technicians placed dozens of sensors on massive lathes, boring, milling and grinding machines on the shop floor and inside the inventory room. They monitor heat, vibrations, engineering tolerances and other factors. The data flows into the cloud for analysis and sends back insights that allow experienced human operators to make the best production decisions. “The algorithms send back five to 10 parameters that really make an impact,” Sharma says. “The information is so good it’s basically like allowing an airplane mechanic to fly a plane.”

GE workers in Italy make massive power modules like the one above, which was designed for the Gorgon natural gas field in Australia. Image credit: GE Oil & Gas

Sharma says that this combination of “domain expertise” – the deep human knowledge of manufacturing and machines – and software analytics is what makes GE unique. “By empowering decisions where they need to happen, the digital thread allows us to guarantee quality and improve yields.”

The system, for example, gathers information from both new and old machines and allows the workers to select the best time for maintenance without disrupting production. The company also draws on 30-years of reliability information stored in a separate database. “We don’t shut things down when we need to change something on the assembly line. It would make Henry Ford scratch his head.”

GE’s Florence factory as birds see it. The digital thread allowed the managers to add a whole new production line to a plant that was already very competitive without building a new production hall or adding a new shift Image credit: GE Oil & Gas

GE Oil & Gas has 13 such Brilliant Factories around the world. The one in Florence allowed GE to add a whole new production line to a plant that was already very competitive without building a new production hall or adding a new shift, potentially saving millions of dollars. “It’s helping them to squeeze more out of their facilities,” says Stephan Biller, chief manufacturing scientist at GE Global Research who helped develop the digital thread. “I can go in and see what happens if I take a machine out. The factory will re-optimize itself instantly and the system will tell me what the consequences or adding or taking away resources are.”

Sharma says that the digital thread begins and ends in the hands of the customers. “We can use it to optimize suppliers, manage the design phase, handle production and installation, and then monitor operations,” he says. “The opportunities are endless. We’ve just scratched the surface.”

New solar and wind energy farms added a whopping 68 percent of new power generation capacity in the United States last year, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. When combined with hydropower, renewables now make up a fifth of America’s electricity generation capacity, more than double what it was in 2008. “The power sector continued to de-carbonize and add near-record amounts of clean energy as policy activity at the global, national and state levels set the country on track for further emissions abatement,” the study found.

This is good news for the environment and consumers but also for companies like GE and their shareholders and customers. GE greatly expanded its renewables portfolio with hydropower, offshore wind systems and power distribution technologies when it acquired Alstom’s energy and grid business last year.

Americans will get their first taste of the combination later this year, when Deepwater Wind turns on the country’s first offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean near Block Island, Rhode Island. But the United States is just one market for the technologies. Take a look at a some of the recent projects.

Top: GE acquired with Alstom’s energy and grid business the Haliade offshore wind turbine. “With a rotor diameter spanning one and a half football fields (150 meters), the turbine can generate 6 megawatts. Image credit: GE Power Above: America’s first offshore wind farm will open later this year near Block Island. We completed installation of the five jacket foundations in November,” says Deepwater Wind’s Stacy Tingley. “Our focus this winter and spring now turns to turbine assembly and submarine cable installation work.” Image credit: Deepwater Wind

A partially assembled Haliade rotor is motoring to its installation site in the North Sea. Image credit: GE Power

GE started connecting wind turbines to the Industrial Internet and also began modeling wind flows to make wind farms more efficient. GIF credit: GE Power

The world’s first wind turbine  produced just 12 kilowatts, enough to supply three modern American homes. Inventor Charles Brush built it behind his mansion, in the middle of a 5-acre backyard running along Cleveland’s fashionable Euclid Avenue. Brush’s business later became part of GE.

GE is testing its latest wind turbine design, the Ecorotr, in the Mojave Desert in California. The shield attached to the nose of the turbine is designed to push wind on the blades and make the turbine more efficient. Image credit: GE Reports

The Alstom acquisition gave GE access to hydropower technology, including systems working inside the Itaipu Dam on the Parana River in Brazil. The dam supplies Brazil with a quarter of its power and Paraguay with 90 percent of its electricity. Image credit: GE Power

A worker is finishing the rotor of a Francis water turbine. Image credit: GE Power

The Francis turbine bears the name of its inventor, James Francis. It’s the most common water turbine today. One of them can generate as much as 800 megawatts. The turbine, which is immersed in water, spins the generator, which is the silver wheel near the top. Image credit: GE Power

This Francis turbine will travel to Brazil. Image credit: GE Power

There are several ways to generate electricity from water. This submarinelike bulb turbine channels water flow along its body to the wheel (see below). Image credit: GE Power

The bulb turbine at work at the Srepok hydropower plant in Vietnam. Image credit: GE Power

The Kaplan turbine was developed by Czech engineer Viktor Kaplan. Unlike the Francis turbine, it has movable blades that allow it to remain efficient if the flow of water changes. Image credit: GE Power

Kaplan turbines can generate as much as 200 megawatts. Image credit: GE Power

Variable speed hydro generators like the one above allow operators to change output, absorb spikes in demand and help utilities stabilize the grid. Image credit: GE Power

The Pelton turbine, invented by Allan Pelton, is attached to a horizontal shaft and extracts energy from a jet of water. It can generate up to 350 megawatts. Image credit: GE Power

GE also has solar technology in its portfolio. It recently built the world’s first smart solar grid near Nice on the French Riviera. Image credit: GE Power

GE engineers also recently used silicon carbide chips like the one above to build one of the most efficient utility-scale inverters in the world and improve its output by 50 percent. The inverter can process power from solar installations generating 4 megawatts, instead of the typical 1-megawatt machine. Image credit: GE Global Research

Overlooking nuclear energy as part of America’s clean energy strategy would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament.

Clean, green and reliable — these should be the core elements of our nation’s energy policy in the 21^st century and beyond. Accepting any lesser criteria will hinder our efforts to reduce carbon pollution and provide clean air for all Americans to breathe. That’s why we cannot afford to lose the most important tool in our clean energy arsenal: carbon-free nuclear energy.

Solar and wind power clearly have an important role to play in our nation’s energy future. Yet despite tremendous growth over the last 10 years, solar and wind combined supply less than 4 percent of our nation’s clean energy, while nuclear energy supplies nearly 20 percent of our nation’s electricity and an astounding 63 percent of our carbon-free energy. As we shape our nation’s future clean energy mix, three guiding principles are key:

1. Nuclear energy continues to be our nation’s clean energy workhorse.

Renewables face a sizeable challenge: No one has solved the issues of reliability and storage associated with them. The wind could be blowing on Monday, but then it stops until Thursday — or even three Thursdays from now. That’s not a factor that can be controlled. Nor can electricity from wind and solar facilities be moved long distances or stored. We do know that renewables will not always be available 24/7. That means the electricity system needs a baseload, always-on source of power.

Enter nuclear energy, one of the most efficient forms of power. And it is getting more efficient every year. Even during severe weather events — such as Hurricane Sandy, when high winds and flooding knocked out other facilities; or “polar vortex” events, when natural gas would not move through pipelines — nuclear energy facilities continued to run without incident.

I believe we may be able to get there, but until a viable storage solution is developed, we will have to have a steady supply of power that is always there — and that comes from nuclear energy.

2. Nuclear energy is our most effective tool in combatting climate change.

We’re already seeing damages to our environment and changes in our climate that threaten our health and safety due to climate change. Put simply, we have to contain carbon emissions. That is what the EPA is attempting to do with the Clean Power Plan, which limits the amount of carbon that power plants in each state emit. Unfortunately, many states aren’t even putting up a fight to keep their nuclear facilities open. These legislators are failing to see the big picture. Perhaps they, like many people, simply assume it’s possible to replace nuclear energy with renewables. However, due to nuclear energy’s very high rates of efficiency, it’s not a 1:1 trade.

For instance, it was recently announced that the Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Massachusetts will close in 2019. Under EPA’s climate rules, Massachusetts already had to produce an additional 457,000 megawatt hours of clean energy by 2030. Without Pilgrim, that number grows to 6.3 million megawatt hours. To put that in perspective, Massachusetts would have to build wind farms a mile deep along the entire Massachusetts seaboard.

3. We need all the help we can get to fight climate change.

We can and must do more to increase our energy efficiency, promote energy conservation and expand our use of renewable energy. We also need to prevent well-operated, safe and efficient U.S. nuclear energy facilities from shutting down prematurely. Recently, the think tank Third Way released a report that showed it is much more likely that utility companies will build natural gas facilities before they build wind or solar facilities. Natural gas is now cheap and plentiful, but it emits far more carbon emissions than renewables and nuclear energy. This moves us farther away from our clean energy goals.

Policy makers must ask themselves this: Why discard our most robust source of clean electricity, nuclear energy, in favor of unproven and less reliable sources? It is time for our leaders in government to recognize the value of nuclear energy when setting clean energy targets or working to develop plans for meeting EPA’s climate rules.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

Christine Todd Whitman was governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003. She is currently president of The Whitman Strategy Group, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies find solutions to environmental challenges.

All views expressed are those of the author.

When the Czech writer Karel Capek started working on his science-fiction play R.U.R., he asked his brother Josef what he should call the humanlike machines at the center of the play. Josef, who was a poet, thought of robota, the Czech word for forced labor, and told Karel to call them robots.

Since Josef Capek coined it in 1920, robot has become one of the hottest words in any language that adopted it. Yet despite all the talk about robotics, robots today can automate only a small fraction – about 5 percent – of the dull, monotonous work they could be used for. “There are robots welding cars and helping with other repetitive tasks, but manufacturers still can’t economically or practically automate most tasks in an assembly line,” says Jim Lawton, chief marketing officer of Rethink Robotics.

Top image: Sawyer (left) and Baxter, Rethink Robotics’ two collaborative robots. Above: Baxter at work at Du-Co Ceramics. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

The company wants to change that reality with its smart collaborative robots like Baxter and Sawyer that can easily work with humans and adapt to real-world variability and imperfections. “We want to help companies build the factories of the future by revolutionizing how automation is deployed and freeing workers to use their minds for more interesting work,” Lawton says.

Rethink Robotics got several big backers last year. GE Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions and a group of other big names have invested in the company, which was founded by the Australian roboticist and former MIT professor Rodney Brooks in 2008. “Advanced manufacturing is an important area of focus for GE, both as an investor and a manufacturer,” says GE Ventures CEO Sue Siegel. “Rethink Robotics is paving the way for a new era of manufacturing in which robots work safely with humans and help companies to improve their production.”

Czech poet Josef Capek coined the the word robot after robota, the Czech word for forced labor.

Manufacturing robots aren’t typically the friendliest of fellows. Powerful electromechanical arms lift, spin and weld partially built car bodies. Precise robotic lathes and drills effortlessly transform metal blocks into complex parts. It’s an awe-inspiring thing to see a modern automated manufacturing facility in full swing. There’s only one thing – don’t get in the robots’ way or you could be seriously injured .

That’s why Rethink Robotics introduced Baxter in 2012. Baxter is leading a new category of smart, collaborative robots designed to safely and intelligently work right next to people. “Freeing the robot from its cage was just the beginning of a major leap forward in how manufacturers use automation,” Lawton says.

The real breakthrough with Baxter lies in how it tackles tasks. The red robot is 3 feet tall without its pedestal and weighs some 165 pounds. Workers can wheel it around the shop to where it is needed. Baxter has two agile arms and animated eyes, which indicate to nearby humans where it is working. When one of its two swinging arms encounters an unexpected object, say a person’s hand, the machine immediately stops moving.

Unlike traditional robots, it learns by training, not by programming. Workers can switch Baxter’s arms to a “zero G” mode, grab the robot by its wrists and simulate the task Baxter will be doing. “The team at Rethink Robotics really simplified the human-machine interface so anyone can program the robot,” says Roland Menassa, the Advanced Manufacturing Center leader at GE Global Research. “This is fundamental for advanced, flexible manufacturing. With Baxter, automation can be as redeployable as sending an email.”

A Baxter at work. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

GE is exploring Baxter’s applications in healthcare. But there are already hundreds of them working in American factories. Menassa says that the majority of repetitive assembly-line jobs are composed of tasks that add little value. “People are walking back and forth to grab parts and put them inside a product,” he says. “With Baxter stepping in, they can apply their brain and their time to more useful and interesting work.”

One company that already embraced Baxter is Vanguard Plastics Corp., a family-owned custom injection plastics company with 30 employees based in Connecticut. The robot’s job is simple and mind-numbing. It picks up plastic medicine cups coming from injection molders on a conveyor belt and drops them into a bagger.

Baxter is helping workers at Praxis Packaging box products. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

Baxter has bagged over 800,000 cups in a month and a half, but he could be soon helping out elsewhere. “You can teach somebody to program Baxter in about 15 minutes,” says Chris Budnick, Vanguard’s president.

GE’s Menassa says that the ease of programming combined with Baxter’s mobility allows manufacturers, from mom-and-pops to GE, to embrace advanced, automated manufacturing and quickly retool and react to market demand. “Baxter allows you to introduce automation at a very low entry point,” he says. “If a traditional big robot that is bolted to the floor fails, the whole system stops. But if Baxter fails, a human can step in and you never incur downtime.”

Vanguard’s Budnick says that advanced manufacturing is key to his company’s future. Most of Vanguard’s human workforce has been around for more than 10 years. “I have a personal responsibility that we continue to exist and that they have jobs,” he says. “If we are not driving our productivity, our jobs will be taken by Asia or Mexico.”

Mildred Martinez, Vanguard’s shipping manager, says that when she “saw Baxter for the first time, I got scared. I said, oh my God, this robot is going to take away an operator. But after I worked with him, I said well, maybe he is going to help us.”

Eight hundred thousand cups later, Martinez doesn’t see Baxter as a robot. “I see him as a person,” she says. “I feel good with Baxter here, I’m very happy. He’s doing a good job.”