Jeffrey Immelt is Chair of the board and CEO of the conglomerate General Electric since 2000. Under Mr Immelt’s leadership, GE implemented a new initiative, “ecomagination,” to ramp up development of clean technologies and lighten the company’s environmental footprint. GE committed itself in 2005 to double its research-and-development investments in eco-friendlier technologies from 2004 to 2010, more than ten times the 2005 federal US R&D budget for solar and wind combined.