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GE Cuts 12,000 Jobs In Response To Falling Demand For Fossil Fuel Energy (qz.com)
In response to the drop in demand for fossil fuel energy, General Electric -- the world's largest maker of gas turbines -- announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs. Quartz reports: Those cuts will mostly come from GE's power division, which makes energy-generation technologies. The reduction will account for 18% of the division's workforce and affect both professional and production employees, the company said in a statement. The majority of job losses will occur outside the U.S., Bloomberg reports. In a statement, Russell Stokes, the division's president and CEO, said disruptions to the power market were "driving significantly lower volumes in products and services." Demand for GE's power-generation equipment has stalled in part because of renewable energy growth, says Robert McCarthy, an analyst at Stifel Financial.
The move is part of a larger restructuring effort under GE's new chief executive John Flannery, who has faced immense pressure to regain the company's footing since taking the helm in June of this year. GE's stock price plunged 44% this year, the worst performer on the Dow, according to Bloomberg. The company aims to cut $3.5 billion of expenses across its divisions by the end of 2018, including a $1 billion cut from the power division.
The move is part of a larger restructuring effort under GE's new chief executive John Flannery, who has faced immense pressure to regain the company's footing since taking the helm in June of this year. GE's stock price plunged 44% this year, the worst performer on the Dow, according to Bloomberg. The company aims to cut $3.5 billion of expenses across its divisions by the end of 2018, including a $1 billion cut from the power division.
Looks like even run-of-the-mill layoff/efficiency drives are being greenwashed.
It's a Good Thing(TM) they don't pay any taxes at all, otherwise they'd be in real trouble from their own mismanagement.
A large part of General Electric's power division consists of the former power division of Alstom that was bought by GE in 2015 for € 12.4 billion. Alstom may have made a much better deal than it seemed at the time.
That would be a nice indication of progress of our society.
However, this might the "public" explanation which looks good in media.
I can think of two other reasons, which are less flattering for GE; 1) GE fails to be competitive for this type of equipment (for various reasons), or 2) the market for gas turbines shrinks, maybe due to the very high operational costs of gas turbines (they are very expensive to run, for at least electric power generation)
That's just said and not fair to the employees at all. Fossil fuel was already a risky area to jump in. They should've seen it coming.
understatement eh bill? most of us can sing along legitimately.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m50p-XScreM
we could call it unsealed fate? see you there.. cease fire stand down,, there's innocent moms & babys in every one of our towns..
The main issue with solar and wind, the main replacements for fossil fuels, is that their output is affected by weather conditions. What this means is that you either need to produce a surplus when weather conditions are good and store that energy in batteries or you need to have energy generation capacity that can be turned on and off as needed. While Musk has been touting his batteries for storing surplus energy, the main way to counter fluctuations in output has still been to have power stations with diesel generators or gas turbines like those produced by GE that can be turned on and off as needed.
What makes GE's reasoning suspicious is the fact that there's actually been an upswing in the demand for reserve power stations like those GE provides equipment because of more and more wind and solar capacity being built up. This build-up of capacity isn't going to stop anytime soon so it's not like we're talking about a small yearly change in the market either as the build-up of solar and wind will continue for quite a while.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
I can think of two other reasons, which are less flattering for GE; 1) GE fails to be competitive for this type of equipment (for various reasons), or 2) the market for gas turbines shrinks, maybe due to the very high operational costs of gas turbines (they are very expensive to run, for at least electric power generation)
2) is exactly what they said. The market for gas turbines is shrinking due to altpower's competitive advantages (they are less expensive to run, for at least electric power generation.) That's not an "other reason", that's the same reason. You're not contradicting them. You are not cleverer than GE.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Too bad, huh? Clinton was such a globalist, right?
Maybe they can all find work in companies working in the renewable energy sector? Like this one: https://www.gerenewableenergy....
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
The market is shrinking. Like GE, Siemens, a major competitor of GE, is also reducing their engagement. In addition Siemens is also reducing steam turbine capacities, as turbines for coal and nuclear plants are in less demand.
RE: GE's stock price plunged 44% this year, the worst performer on the Dow, according to Bloomberg.
The stock plunged because they sold their most profitable division, their GE Card Business. Interest levels of 32% with locked in customers who want to buy at local retail stores or online for their house. ie wealthy middle to lower class customer with stable full time jobs.
Thats the main reason their stock is suffering, because they sold all their future profits and now are largely concentrating on a gamble in the energy sector.
Demand for Gazaâ(TM)s Turbines should be up because of the low price of natural gas compared to coal.
2) is exactly what they said. The market for gas turbines is shrinking due to altpower's competitive advantages (they are less expensive to run, for at least electric power generation.) That's not an "other reason", that's the same reason. You're not contradicting them. You are not cleverer than GE.
Nope. It's not exactly the same, presentation does matter, and the market for gas turbines shrinking due to them being expensive and wasteful is not the same as other options in "green power" being cheaper or competitive. The two are not even necessarily related, the market for gas turbines could shrink without the other growing.
I really do wish GE wasn't intent on being clever and manipulative, but they are and have been, so you have to parse their words carefully, and review the situation. And even if they were not, if they were simply making a faulty presentation, it's still important to be sure.
1) growth rate of demand is down. Historically, the US could rely on an average 2% growth of peak load a year. That pattern halted in 2007, thanks to the economic downturn plus energy efficiency plus load response programs. In 2017 we have only matched 2008 peak load in the US.
2) extended life of existing plants. In a regulated industry, you overhaul a couple of times and replace with new tech. With deregulation, everyone is squeezing life and extra MW out of everything
3) increased renewable. Wind and solar only make up 15% of total US generation, but that's 15% of new build that wasn't a GE or Siemens steam turbine.
4) increased efficiency. An old 7FA topped out at about 50 MW, but new designs can run up to 120 MW per turbine at lower costs.
5) government subsidies for nukes and coal. The industry was banking on the CPP killing off coal, and now states are proposing subsidies for their "jobs programs" power plants. This adds uncertainty to the future and probably reduced orders.
6) terrible investment in Alstom. They paid peak prices thinking they were going to get steam tech, when all they got was a bloated workforce protected by European labor laws
Green power can't be the cause. Trump is bringing back the coal jobs!
This is the Corporate equivalent of Darwin in Action.
There have been so many indicators of a shift away from fossil fuels that no company operating in that market sector - and certainly not a company as large or well established as GE, can have any excuse for not being aware of this fact.
The failure of GE to anticipate this market shift and adjust their corporate strategy to accommodate it would be the responsibility of John Flannery's predecessor, Jeff Immelt and the board of Directors that he led. Whilst unforgivable, it is certainly not the first time that we've witnessed such corporate hubris. Look at what happened to Kodak as a result of the "digital revolution" for example.
The most egregious aspect of this story is the one that doesn't seem to be explored properly: the fact that 12,000 people have lost their jobs because of utterly incompetent management. And what happens to those incompetent managers? In the case of Immelt, at 61 he stepped down from the CEO role and planned to continue as Chairman to the end of this year, but got pushed out of that by Flannery on October 2nd. Not a moment too soon, looking at this mess. So Immelt will cruise into retirement with a massive 401k, not to mention all the stock options he's had over the years. A shame that 12,000 families are now going to pay the price for his incompetence.
I'm sure that they are different at a detail level, but at a *scale* level there have to be parallels between the manufacture of turbine blades used in fossil fuel power generation and the technologies used for wind or hydro power generation. Why didn't GE begin a ramp-up into those emerging technologies when they had the time and revenue to carry it? This article headline should have read, "Over the last 18 months, GE have switched 12,000 Jobs from Fossil Fuel to Renewable Energy Technologies".
The fact that it doesn't should herald a managerial bloodbath, and the installation of a competent board of directors. Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...
Yeah, right. You cannot create demand where none exists. And there is no such thing as trickle down demand.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel, that is cheaper to extract, burns cleaner than coal, and is plentiful, and in general requires less workers to extract than coal or oil.
I don't read AC
Gas turbines are not the only way to make electricity from natural gas. Nor are they the most efficient in terms of power generated from a given volume of gas, they're not the cheapest option, nor do they react as fast to varying market load as other options. None of this relates to alt energy sources but affects the market for gas turbines. They're still great if you need excellent power generation density.
Do you always make shit up or just on /.?
Progress of our society? You were a teacher's pet weren't you?
When natural gas prices dropped a few years ago there was a big gas generator construction boom. The power plants are now operational and gas is being consumed as fast as it's being produced, so the demand for new turbines has dropped. Has nothing to do with "greenification".
I believe GE makes wind turbines for power generation. Anyone know if this is so and if the market for wind power generation is growing
you're a fucking moron.
...not the only way to make electricity from natural gas. Nor are they the most efficient in terms of power generated from a given volume of gas
They're currently at ~62%. That's pretty damn high in my book. What is more efficient, in your opinion?
Ezekiel 23:20
GE is probably making some room in the budget for even bigger bonuses for execs.
Not paying any taxes was not leaving enough in the kitty.
No worries, however, all of those laid off can find jobs in solar, if they want to see if the PRC is willing to pick them up.
Agreed - the headline could have just as easily read: "Over the last 5 years, GE has failed to adapt to changing market conditions".
Ultimately, GE's failed to perform. They're saying something that sounds plausible, and is 'du jour', but the truth of it goes back several years when they should have started to develop alternative products. It's not like we've had any drop in energy demand, so "energy' is still a growth market.
China is building 700 new coal plants in China and around the world over the next 5 years. The technology is what GE gave them. However, in America, we stopped im-ex bank supporting building coal plants. Otoh, China doubled down on it and there is adding another 43% more coal plants than exists today.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Over the last 18 months, GE have switched 12,000 Jobs from Fossil Fuel to Renewable Energy Technologies".
GE or no GE the jobs switched to renewables. If GE is not there, some other renewable company will employ them.
Water flows downhill! Whooper-te-do! This is beyond obvious and irrelevant! The operative question is, does GE take advantage of business opportunities or do they squander them?
Maybe you can try peeing on yourself to verify the downward force of gravity
they're cutting production of Gas turbines while Natural Gas production is exploding. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Renewables are nice and all but they're still not dominating our power grid. My guess is this is more to do with a weak global economy for the working class leading to less demand for power. The switch to LED bulbs isn't helping either, or energy efficient devices in general. Again, less demand for new power. This are either politically sensitive or long term structural things, neither of which GE is going to be keen to talk about. Just keep telling everybody that it's just because of a switch to renewables becuase hey, GE can fix this by switching themselves, right?
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And how many old ones are they closing? You also always forget to mention that they are all more efficient and cleaner than all the coal plants in the US. Idiots like you are surprised that growing economies have growing demand for resources, but stagnating ones like the US don't need too. All their pollution already happened, their high numbers are just accepted for some reason.
And how many old ones are they closing? You also always forget to mention that they are all more efficient and cleaner than all the coal plants in the US.
Idiots like you are surprised that growing economies have growing demand for resources, but stagnating ones like the US don't need too. All their pollution already happened, their high numbers are just accepted for some reason.
incorrect or disingenuous
Just call it a lie
captcha: modernly
Here the Marxists have done something like you suggest. Now we have massive overcapacity on the short periods when the sun shines and the wind blows.
On a cloudy windless day (easily 30% of time) solar and wind are miniscue contributors.
But most of the time we need coal, gas and nuclear power to keep the supply reliable.
Also, we now pay 35 euro cent and more per kWh !
GE Executives make mistakes.
They punish the rank and file with layoffs.
GE executives have no accountability or responsibility.
62% of the lower heating value or net calorific value. Counting like that allows modern power plants to reach combined efficiencies over 100% when they do district heating as well.
However, it is still a really good value even if I think it is cheating. Only fuel cells are likely to do significantly better, and they are not really viable yet. Maybe they will never be viable.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Look, your old fossil fuel energy is .. just plain overpriced and inefficient.
It's hard to transport without explosions.
It requires capital investments that only last a few years and then get thrown away.
Meanwhile, renewables like solar wind and biofuels tend to last 20-100 years in operation, can be easily moved, don't explode, kill far fewer animals and birds than all fossil fuels do, and don't endanger expensive urban areas with giant explosions that kill thousands and destroy billions of dollars of investments.
It's a lot simpler to plant pine and willow spinnies and reuse the same tree trunk to grow 100 percent useable biofuels every two years for 20 years than it is to dig into inaccessible and remote mountain areas for dinosaur and tree remains from the last global warming event.
Adapt. Renewables are cheaper and they work better. They power most of the Internet you use.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That's part of our problem as a society when it comes to energy, we seem to think that we're doing well as long as we're better than 50% efficiency. Most modern systems get 90% or better. Modern furnaces are 97% efficient, EVs can go the same distance on 20% of the energy contained in the average gas tank, modern LED lighting uses +10 times less energy. All of this means that we can do almost twice as much work with the same amount of energy. If fossil fuels are going to survive in even a limited fashion they're going to have to catch up. The thing is it wouldn't even be that difficult for them to do so (co-generation, fuel cells, etc) but it just seem that they can't be bothered to.
Most modern systems get 90% or better. Modern furnaces are 97% efficient
Apples to oranges. It makes no sense to compare a furnace to a system for converting chemical energy into electricity. What other such system makes significantly better use of the input energy?
If fossil fuels are going to survive in even a limited fashion they're going to have to catch up.
This is not even about fossil fuels. A modern gas turbine even competes with fuel cells in efficiency, but solidly beats them on price. Which is why efficient gas turbines might easily survive if we switch to massive generation of synthetic hydrogen in the future - they achieve the same goal but more cheaply.
Ezekiel 23:20
As far as I know, fuel cells are comparable...IF you start with hydrogen. But given the losses in steam conversion, fuel cells seem to be worse off at least for this application since a CCGT can use the energy directly.
Ezekiel 23:20
Thatâ(TM)s right. Forward thinking companies did that first. Dinosaurs died out for a reason. So do dinosaur companies.
Most modern systems get 90% or better. Modern furnaces are 97% efficient
Apples to oranges. It makes no sense to compare a furnace to a system for converting chemical energy into electricity.
It also makes no sense to count the steam turbine part in your efficiency calculations for a gas turbine, but apparently you keep doing that, so...
What other such system makes significantly better use of the input energy?
Some of the ones here.
If fossil fuels are going to survive in even a limited fashion they're going to have to catch up.
This is not even about fossil fuels.
It is for all practical purposes today. Which is why...
A modern gas turbine even competes with fuel cells in efficiency, but solidly beats them on price. Which is why efficient gas turbines might easily survive if we switch to massive generation of synthetic hydrogen in the future - they achieve the same goal but more cheaply.
So you're positing hydrogen cracking involving what now?
~62% is for a combined cycle plant, not a standalone turbine.
The best you can get out of a standalone turbine is about 32%, increasing to about 35% if you add a recuperator (the advantage of a recuperator is that efficiency at part-throttle is vastly improved, making them more applicable for ships than power generation)
CCGT drives steam turbines from the heat of the exhaust stream. You could add Stirling engines to recover energy from what's left after that but cost:benefit falls away rapidly.
The only way to produce mass quantities of "synthetic" hydrogen is with a nuclear source.
At that point you may as well just go ahead and generate electricity directly, tacking on some carbon atoms to the hydrogen to make synthetic liquid fuels for applications where you need mobility and energy density beyond that which can be provided by batteries (IE: aircraft)
Yes, you could setup hydrogen pipelines or repurpose existing natural gas distribution lines, but raw hydrogen is a bitch to handle due to the embrittlement issues under pressure and its tendency to permeate straight through the container walls means that long-distance losses would be comparable to electrical transportation losses and that's without even taking the conversion losses into account at the far end or its inherent dangers over natural gas when used in most domestic/commercial applications thanks to the nasty properties mentioned above.
"Siemens is also reducing steam turbine capacities"
This is a mistake.
The long-term demand is going to be for high capacity steam or other gas turbines driven by molten salt nuclear reactors and in the meantime steam demand is likely to increase due to an increase in the conventional nuclear fleet.
Reasoning: Renewables (Wind and solar PV) are a nice scam, but at best and assuming all planning objections are overrriddden so you build everywhere you can, they can collectively only just match the electrical output of the existing non-nuclear electrical generation fleet.
Worse, the places you can site them aren't the places where the demand is, so you need to factor in transmission losses (HVDC/HVAC transmission lines top out at about 1MV thanks to corona losses and arcing) and line density requirements (you can't just string heavier lines without decreasing the tower distance and each tower affects the electrical isolation, meaning that increasing capacity of these kinds of lines usually means more parallel transmission lines)
Now factor in that once you come under intense pressure to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions (what we're currently seeing is just tinkering around the edges), you're going to see an increase of electrical demand by a factor of 6-8 - at that point the ONLY viable way forward is nuclear energy and that should be molten salt systems by preference due to the ready availability of Thorium, the fact that you don't need to spend prodigious amounts of energy to enrich it (tossing out 90% of the raw uranium in the process) and you can achieve a utilisation exceeding 95% of the input materials with relatively continuous chemical reprocessing - and that doesn't even start to address the safety issues that water moderated systems have with putting extremely hot, high pressure, acidic water in direct contact with the nuclear sources and inevitable contamination that results, with risk of leaking into the biosphere that comes with it or the difficulties inherent in packing uranium ceramics into a fuel rod and leaving it to break down for 20-30 years, then try to process the resulting mess. Conventional nuclear power is 300,000 times safer than coal, but molten salt provides an opportunity to make it a few (ten) thousand times safer whilst lowering costs dramatically. Most of the costs of conventional nuclear come from the safety systems that are inherent with having a 800-1600MW radioactive steam bomb at their core. If you can separate the steam and the radioactivity you eliminate most of the costs - and as almost all the civil nuclear accidents have revolved around water in some way or another it makes sense to eliminate it. (Chernobyl went prompt-critical and it was the resulting steam explosion which blew the roof off. Everything that followed was a result of that explosion. Snake river was also a prompt-critical incident)
Ehm no. Renewables are quite reliable. That might be in contradiction to your world view, but fortunately reality is different. However, molten salt nuclear reactors are decades away from any real application and they still have this nasty recycling problem.
Siemens and GE are for profit corporations. If they see a demand in an area they will invest and expand business there. However, business for these large turbines is going down. This includes steam and gas turbines. Therefore, they reduce capacity. Maybe they keep some, for instance for solar therm plants.
Renewables are reliable collectively. The problem is production volumes.
Renewables can just about match existing carbon-sourced electricity production.
Electricity only accounts for 30-40% of carbon emissions.
Replacing those carbon using processes with electrical or other sources will result in a 6-8 fold increase in generation requirements.
How do you propose filling that gap?
As for the recycling problem: A conventional 800MWe nuclear plant over its 60-year lifespan produces a a lot of high level waste - enough to fill a single olympic-size swimming pool in fact (compare with the lakes of coal fly ash simmering across the USA - the two largest environmental disasters so far this century have been ash pond dam failures)
A molten salt reactor with inline reprocessing reduces that by 98% on the output side.
-But because it can eat highlevel conventional nuclear waste, it also reduces the conventional waste pile.
-And because it can eat U238, it can also reduces the _input_ waste pile of depleted uranium (enriching natural uranium to 3% U235 results in ~87% of the original uranium to be discarded during the enrichment process)
-And because they eat Thorium and convert it to U233 along the way, they have essentially limitless fuel - there are hundreds of thousands of tons of Thorium sitting in rare earth metal refining waste piles and the USA DOE buried ~30,000 tons in the Utah desert in the 1990s.
The recycling problem is largely self inflicted because of the insistence on using Uranium instead of Thorium and a focus on extracting plutonium for weapons. Molten salt reactors produce so many plutonium isotopes that attempting to make weapons from the output is difficult-to-impossible and whilst you can get U233 from the process, doing so will reduce output so much that any reactor operator doing so will be noticed.
Couple that with blind insistence that all radiation exposure is bad and you have a kneejerk fear response which prevents proper R&D. Look into the radiation exposure of aircrew sometime. They get 10-100 times the allowable dose for nuclear workers and the early death/cancer rate is no higher than the general population - which indicates that the perceived wisdom about radiation exposure is wrong. (Panic over radiation killed 1500+ people around Fukushima. Radiation didn't kill anyone and the worst injuries inflicted were some mild skin burns around the ankles of a few staff trying to stop the water leaks on the reactor vessel.)