GE Appliances 2025: Energizing Change

At the turn of 2025, Kevin Nolan, CEO of GE Appliances following its acquisition by Chinese appliance giant Haier in 2016, is reviewing progress toward his net zero carbon vision for homes, which would otherwise exacerbate the global warming climate crisis. An innovation champion, Nolan and his team have channeled Haier’s unique entrepreneurial culture focused on ecosystems, not just products, into profitability and growth. Innovation in product lines (called “microenterprises”) has increased energy efficiency for higher-priced air conditioners, laundry equipment, and water heaters, among other appliances, but hasn’t yet made breakthroughs, although Nolan sees the potential in clean energy-powered heat pumps with water heaters as energy storage systems. Overall, digital connections have contributed to smart appliances but not yet to smart homes, since appliances remain segmented rather than connected, which involves industry interoperability. Nolan’s vision of “eco balance” involves net zero homes which generate as much electricity as they consume, with appliances connected to utilities and the grid so as to generate and store power during slow use times for use at peak consumption times. Only recently has net zero been applied to neighborhoods in a partnership with Habitat for Humanity (a nonprofit) and Southern Company (a utility). The case illuminates numerous barriers to industry transformation and consumer acceptance of these steps to address energy use and climate change. It raises the question of whether an established company tracing its origins back more than a century act quickly, innovatively, and collaboratively enough “outside the building” (its existing frameworks) to drive change?