"I find out what the world needs, and then I proceed to invent," said Thomas Edison, father of General Electric. On Monday afternoon in Washington DC, Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chairman and chief executive, will make a historic bet: that "what the world needs" today, as much as it once needed the light bulb, is green technology. Mr Immelt will present a company-wide initiative called Ecomagination.

Under Ecomagination, GE will "proceed to invent" green technology, doubling both green research spending and the number of green products and services it offers. It will commit itself to reducing greenhouse gases within the company and in products. Finally, GE will promise to make the environmental consequences of its work more transparent. In effect, the company is inscribing its name below all the country names on the Kyoto treaty.