GE Careers Blog.

In two years, GE has announced 15 new manufacturing plants or existing facility expansions in the United States, from a new locomotive manufacturing plant in Texas and an aircraft engine composites factory in Mississippi to refurbished appliance and lighting facilities in Kentucky, Alabama and Ohio, among others. GE’s recent breakthrough in solar energy technology—earlier this year achieving the highest-ever reported efficiency for CdTe thin film solar panels—will be brought to market at a new manufacturing plant to be built in Aurora, Colorado, the company announced last night at an event with Governor John Hickenlooper. When completed, the expansion will create the country’s largest U.S. solar panel manufacturing plant, 355 advanced manufacturing jobs at the new plant in Colorado and approximately 100 additional jobs in New York, at GE’s renewable energy headquarters in Schenectady and the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna.

Niagara Falls, New York celebrated 300 new construction jobs and an additional 100 manufacturing jobs at the groundbreaking yesterday for a new, recycled-containerboard mill that was financed in part by GE Capital. The $430 million Greenpac Mill is set to open in the summer of 2013 and is being built and operated by Norampac, a division of Canadian company Cascades, Inc. and other investors. It will manufacture approximately 540,000 short tons of lightweight linerboard a year in Niagara Falls, all of it made with recycled fibers. To help fund the development, construction and operation of Greenpac, GE Capital led the financing of $228.9 million in project finance credit facilities.

Over the last year, a group of Northeastern University engineering students built a solar-powered boat not only to compete in a national collegiate competition, but also to shed light on the potential of green technology.

Expanding into the growing renewable energy market, General Electric Co. said that it will build a $600 million solar panel factory, the nation’s biggest, to produce the same type of “thin film’’ panels made by First Solar Inc., the biggest producer. It’s demonstrated to be the cost leader in the marketplace, and we think we can push costs lower, and faster,’’ said Vic Abate, a GE vice president. Abate said it would eventually employ 400 people and produce panels by 2013, with the capacity to build 400 megawatts’ worth of panels per year, or enough to power about 80,000 homes.

Clarkson University has received a $1 million corporate grant from long-time partner GE Energy to support graduate students who will perform research in conjunction with GE’s Smart Grid and Smart Grid technology. The GE Smart Grid Fellowship Program, which began last fall, will fund the education of 11 graduate students over two years. The program has two main goals: to advance research into a self-monitoring and self-regulating network of electric power and to prepare the next generation of talented engineers and software developers to enter the energy field. Each fellowship student will work with a dedicated Clarkson professor and a GE representative to develop research projects and conduct experiments.