Two years after announcing plans to renovate its 100-year-old building in Schenectady, GE opened revealed its new, environmentally-friendly global headquarters this week.

A new report shows wind energy installations are up significantly; however, U.S. manufacturing of wind turbines has slowed.The new headquarters will house GE's fast growing renewable energy segment, reports the Times Union [1]. This segment grew from $200 million in annual sales in 2002 to over $6 billion last year. GE's wind turbine business accounts for a significant chunk of this success; GE produces steam turbines as well as traditional generators at its Schenectady campus.

The $45 million renovation is set to boost employment in the Capital Region.  The new building is welcoming 650 new GE employees, many hired from local colleges.  As a condition of receiving grants from NYSERDA and the state, GE agreed to create 500 jobs in the region 2011. 

The opening coincides with a new report by the American Wind Energy Association [2] (AWEA) that showed the U.S. wind industry broke its previous records in 2009 by installing nearly 10,000 megawatts in 2009. That puts wind power neck-and-neck with natural gas as the country's primary source of new electricity generation.