Energy giant GE Vernova said the company continues to advance electrification and decarbonization goals as it adds more generation capacity to global power grids. The company on June 17 released its 2025 Sustainability Report, highlighting its emphasis on bringing new innovation and breakthrough technologies to the power generation space.
The company on Wednesday said 2025 brought step change advancements across several areas, including small modular reactors, carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture technologies. GE Vernova said it brought 26 GW of new power generation capacity online last year, with a carbon intensity ~31% below the global average carbon intensity of the existing grid. The company said 47% of the new capacity was installed in developing and emerging economies.
The company also said its focus on carbon intensity has resulted in a 64% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 operational emissions since 2019.
“At its core, our work is not only about electrons and emissions,” said Scott Strazik, GE Vernova CEO. “Energy is about people, and we’re working to electrify the planet in a way that enables individuals, communities, and economies to thrive, every day.”
“The story of GE Vernova is one of an unrelenting focus on delivering the technologies the world needs not just today, but importantly for the decades ahead,” said Roger Martella, chief corporate officer and chief sustainability officer for the company. “I have never been more optimistic about our ability to help meet not only the needs of today, but of the generations that follow.”
Martella told POWER the company’s work toward electrification is a key message. “Electrification is sustainability … we’ve always begun our sustainability message with electrification,” said Martella, who added that a theme of the new report is “how concepts become reality.”
Said Martella, “2025 was a very historic year, a lot of things that were being worked on in the labs came out of the labs, including the first small modular reactor in Canada, direct air capture technology in New York, starting construction on Teesside.” The latter project, led by NZT Power, could be the world’s first gas-fired power station with carbon capture and storage. GE Vernova is supplying the full power island for the plant, including a 9HA.02 turbine, a STF-D650 steam turbine, a W88 generator, and a triple heat recovery steam generator, or HRSG. The power plant will integrate with a state-of-the-art carbon capture plant using Technip Energies’ Canopy by T.EN solution powered by the Shell Cansolv CO2 capture technology. GE Vernova will also provide an exhaust gas recirculation, or EGR, system for the plant, which allows the operator to boost the efficiency of carbon capture.
Innovating for the Future
The company said that as part of its focus on innovating for the future, the report highlights several technologies that made significant progress last year. They include:
- Small Modular Reactors (SMRs): In April 2025, GE Vernova Hitachi received the first license issued to construct an SMR in Canada, with construction progressing at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site. The project will deliver the first operating commercial SMR in the western world.
- Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS): Construction began on the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) Power station in the UK in 2025. Once completed, it is expected to be the world’s first commercial-scale gas power plant equipped with carbon capture and storage. The facility is expected to generate more than 740 MW of lower-carbon power.
- Direct Air Capture (DAC): The company’s 10-ton-per-year DAC pilot system at its Advanced Research Center in Niskayuna, New York is now operational, capturing CO2 directly from ambient air across a wide range of operating conditions. Our DAC system will soon be deployed at Deep Sky Alpha in Alberta, Canada, becoming the world’s first cross-technology CO2 removal hub.
- Ammonia and Hydrogen Fuel Capabilities: GE Vernova and IHI completed a new Large-scale Combustion Test (LCT) facility engineered to test advanced ammonia combustion systems at GE Vernova’s F-class gas turbine operating conditions. Also, GE Vernova successfully completed the validation test campaign of a hydrogen DLN combustor for B- and E-class gas turbines, demonstrating robust operations on natural gas and hydrogen blends and on 100% hydrogen with dry emissions below 25 ppm NOx.
GE Vernova in the report also outlines its three-part role in enabling reliable power generation and service to data centers, as part of how it is electrifying diverse industries. The company noted how it is using the power of automation and AI, including the utilization of AI to advance sustainability solutions. The group said the report showcases the company’s “comprehensive sustainability strategy based on a sustainability framework with four strategic pillars: Electrify, Decarbonize, Conserve, and Thrive.”
The group provided more details about those pillars:
Electrify: Catalyze access to more secure, sustainable, reliable, and affordable electricity, and help drive global economic development.
- In 2025, GE Vernova brought 26 GW of new generating capacity online, the approximate equivalent of the installed generating capacity of the U.S. state of Louisiana, with 47% deployed in developing and emerging economies.
- Across grid infrastructure, 68 GW of new power transformers were energized, with 33% in developing and emerging economies.
- Approximately 10,700 students and learners have been reached through the GE Vernova Foundation’s workforce development programs since the beginning of 2024, with an overall goal to reach 30,000 learners by 2030.
Decarbonize: Invent, deploy, and service the technology to help decarbonize the world.
- New power generating capacity of our equipment brought online is ~31% below the global average carbon intensity of the existing grid, demonstrating that electrification with our equipment has an impact on reducing the carbon intensity of the grid.
- 22 million metric tons of CO2 avoided last year, the equivalent to 5.1 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven in one year. This is a relevant data point for how we deploy technologies with favorable emissions profiles as compared to what may otherwise be deployed.
- We have made significant progress on our breakthrough technologies, including small modular nuclear reactors, carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture, and ammonia and hydrogen as fuels.
Conserve : Innovate more, while using less, safeguarding natural resources.
- In 2025, GE Vernova reduced its Scope 1 and 2 (market based) GHG emissions footprint by 27% year-over-year across our operations, with a 64% reduction since 2019.
- For circularity, 53% of GE Vernova’s top products are now covered by its 4R circularity framework (Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), with 76% of products covered by Life Cycle Assessments or Environmental Product Declarations.
Thrive: Advance safe, responsible, and fair working conditions in our operations and across our value chain.
- GE Vernova’s new Code of Conduct marks a significant milestone for the evolution of the ethics and compliance program, shifting from a rules-based framework to a values-based foundation.
- The GE Vernova Foundation made significant community impact, distributing $12.8 million in total family giving, and $800,000 in disaster relief and recovery aid to communities affected by global disasters in 2025.
- The company achieved recognition for its inclusion efforts, earning “Best Company: Culture” and “Best Company: Work-Life Balance” honors from Comparably.
Electrification Impact Tracker
Released alongside the 2025 Sustainability Report is GE Vernova’s newly launched Electrification Impact Tracker, available on GE Vernova’s sustainability website. By visualizing the gigawatts of new power generating capacity added and technologies deployed to power homes in various regions, the tracker illustrates GE Vernova’s global impact electrifying the planet.
“2025 marks the transformative moment where GE Vernova’s story became squarely focused on serving the future. The world’s growing needs are changing, and we need to change to be ahead of it,” said Martella.
Referencing the electrification tracker, Martella said, “We’re unique in that we quantify our electrificaiton metrics, including decarbonization, and the impact on people. The idea is that you can go on our website, and click on different regions of the world, and see where we’re adding capacity and how that impacts communities. Maybe once a quarter we’ll be updating this, seeing how benefits are being brought to communities at the same time.
“The theme we see globally right now is energy security,” said Martella. “In the U.S., it’s about data centers and AI, but it’s much larger than that. No one is taking the grid for granted anymore. The world is in kind of a supercycle, the biggest investments in scale since World War II. That’s what we’re looking to serve in the best way we can.”
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
