These days, when every corporate Goliath – from General Motors and ExxonMobil to Wal-Mart and Fannie Mae – is vying to paint itself green with splashy save-the-planet ad campaigns, it's hard to distinguish between the companies that are making real environmental progress and those that simply want to create an eco-friendly appearance.

Which is why LIME has assembled a list of three corporate kingpins who are making big bets on the environment – leaders whose companies have tainted reputations and, to many, represent the biggest and the baddest, but nevertheless are setting bold environmental targets. They are setting out to prove the critical point that America can grow its economy and protect the environment at the same time.

Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric

Last May, Jeff Immelt launched “ecomagination,” an admirably broad and ambitious effort to develop next-gen clean technologies, reduce the company’s emissions, and boost its energy efficiency. Since GE makes nearly every energy-consuming technology imaginable – from light bulbs and dishwashers to power plants and jet engines – the company is well-positioned to take a leadership role.

Immelt is committing to hard-and-fast targets: pledging to double GE’s research-and-development investments in cleaner technologies to $1.5 billion, and to double revenues from those innovations in the next five years. Immelt has also committed GE to reducing its own current level of greenhouse-gas emissions by 1 percent by 2012. Sounds insignificant at first, but not when you consider that GE’s emissions would otherwise grow 40 percent during that time period.

Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart

There’s no denying that Wal-Mart is a symbol of commercial hegemony and excess. It has a reputation for having tremendous environmental impacts and has been criticized for poor labor policies. But as one of the biggest companies in world, it can make small decisions that have enormous environmental implications. And the company’s leader Lee Scott is actually setting big – not trifling – goals. In a recent speech on 21st century leadership he said he wanted to position the company to be supplied by “100 percent by renewable energy. To create zero waste. [And to] sell products that sustain our resources and environment.”

More specific targets include investing approximately $500 million annually in green strategies. Scott has pledged to increase Wal-Mart’s truck-fleet efficiency by 25 percent over the next 3 years and double it within ten years, reduce energy consumption in stores 30 percent, and reduce its greenhouse gasses 20 percent over the next 7 years.

Chad Holliday, CEO of DuPont Chemical

According to an excellent feature in Business Week from December ‘05, The Race Against Climate Change: How top companies are reducing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, DuPont tops the charts of corporate environmental do-gooders. That’s largely because its leader, Chad Holliday, was way ahead of the game: “In 1994, DuPont committed to cutting its gas emissions by 40 percent by the year 2000 from its 1990 levels. By 2000 the company had met its original target and set an even more ambitious one – a 65 percent reduction by 2010,” says Business Week. Holliday is so ahead of the game, in fact, that DuPont has already hit the 65 percent goal – four years early. Now the company uses 7 perent less energy than it did in 1990, even though it produces 30 percent more product. Here’s the best part: Holliday has saved the company a whopping $2 billion in energy bills.

The Takeaway

Of course, any way you slice it, all these companies will have colossal environmental impacts in spite of their progress for decades to come. But an acknowledgement among their leaders of the escalating climate crisis combined with a public commitment to strong targets is a good start.

Image credit: GE.com