Mike Fowler, Cummins Director and General Manager On Highway Asia Pacific, as Cummins looks forward into the future, talks to PowerTorque and explains Cummins’ zero emissions road map to get the company to carbon neutrality by 2050.
The development between now and viable zero emissions technology becoming common in heavy duty applications is going to be a considerable time. This means lower emissions trucks using ICE need to reduce their carbon footprint to help with the overall reduction in carbon emissions.
“A good path to zero emissions has to lower emissions today in the lead up to 2030,” says Mike. “Whatever technology you develop today has to have the capacity to drive wide spread customer adoption as well as reducing well-to-work or well-to wheel emissions.”
If the world moves over to battery electric trucks, but the power grid remains coal powered there has been no improvement. From the point of view of an operation like Cummins, there is a need to reduce particulate matter and nitrogen oxides as well and carbon emission in this decade.
The path from current product to the final goal involves a number of smaller steps, each delivering a better carbon outcome. The next stage in the future is the delivery of a new engine platform which will enable the lower emissions technology and fuel to deliver the results required.
It is on this platform that Cummins will be able to move forward in a number of stages, from the current diesel technology to the final goal of zero carbon. That new platform is in the latter stages of its initial development and we can expect Cummins to reveal the new technology over the next few years.
There are a number of elements which can offer emissions reduction on the road to zero. For example the new platform will be able to adapted to use natural gas. Just using natural gas does reduce carbon emissions to a degree, but if that gas is made from a biomass, then it becomes a zero emissions engine.
The most likely next step in the development of that particular engine will be to run on hydrogen. Cummins reckons that developing and growing the hydrogen economy is essential. With less expensive, more available green hydrogen, the engine maker will have the opportunity to switch to green hydrogen as a fuel source to decarbonise industries, particularly transportation.
There is already a lot of interest in the production of green hydrogen, manufactured using solar power to convert water into the gas. Again this is a zero emission result with a couple of lower emission stages on the way.
“Government does need to provide incentives and encouragement for operators to adopt new technology,” says Mike. “Transit bus is an early adopter market, heavy duty truck is not.”
The Road Ahead
Between now and 2030 Cummins says it will be focused on advancing its solutions, and creating a technology-forcing regulatory environment. Over this period it expects to get to the point where it will build scale in new technologies as the economy builds renewable grid infrastructure.
In its forward thinking Cummins sees the decade between 2030 and 2040 as a period when a number of new technologies will compete and improve, leading to a reduction in prices. At this time the refuelling infrastructure will spread out over the highway network.
After this decade of change, Cummins sees the run up to 2050 as a time where the technology, infrastructure and supply industry will mature to enable genuine zero emission transport to flourish. There will be a renewable and resilient grid in place, mature hydrogen infrastructure and widespread deployment of new zero and low carbon technologies.
