Cummins Inc. leaders say the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law this week by President Biden will play an important role in the company’s journey to a carbon free economy.
The legislation establishes key incentives for the development of both the technologies that will power the future and the infrastructure to support them.
“We think the comprehensive scope of the energy provisions (in the act) – from power generation, to transportation, to hydrogen production – are all important pieces of the decarbonization puzzle, and they’re important to ensure we have the well-to-wheels decarbonization in hard-to-abate sectors like those we serve,” Cummins President and CEO Jennifer Rumsey said at a roundtable discussion hosted by the White House earlier this month before final congressional approval of the legislation.
“We see a significant opportunity to increase U.S. manufacturing capacity and grow jobs in all of these different technologies that support our strategy – Destination Zero – to decarbonize our industry,” Rumsey said later in the virtual forum, which also included General Motors CEO Mary Barra and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.
The Legislation and Destination Zero
The legislation includes incentives for development of low- and no-carbon technologies, including battery and fuel cell electric, as well as low- and no-carbon fuels like hydrogen that could be used in those new technologies. Hydrogen can also fuel traditional platforms, such as internal combustion engines, to reduce carbon.
Destination Zero, Cummins’ strategy for decarbonization, calls for developing and advancing low- and no-carbon platforms for those customers who are ready for them while also working to reduce carbon emissions from the company’s more traditional products.
Cummins has brought to market battery and fuel cell electric platforms as well as electrolyzers critical to producing low-carbon and green hydrogen. Green hydrogen is produced when the electrolysis of water to split hydrogen and oxygen is accomplished using renewable forms of power.
The company is also bringing to market fuel-agnostic internal combustion engines offering a common architecture that can be optimized for different low-carbon fuels.
Click here to read the full column by Blair Claflin, director of sustainability communications for Cummins
