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The Route to Alternative Energy Continuing our series on perspectives on future fuels, Chris Sleight, managing director of Off-Highway Research and a former construction journalist, gives his thoughts on how the construction equipment industry will tackle the alternative energy challenge. As in the on-road world, we can expect construction equipment to move away from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources. Although the off-highway industry tends to follow what happens in the on-road world, it also has some unique challenges. That means the journey for our industry won’t be a carbon (or no carbon) copy of on-highway developments.
Diesel v alternatives Although alternative energy now looks like a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, the timeline is hard to predict. There are many factors driving both the decline of diesel and the rise of replacement energy sources. Cost is being added to diesel power and has been for some time. Ever-increasing regulation on emissions has meant more expensive engines with elaborate after treatment being introduced, along with more consumables like AdBlu. Although we have paused for the moment at Stage V in Europe, while the rest of the world heads towards Stage III-IV equivalents, it would be naïve to think this will be the end of diesel engine emission regulation. The move away from fossil fuels in general, and the demonisation of diesel in particular, is likely to mean that law makers around the world will remove tax breaks and subsidies. An example of this is the change currently taking place in the UK around the permissible uses of cheap ‘red diesel’. As well as the loss of favourable treatment, doubtless taxes on fossil fuels will continue to be increased, while the oil price is always
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a source of uncertainty in the future. This will all tilt the economic balance further away from diesel. On the other side, technology around alternative fuels will improve, delivering better efficiency and greater power density, while increased scale will lower prices. That could be accelerated if governments use policy to drive this change. These may be carrots like subsidies, tax breaks or other incentives, or they may be sticks, such as the setting up of zero emission zones. In the off-highway world, the alternative fuels focus to date has been on electrification. This is a reality today. Many companies, including major suppliers like JCB and Volvo, now have electric machines commercially available. More will follow. The greatest opportunity for electrification in construction equipment is compact machines. Depending on how this is defined, it could account for as much as two thirds of the 1.1 million units-per-year global construction equipment market. As time goes on, technical and economic feasibility will change and bigger electric equipment may become viable as batteries get cheaper, better and more compact. Even today electrification is not limited to small machines. Liebherr, for example, now offer a 220 tonne capacity battery-powered crawler crane, and several manufacturers have shown prototype batterypowered 20 tonne excavators at exhibitions The need to be lightweight is a burning issue in the on-road world, but it is less important in many off-highway applications. Battery weight
