We’ve commented previously on the report from the Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine Task and Finish Group titles ‘Powering Growth – The Role of Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines in Non-Road Mobile Machinery’. Given the importance of this 109pp document, here is another set of snippets.
The report quotes data from the ONS that the non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) sector was worth over £17.6B to the UK in 2022, with over 83% of revenue from export and employing around 100,000 people directly and indirectly, and so represents a significant pillar of the UK economy.
Including a vast range of applications and sectors such as agriculture, construction, mining, rail, generators etc., NRMM machines are fundamental to the national agenda for growth and infrastructure development, alongside the value and impact the industry has on the UK economy as a whole. The practical and economic benefits for the transition to hydrogen in these applications is apparent.
Importantly, the report notes that hydrogen ICE is becoming more important in environments that are becoming more demanding or complicated, such as:
- Machines that are first on site and must operate with no services provided
- Mobile machinery that needs mobile fuel delivery to keep working
- Machines that if not working due to a refuelling difficulty means that construction stops
- Machines that need to be robust and not too complicated for the job they do
- Machines that are nomadic – continuously moving onto the next job site and need fuel to be available wherever they are deployed.
These challenges put NRMM applications squarely into the ‘hard to decarbonise’ box in the Net Zero challenge.
Among the conclusions are that hydrogen internal combustion engine machines will more than meet the needs of decarbonised solutions for the NRMM applications in terms of:
- Efficiency
- Performance
- Emissions (greenhouse gases and air quality)
H2ICE represents the least inflationary technology for decarbonising NRMM applications. H2ICE powered equipment will have a similar capital cost to existing equipment, that is within the scope of ‘normal’ price inflation/improved product development changes, as well as similar maintenance and cost to current equipment. H2ICE represents the most likely solution that could be deployed in the appropriate applications at scale and in the timescales of Net Zero.
