Trump drives renewed belief the internal combustion engine is here to stay

US president Donald Trump’s campaign slogan to “drill, baby drill,” and promises to “revoke the electric vehicle mandate,” are signalling a renewed focus on internal combustion engines, both for construction machinery and across the wider market.

Since Trump returning to power at the start of the year, the president has laid out a pro-fossil fuel agenda which includes withdrawing the USA from the Paris climate agreement, reopening oil and gas leasing across hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands, signing an executive order revoking a US$7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles, and ordering US states to suspend a US$5 billion electric vehicle charging station programme.

Dramatic change

It’s a dramatically different picture from that of three years earlier when former President Joe Biden set an ambitious target that by 2030 half of all new vehicles sold in the USA would be battery-powered and some 20 world governments pledged to work towards a target of 100% zero emissions new car and van sales in leading markets by 2035 or earlier.

For Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Engine Technology Forum, a non-profit dedicated to educating the industry about the merits of ICE technology and which represents manufacturers of advanced internal combustion engines and fuel manufacturers, the change in political direction marks a renewed belief that fuel-based engines can be used for many years to come while still lowering carbon emissions.

Allen Schaeffer

“The previous four years were very heavily focused on climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in every possible way,” he tells International Rental News’ sister title Power Progress. “And they had the monies and policies to really drive that. What you saw [on inauguration day] with the incoming administration was a bit of a reversal.”

“That sort of energy policy underscores the importance of continued innovation and development of advanced internal combustion engines,” he adds.

For anyone likely to be investing heavily in powered construction equipment over the next five years, the sea change in policy is also likely to be particularly pertinent as rental companies debate whether to hang onto ICE powered equipment or invest in battery-powered alternatives.

Yet having spent the last thirty years producing ever more efficient and less polluting engines, manufacturers say they may be reaching their technical limits.

Instead, the ETC’s members, which include Caterpillar, John Deere, Volvo, Kubota, Yanmar, Cummins, Rolls Royce, Neste and the Clean Fuels Alliance America, say that there should be more focus on fuel.

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency is in charge of setting the Renewable Fuel Standard, a federal programme that determines how much renewable fuel should be blended into the gasoline and diesel sold across the country.

Although the RFS requires renewable fuel such as corn-based ethanol to be blended into transportation fuel in increasing amounts each year, for years big oil companies and the Farm Belt’s biofuels makers have argued about what it should be and complain that small refiners have been allowed to sidestep their blending obligations.

“I think there’s been a great frustration the last four years from the biofuels industry about the Biden administration’s lack of growth policies for the renewable fuel standard,” Schaeffer says. “If you really were looking at freight sustainability and decarbonisation, you’d look at all the different approaches. That was one that they never really tended to.”

In California, the first US state to impose such rules, the US$2 billion Low Carbon Fuel Standard has been in operation since 2011 and has been used as a model for federal fuel standards.

Schaeffer says that today more than 75 percent of diesel sold at the pumps fuel pool is renewable, producing as much as 80 percent fewer carbon emissions than its fossil fuel equivalent.

Changing the fuel mix

“Fuel is at the top of the list. I think we’ve seen that, from the renewable fuel perspective over the last few years, how much that’s grown and how much that’s been a significant part of California and their ability to reduce carbon emissions because of their low carbon fuel standard, which requires increasing percentages of low-carbon fuels into the mainstream fuel pool,” Schaeffer says.

“Changing out the fuel for the engines that we have hopefully will be part of what we might say is a new energy policy from this administration. Let’s look at innovative fuels and technology in a different way.”

Another alternative fuel which can be used in internal combustion engines is of course hydrogen. Typically hydrogen internal combustion engines are simply a modified version of a traditional ICE.

Cummins B6.7H hydrogen engine (Photo: Cummins)

“It used to be a big joke that hydrogen was right around the corner. Honestly, in the last year, it really felt like the corner has been turned and we see some really interesting developments there from companies like Cummins and others. JCB has a hydrogen technology out there now. Caterpillar has hydrogen. [There are] dual fuel blending applications, etc,” says Schaeffer.

“Companies have a huge interest in providing their customers with more options. Certainly, a hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle checks a lot of boxes. [It uses] the same engine architecture components. People know how to service these kinds of engines. We’re again just switching out the fuel to a different kind of fuel.”

The key problem with increasing uptake of H2 is the current lack of a suitable hydrogen fuelling network.

Moreover, Schaeffer points out that the Trump administration has so far announced no additional funding to develop the technology further.

“That’s a tricky one because those investments [in hydrogen] came from the Biden administration’s program. I think they’ve spent pretty much all of that.”

In future, he envisages customers being able to choose from a variety of power sources depending on the work they want to do.

“Diesel has sort of been that big hammer,” Schaeffer says. “You know what, we’re going to have a truck, bang — we’re going to need diesel. We know what it does. it’s strong enough to get the job done. It can create efficiency, and the hammer’s gotten better over time.

“But maybe now we need more of an assorted bunch of hammers. The tasks we have are different, and not every hammer is going to work in every circumstance. So, I think that the toolbox is definitely expanding for technology solutions.”