Is hydrogen ready for take off? Five OEMs and rental companies investing in H2 tech

JCB’s hydrogen refueller refuels a hydrogen-powered backhoe loader (Image courtesy JCB)

Described by Microsoft founder Bill Gates as “the Swiss Army knife of decarbonization,” many construction equipment manufacturers and rental firms are pinning their hopes on hydrogen as an energy-dense, emissions-free replacement for diesel.

The gas is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe and, on a mass basis, has nearly three times the energy content of diesel or gasoline. Better still, when burnt, it produces no carbon dioxide, just power and water and it can be used like a battery in a fuel cell.

With all of that in its favour it’s no wonder that over the last decade, hydrogen’s allure as a fuel has been prompting equipment manufacturers to explore its potential to drive machinery.

Despite ongoing difficulties in producing the gas in a cheap and environmentally-friendly way and developing an infrastructure to supply it, some manufacturers and rental firms are starting to use it, with applications varying from mobile lighting towers to scissor lifts.

1. JCB

Take for example UK-based manufacturer JCB.

In January the company announced that its hydrogen combustion engine (HCE) in-development had received licensing and approval for use in commercial machines.

The company said it was a “world first” for construction machinery.

“Eleven licensing authorities across Europe have now given permission for JCB’s hydrogen engine to be sold  – with authorities in other countries set to follow suit with certification in 2025,” the company said.

JCB chairman Anthony Bamford added, “This is a very significant moment for JCB. To start the New Year with certification in place in so many European countries bodes very well for the future of hydrogen combustion technology.”

“This formal type approval/certification paves the way for the sale and use of hydrogen engines right across the UK and Europe.”

JCB said the Netherlands’ Vehicle Authority RDW was the first licensing authority to issue official certification.

Other licensing bodies across Europe have followed, including Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Finland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The OEM said licensing authorities in other countries are set to follow with certification in 2025.

The company said it has already produced more than 130 evaluation engines for backhoe loaders, Loadall telescopic handlers and generator sets.

JCB first unveiled the prototype engine in January 2023 before an international debut at CONEXPO that March. The OEM said it invested around US$122 million into the project over the last three years with 150 engineers involved.

Meanwhile, the company has also been working on a hydrogen generator.

The G60RS H is powered by a JCB hydrogen combustion engine that it says will deliver the same power, performance and efficiency as its diesel equivalent but with zero-emissions.

The company said the generator offers a “glimpse into the future of zero carbon worksites.” 

Photo: AFC Energy

2. AFC Energy

It’s a vision shared by UK-based AFC Energy whcih specialises in producing hydrogen fuel cell generators. In February 2025 it launched its 2nd Generation H-Power S+ 200kW Generator.

Designed for construction and off-grid power applications, the unit builds upon the 1st Generation prototype developed alongside ABB as part of a partnership announced in 2020. The upgraded H-Power S+ 200kW genset is now 34% smaller in size, 28% lighter in weight and is said to be 65% lower in cost.

According to AFC Energy, the upgrades make it “more portable and cost-effective” while also removing barriers to widespread hydrogen adoption.

It will be first deployed via its UK partner Brett Aggregates, where it will be used to power facility operations under the UK government’s Red Diesel Replacement (RDR) Grant.

The RDR programme, administered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, is focused on accelerating clean energy technology adoption in the construction, mining, and quarrying sectors.

With up to £40 million in matched funding available, the initiative is part of the £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP), which aims to drive the commercialisation of innovative clean energy solutions throughout the 2020s and 2030s.

The company said the development of the H-Power S+ 200kW Generator was made possible through collaboration with its partners, including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Energy Solutions (UK) Ltd, ABB, Speedy Hire, and Brett Aggregates.

As part of a partnership with Speedy Hire, it launched Speedy Hydrogen Solutions Ltd (SHS) in 2023, a 50:50 joint venture company dedicated to renting hydrogen fuel cell powered generators.

At the end of 2024 the company said the join venture was getting a “very positive” reception from customers, with AFC’s full year revenues of approximately £4 million were largely driven by sales to SHS.

3. TCP Group 

Sales director Joe Ambor (left) and operations and development director Jim Irvine (right). Photo: TCP

UK-based manufacturer and plant hire company TCP Group has reached the milestone of operating a fleet of 500 hydrogen fuel-cell mobile lighting towers.

The product of a 2010 partnership between TCP and UK gas provider BOC, the TCP Ecolite TH200 is powered by a HYMERA fuel cell.

The unit is fitted with Prismalence lenses, which is said to create “controlled light distribution”, low glare and good visbility.

IRN was told that the majority of the 500 units available for rent, which are all manufactured by TCP, have been converted from old diesel-powered units.

Jim Irvine, operations and development director, TCP Group, said, “The TCP Ecolite TH200 (hydrogen fuel-cell mobile lighting tower) is an increasingly popular choice where temporary lighting is required as companies look for clean energy solutions to reduce carbon emissions. We have an ever-growing demand for this particular lighting tower, and we committed to the provision of 500 towers by July 2024.

“With large infrastructure projects moving forward, such as Sizewell C and the Lower Thames Crossing, this temporary lighting solution is the No.1 choice, as they are silent running, no spill risk and zero emission at point of use.”

Joe Ambor, sales director, TCP Group, added, “We have steadily grown the fleet of hydrogen mobile lighting towers in recent years. As a company faithful to recycling where possible, we have remanufactured hundreds of our diesel-powered lighting towers to use hydrogen fuel-cells and gas cylinders.

“Our added value is to provide a fully managed gas service. Gas usage is monitored remotely and when a hydrogen gas cylinder needs exchanging, the TCP team make arrangements with the customer to replace the empty cylinder with a full one and then take the empty one away.”

As well as the TCP Ecolite TH200, BOC and TCP have also collaborated on other lighting towers powered by hydrogen. The companies have also produced a range of generators powered by fuel cells.

4. Haulotte

Across the channel, France-based Haulotte’s journey to adopt hydrogen energy began in June 2022 when it announced a collaboration with Bouygues Energies & Services, a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction, which completed the acquisition of hydrogen solutions specialist Equans in October of the same year.

Haulotte’s HS18 E PRO scissor lift is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

“Haulotte decided in 2018 to switch all its machines to electrical mode,” Benoît Baleydier, project manager at Haulotte, tells IRN.

“The electric HS18 E was launched in 2021 from what was historically a diesel machine. We had a removable diesel range extender on it.”

According to Haulotte, the diesel range extender is a removable power generator that can recharge a scissor lift’s battery to 80% in three hours.

Following the partnership with Bouygues, Baleydier says the removable diesel range extender can now be replaced with a hydrogen fuel cell version, which is the same size and has the same electricity generation capability.

Haulotte used the hydrogen range extender on site for the first time in October 2024 on its rough terrain HS18 E PRO scissor lift at the Saint-Cyr-l’École military school near Paris. Equans is the hydrogen gas supplier for this trial program.

“Technically speaking, the hydrogen fuel cell technology is mature. But today’s regulations are not mature enough,” Baleydier says. “Today, we only deal with the regulations for one machine prototype and construction site. But we cannot deal with the regulations for tomorrow’s mass production because they are too complicated.”

He adds that current regulations and safety guidelines for storing hydrogen gas on construction sites must be updated before it can be used effectively.

“From an economic point of view, the fuel cell technology is too expensive to justify the costs of its usage today. We are now working with several suppliers to find out how to reduce the costs,” says Baleydier. 

Another difficulty facing the adoption of the technology is the time taken to refuel machines.

“The only thing they [customers] ask us to improve is the time for refueling the machine,” Baleydier says. “They told us that this is acceptable for an experiment, but we need to improve the refuelling system for mass production and daily use.”

Equan developed the refuelling system without an intermediate tank due to regulatory constraints. According to Baleydier, recharging will be faster once the refuelling system can pressurise hydrogen from 200 to 400 bar in advance and store it in the intermediate tank at about 350 bar.

He says Haulotte had considered using removable hydrogen gas tanks in its range extender but did not pursue it because this would require qualified staff to change the tanks frequently.

“One thing we know is that there will not only be one energy source in the future. We want to be sure we will be ready for the future, so we launched this project to check the regulations, technical issues, and market response,” Baleydier says.

5. Speedy Hire and Niftylift

Elsewhere, in June 2023 UK-based rental firm Speedy Hire and MEWP manufacturer Niftylift launched the world’s first hydrogen-electric powered access platforms, HR15E and HR17E.

Speedy Hire’s Diesel-Free Matrix allows customers to make measurable progress in decarbonisation. Photo: Speedy Hire

According to Speedy Hire, the two machines can typically be operated for up to five days on a single electric charge, with significant additional range available from the hydrogen fuel cell.

Niftylift said hydrogen combution is only 25-35% efficient in energy conversion, but a hydrogen fuel cell can be as high as 60% efficient. It added that refueling is straightforward - connect to a G20 Hydrogen bottle to fill up the fuel cell.

“We use removable tanks,” Tom Hadden, technical sales manager at Niftylift, tells IRN in an interview. “Once you’ve depleted the cylinder, you can change it like a gas barbecue.

“A level of training is required, but it’s not that you have to do a 10-day course on this,” he says. “In competency-based training, you can be trained within a morning.

“All the connections we use do not involve tooling as they’re either hand-tied or push-fit connectors,” he adds. “You don’t have to have a mechanical engineering degree to change your cylinder.”

Hadden says many larger utilisation-type products, such as earthmoving excavators, have adopted hydrogen combustion engines, and most industry players are not planning to build hydrogen combustion engines smaller than 50-55kW.

“This takes us out of that market as we only use 19kW engines, but then we realise we don’t need it,” he says, adding that an excavator operator digs and moves all day while an access platform operator only needs to move into a position and go up in the air to stay there for an hour or two.

While Niftylift has ruled itself out of hydrogen combustion and decided to focus on hydrogen fuel cell technology, the initial lack of industry standards and governing body guidance on hydrogen fuel cells in machines remains a key challenge. Besides, says Hadden, there are not many fuel cell suppliers worldwide.”

“We are looking at extending our range in 2025,” he says. “We have spoken to another fuel cell supplier and agreed to do an urban development program.”

Niftylift is seeking fuel cells with larger outputs to cover all its self-propelled lift platforms from 12 to 28m, he says.