On an overcast day at the end of May, the UK’s energy minister climbed aboard the world’s first hydrogen-powered digger. After connecting a pipe to refuel the white-and-green backhoe loader, built by JCB, Claire Coutinho vowed that Britain would “stay at the front of the race” to use renewable hydrogen to reduce emissions from the construction industry. But not everyone agrees that hydrogen will necessarily be the future fuel for heavy machinery.
Then power generation, fuel, steel production and so on. So we focus specifically on those use cases.” But he adds that, until politicians have determined the incentives and built more green hydrogen infrastructure, it is difficult to predict how much demand there will be from industries to switch to the fuel. At present, less than 1 per cent of the world’s hydrogen is produced from renewable sources, according to the International Energy Agency .