Lower-Carbon Intensity Fuels
Fuel choice is one way customers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from in-use products. Many Caterpillar products are operating on lower-carbon alternatives to diesel and natural gas today, including biodiesel, renewable diesel, and biogas. For example, renewable liquid fuels like hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) are being used in our C175-20 engines to provide stand by power at a Microsoft data center in Sweden. HVO can reduce carbon intensity by 45% to 85% versus diesel. All Caterpillar diesel engines are capable of operating on 100% HVO right now. Caterpillar engines operating on natural gas blended with up to 80% hydrogen are being demonstrated in power generation projects today. Turbines can operate on up to 100% hydrogen. These and other projects are helping to demonstrate the viability of potential fuel sources like hydrogen while the infrastructure to support availability of renewable hydrogen is being developed. In 2021, we announced that some Caterpillar gas generator sets are being configured to use 100% hydrogen on a design-to-order basis, and some commercial sets will be configured to operate on natural gas blended with up to 25% hydrogen.