UK contractor BAM Construction has been trialling JCB’s hydrogen internal combustion engine (ICE) telescopic loadall at a building project in Birmingham.
The 540-I80H Loadall is powered by JCB’s hydrogen ICE, which was was approved for commercial use in machines by 11 licensing authorities across Europe in January 2025.
Deployed at a factory regeneration project in Birmingham, the loadall is being refuelled by hydrogen delivered by JCB in a mobile unit.
“We’re starting to explore the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel,” explained Colin Evison, BAM’s Innovation Technical Lead.
“It was important to get the hydrogen fuel machine on a real construction site. We’ve seen it in test environments, and we know that technically it does work, but putting it to the test on a real site makes a real difference.”
Evison added, “We’ve noticed no difference in the way the machine operates. We have to refuel the machine in a different way, but it’s a simple and straightforward process.”
Maggie Hall, BAM’s Environmental Sustainability Manager, emphasised the company’s commitment to halving its Scope 3 emissions, which stem from its supply chain.
“The road to Net Zero will introduce lots of different things to our industry, and hydrogen is an important part of that solution,” Hall said. “It can be easily serviced and refuelled. It’s a really important step to take to reduce our emissions.”
During a previous H2 View webinar, Tim Burnhope, Group Director for Special Projects at JCB, reinforced the need for a “technology-neutral” approach in the mobility industry.
“We’re starting to see the real acceptance of hydrogen combustion as a credible energy solution,” Burnhope said. “[The industry] must be technology neutral, we can’t restrain any of our engineers from coming up with great solutions.”
Hydrogen ICE: The future of off-road machinery
“Hydrogen internal combustion engines (ICE) offer immediate decarbonisation for non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) by facilitating a quick transition to hydrogen fuel, driving investment and infrastructure growth for hydrogen.”
This was the opinion of Prof. Sam Akehurst, Research Director at IAAPS, whose research found that hydrogen ICE technology can match or exceed diesel engine efficiency with little to no emissions.
Despite being a key sector in the UK economy, contributing over £17.6bn ($22.4bn) in 2022, off-road vehicles and heavy machinery are among the most challenging to decarbonise.
This is attributed to the sector’s reliance on diverse machinery operating in varied environments with demanding duty cycles, along with its heavy reliance on diesel engines.
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