By President Joe Biden touted efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing after touring a Cummins facility in Minnesota on Monday, as the company announced it will invest $1 billion in making cleaner engines.
Cummins intends to invest the money in Indiana, North Carolina and New York, focusing on creating low-to-zero-carbon engines. More than half of medium and heavy-duty trucks in the U.S. use Cummins engines, and the upgraded facilities aim to decarbonize shipping vehicles across the country.
“Instead of relying on equipment made overseas in places like China, our supply chains will be again made in American,” Biden said in Fridley, Minn. “Companies and utilities across the country will use those products to make clean hydrogen and trucks made in America with zero emission engines will be powered by clean hydrogen.”
Biden tied the announcement in with his Investing in America plan, a set of policies that aim to boost manufacturing in the U.S. with a focus on clean energy.
Cummins announced its initial investment in electrolyzer manufacturing at the Fridley facility in October 2022, two months after Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. Electrolyzers are needed to create clean hydrogen, used to power certain vehicles and in steel production.
“When Cummins first manufactured hydrogen electrolyzers they had to make them overseas, these are the machines that make clean hydrogen renewable energy used to power our economy from clean cars to trucks to steel to cement manufacturing,” Biden said. “Now thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act with tax credits for renewable energy, Cummins is going to manufacture these electrolyzers here in America for the first time.”
Companies have committed to invest more than $2 billion in Minnesota since Biden’s inauguration, according to the White House.
“All these investments mean that now if you grow up in Minnesota, if you go to school in Minnesota, you can stay in Minnesota,” Biden said. “The Midwest is coming back screaming. There’s good jobs you can raise a family on.”
