Diesel out, battery in: construction wants electric (but can’t afford it)

Jaap Veldhuizen says he was right on time. With his contracting company in groundwork, road construction and hydraulic engineering, he invested for the first time in electrical construction machines in 2021 for an assignment in Utrecht. “Diesel engine out, electric motor in. The municipality asked for it in the tender, and we saw an advantage in that.” At construction company J. Veldhuizen bv, almost half of the excavators, shovels, vibrating plates and loose hand tools now run on electricity. In the current job, in which a residential area in Utrecht is provided with new paving, a heavy electric excavator is driving around and the shovels can also be plugged in. “The soil displacement is virtually emission-free. Only heavy transport still runs on diesel,” says son Jordi, who is present on the construction site as project manager. “Battery trucks are still a bit tricky.”

Since a month there has been great urgency for construction companies and contractors to switch to electric construction equipment. At the beginning of November, the Council of State canceled the construction exemption, which exempted construction companies from nitrogen emissions. Since then, the diesel engines used in construction also count towards the permit application, making it a lot more difficult to build as before. This problem is greatest for construction projects in the vicinity of vulnerable Natura 2000 areas; where there is no room for nitrogen, industrial or agricultural emitters must first be bought out in order to ‘create’ room for construction. Because these are often costly and lengthy legal procedures, construction companies are now also looking to limit their own emissions.

The main source of nitrogen emissions in this sector are the diesel engines of construction equipment. Although the expiry of the nitrogen exemption for construction did not exactly come as a surprise, most companies still work entirely or largely on fossil fuels. The main reason for sticking to this is the high costs of electrification, says chairman Riek Siertsema of the AFNL trade association, which represents SMEs in the civil engineering sector. “This is often extra difficult for SMEs. These are sometimes smaller companies where people think pragmatically: can this expensive machine last a while longer with proper maintenance?”

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Cleaner instead of electric

What does not help with regard to costs is that electrification of construction is still a fairly Dutch problem, and there is no global research and development program yet. It makes the electric machines a lot more expensive: a conventional shovel costs 45,000 euros new, for an electric one you have to count around 75,000 to 80,000 euros, estimates contractor Veldhuizen. “For heavier machines, this quickly increases to a factor of two to three because it involves so much labour. They are actually building a machine in such a factory that does not yet exist.”

Another obstacle is the power supply at the construction site. There are not enough charging options for electrical construction equipment everywhere. For example, it is sometimes difficult to get power in the countryside because there is no connection nearby. “I was once able to arrange electricity at a farmer who had a solar park in the meadow. That way you meet someone again”, Jaap Veldhuizen laughs.

In addition, there is not enough space on the electricity network for new connections in large parts of the Netherlands. “One of the solutions is to place battery containers on the construction site to charge the devices,” says TNO researcher Siem van Merriënboer. He and his colleague Pim van Mensch conduct research into cleaner and electrical construction. The disadvantage of these types of mobile super batteries: they come to the construction site by truck, “and that also costs extra transport movements”.

Sometimes the solution can also be simple. Pulling an electricity cable to the construction site, for example, instead of a mobile diesel generator for a pump or a light pole. Or by starting with the installation of the power supply when building a block of houses. Van Merriënboer: “Now that often happens last, but homes eventually need electricity.”

Due to capacity problems and the high costs, according to Van Merriënboer, there is no way to have the electrification take place in one go, but the ‘electrification’ of the construction site must be seen as a transition. And according to the researchers, there are more options for this than simply replacing diesel engines with battery-powered electric motors. Van Mensch: “Take the light delivery vans in the construction industry, there are more than 250,000. If you were to replace all of these with the most economical emission class, i.e. cleaner diesels, it would make a huge difference in nitrogen emissions. The construction industry can benefit greatly from this in the short term.”

And that brings the researchers to an important point. Because even a ‘cleaner’ diesel that emits less nitrogen remains a diesel. And although they emit less nitrogen, they still emit particulate matter and CO₂emissions free – while construction ultimately CO₂must be neutral. Construction companies are faced with the choice of whether they want to invest in the short or long term. Van Mensch: “We see that there is more nuance in the discussion. Where previously only emission-free was a dot on the horizon, policymakers and construction are now also looking at the shorter term – cleaner diesels, in other words.”

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Millions for cover

Because construction companies often cannot make the transition themselves, help comes from The Hague. From next spring, SME entrepreneurs can be reimbursed up to 50 percent of the difference in purchase price between diesel and electric, larger companies have to make do with less. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is increasing the subsidy pot for this to 60 million euros. There is also 30 million for investments in electrically powered trucks.

It made a difference for contractor Jaap Veldhuizen that his client, the municipality of Utrecht, gave priority to sustainability in 2021. “Because we were allowed to deduct part of the costs because we built electrically, we were able to compete on price with companies that work on diesel.”

Siertsema hopes that the large companies will not run off with the subsidy pot. “Last year, the subsidy scheme for company cars was empty within an hour. Building contractors with few employees can make less time and people available for applications, while the big boys with the call were ready with their specialists.”

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