Eco-friendly trends in construction equipment design: shaping a sustainable future

The built environment generates about 40 percentage of total Carbon dioxide emissions and is the single largest contributor to global warming. Construction equipment has a major role in reducing this sector’s environmental impact, while at the same time delivering the productivity and capability needed to build our communities of the future. At Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE), the company is committed to building the world we want to live in and developing solutions that match that ambition.

All Volvo CE products and solutions are sustainable at their core, whether it’s optimised fuel consumption from a more efficient engine, technology to adapt machine usage to its application, or one of the company’s fully electric construction machines.

Electrification of machinery
In the past couple of years, the company’s growing range of battery-powered machines have captured the industry’s attention as they find their way onto projects across Asia. The rollout began in March 2022 in South Korea when Volvo CE launched its first electric machine in Asia, the ECR25 Electric compact excavator. Next, the L25 Electric compact wheel loader and the ECR25 Electric compact excavators were unveiled to visitors in Japan at the 5th Construction & Survey Productivity Improvement Expo (CSPI-EXPO) in May 2023, followed by a third larger model, the EC230 Electric excavator, in May 2024.

In June 2023, Singapore became the first country in Southeast Asia to benefit from the environmental and operational benefits of electric machinery when Volvo CE introduced its L25 Electric compact wheel loader, ECR25 Electric compact excavator, and EC55 Electric Excavator.

In November 2023, Volvo CE also announced the availability of the ECR25 Electric compact excavator and the L25 Compact wheel loader in Indonesia. More recently, Volvo CE unveiled the L120 Electric wheel loader at this year’s Mining Indonesia exhibition, which will be commercially available to Indonesian customers in the first quarter of 2025.

Volvo CE is also focused on delivering more sustainable alternatives for applications where power demands are too great for today’s battery-powered machines. For example, the EC300E Hybrid Excavator, features unique hydraulic hybrid Volvo technology, utilising the boom-down motion to charge the accumulator, with the stored energy used to drive the assist motor to power the engine system, resulting in up to a 17% increase in fuel efficiency.

Seeking solutions on the inside

As well as its investments in leading the industry shift to electrification, Volvo CE is also focused on other areas of machine design to maximise opportunities for improved environmental performance. Here, different technologies have a role to play – for instance, using biocomposites from plant-derived fibres to produce its machine panels not only helps make manufacturing more sustainable, but also reduces overall weight, improving fuel economy and helping to enhance end-of-life recyclability. Or consider the sustainability of longer working lives for machines, where replacement is required less frequently, and on-site performance is optimised through less downtime, eliminating waste. In this way, Volvo CE’s intelligent ActiveCare technology is helping customers boost their operations and their bottom line. There’s also Volvo CE’s Co-Pilot-which helps automate and reduce wastage during digging, loading, and hauling operations.

Overcoming the barriers to adoption
Despite the many advantages of cleaner equipment and society’s positive attitude towards it, there remains some hesitation and uncertainty regarding performance and return on investment with these machines. But as the machines continue to deliver as-expected results on the job site, and customers grow to understand the huge maintenance and fuel savings available with electric options, the industry perception will also begin to shift.

This perception is also helped by several government incentives now appearing in many countries, where environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP) or green procurement agreements are offered to contractors using low-carbon equipment in construction. 

To support this, and overall higher adoption of more sustainable construction machinery, Volvo CE remains dedicated to collaborating with stakeholders across the construction ecosystem as part of its vision for a sustainable future – one in which the company’s own net-zero value chain emissions targets have been brought forward by 10 years to 2040.

Tomas Kuta, President Region Asia, Volvo CE said:

“The road to a sustainable future is one we must build together, and Volvo CE is paving the way by creating a range of machines and technologies that will make this a reality while also providing financial and operational benefits to its customers. With significant gains available in reducing emissions in the development of our built environment, we will continue to drive progress on sustainable innovation that can help transform the construction sector.” 

Discover more about Volvo machines and services at www.volvoce.com/asia.