Experts warn that the Trump administration’s rollback of climate initiatives could slow the adoption of technologies and development of infrastructure that Columbus’ largest employer considers central to its future in a world moving away from fossil fuels.
Those concerns are already reverberating through the clean hydrogen sector, which experts say is feeling the strain as the administration cancels billions of dollars in grants for hydrogen hubs, winds down hydrogen production tax credits ahead of schedule and steers the U.S. Department of Energy back toward fossil fuels.
Cummins Inc. — the largest employer in Columbus — has spent years investing in hydrogen technologies, including electrolyzers, which are devices that use electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting hydrogen can be used to power energy-intensive industries such as steelmaking, maritime transport and other applications that solar and wind alone cannot easily support.
Experts say the policy shift risks ceding the electrolyzer market to China, where government investment and adoption are accelerating. Beijing has been pouring money into hydrogen production and infrastructure, positioning Chinese firms to dominate the global market of a technology the United States helped pioneer.
“What this could potentially do is just put (the United States) behind in that technology push and just leave us watching as China and others just pump out electrolyzers and basically build facilities on a backbone of non-U.S. technologies,” said Gabriel Fillipelli, professor of earth sciences at IU Indianapolis and executive director of the IU Environmental Resilience Institute.
‘Strategic review’
Signs of market instability have already emerged. Danish manufacturer Topsoe recently paused a $400 million electrolyzer project in Virginia, citing the administration’s policy changes. German electrolyzer maker Thyssenkrupp Nucera told investors it would abandon several U.S. green-hydrogen projects after incentives were scaled back.
And on Nov. 6, Cummins said it would begin a “strategic review” of its electrolyzer business after seeing “rapidly deteriorating conditions” in hydrogen markets. The company pointed to “significantly weaker prospects for demand” and reduced federal support as key factors.
“During the third quarter of 2025 … we observed rapidly deteriorating conditions in our electrolyzer markets and overall hydrogen markets, along with significant uncertainty in the alternative-power markets resulting from reductions in government incentives,” the company said.
Cummins Chair and CEO Jennifer Rumsey told analysts this month that the review will help the company “assess the best path forward” as the company responds to “to a very weak demand outlook.”
Despite the strategic review, Cummins said that it remains committed to “zero-emissions investments on the most promising paths to ensure we are set up for long-term success.”
Shift in momentum
The announcement of the strategic review comes after years of momentum in Cummins’ hydrogen and low-carbon ambitions — including a rebranded business segment, federal grants, White House visits, Senate testimony and even a presidential stop at one of its facilities.
Experts say that today’s landscape stands in stark contrast to just two and a half years ago, when President Joe Biden visited a Cummins facility in Minnesota and touted the company’s electrolyzer production.
“Clearly, the political change (in the United States) has been quite significant,” said Jonas Moberg, CEO of Green Hydrogen Organisation, a Switzerland-based not-for-profit that seeks to accelerate the production and use of green hydrogen across a range of sectors globally.
“There is a … challenging situation (globally) amplified in the U.S. by the political changes and the dismantling of much of the (Biden-era climate initiatives),” Moberg added.
Many of the changes in U.S. energy policy can be traced back to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump administration’s signature piece of legislation, experts said. The bill phases out green hydrogen production tax credits ahead of schedule, which experts said has prompted companies to pause or abandon projects.
Additionally, the Trump administration cut $2.2 billion in grants for regional hydrogen hubs in California and the Pacific Northwest last month, as well as an additional $5.4 billion for other clean energy projects across 16 states, The Associated Press reported.
In an interview with One America News, a conservative outlet, Trump said, “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place.”
For many experts, the administration’s shift in priorities was not entirely surprising.
“If you stop and think of the changes being made, part of the platform during the election cycle was, ‘Drill, baby, drill,’” said Steven Mohler, assistant professor of management at IU Columbus. “That’s one of those flags that go up and say, ‘Oh, maybe we’re going to slow down the progress on green energy and concerns with climate change.’”
Hydrogen efforts
Cummins’ turn toward clean hydrogen long predates the recent policy reversals. The company began expanding into the sector several years ago as part of a broader effort to secure its place in a global economy that is shifting away from fossil fuels and the diesel engines the company is most known for.
Clean hydrogen, often referred to as “green hydrogen,” is produced by using renewable electricity to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen atoms in wager molecules, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. However, most hydrogen produced today is not green but rather extracted from natural gas in a process that generates carbon dioxide emissions. But unlike fossil fuels, the only byproduct of hydrogen combustion is water vapor.
In recent years, several Cummins officials have said they expect green hydrogen and electrolyzers to play an important role in cutting emissions in some of the industries that are most dependent on fossil fuels, including being a “key piece in the decarbonization of transportation and industry.”
In 2019, Cummins acquired Hydrogenics Corp., adding what the company describes as key electrolyzer and fuel-cell technologies to its portfolio. At a “Hydrogen Day’’ event the following year, Cummins officials said they anticipated the company’s hydrogen production business to grow quickly over the next few years.
Then-Cummins Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger said during the event that the company already had more than 500 electrolyzer installations across five continents and projected that the business would generate roughly $400 million in revenue by 2025.
“All in all, hydrogen technologies, particularly electrolyzers, will be a fast growing and increasingly important part of our business over the next few years,” Linebarger said during the event.
Cummins executives also made the case for green hydrogen in the nation’s capital. In March 2021, then-Cummins Vice Chairman Tony Satterthwaite urged the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to help accelerate the development and adoption of green hydrogen.
“Infrastructure is a fundamental chicken-and-egg problem,” Satterthwaite told The Republic on March 17, 2021, following his Senate testimony. “…Without infrastructure, you don’t get adoption, and without adoption, nobody invests in infrastructure. And so, we see a definite role for the federal government to kick start that chicken-and-egg cycle and provide some incentives for early investment in infrastructure.”
Waves of incentives
Later that year, Congress would enact the first of two pieces of legislation that provided billions of dollars in incentives for green hydrogen production and technologies.
In November 2021, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which steered $9.5 billion toward green hydrogen, including $1 billion for electrolysis technologies such as electrolyzers, $500 million for clean hydrogen manufacturing and $8 billion for regional hydrogen hubs to accelerate the development of a hydrogen supply chain.
Rumsey, who was Cummins president and chief operating officer at the time, traveled to the White House to attend the signing ceremony for the bill. Following the ceremony, she told The Republic, “There was a piece of this infrastructure bill that was focused on starting to build out an infrastructure that we think is key for decarbonization and our country. It includes substantial investment in hydrogen infrastructure and charging infrastructure and also recognition of the importance of low-carbon fuels.”
In August 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided additional policies and incentives for green hydrogen, including a hydrogen production tax credit of as much as $3 per kilogram produced.
Shortly after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Cummins announced that it would be dedicating 89,000-square-feet of its Minnesota facility to start producing electrolyzers in the United States in what the company described at the time as a “milestone.”
In March 2023, Cummins rebranded its new power business as Accelera to emphasize its portfolio of zero emissions technologies, including electrolyzers.
Following the announcement of the rebrand, Srikanth Padmanabhan, former president of Cummins’ engine business, told The Republic that “this (new brand) provides an opportunity for us to move into areas like electrolyzers that others don’t recognize Cummins as a player in because historically we’ve been in the transportation and mobility spaces.”
The following month, Biden visited Cummins’ Minnesota facility, speaking for around 30 minutes and touting the company’s efforts to ramp up its hydrogen production business in the United States.
“When Cummins first manufactured hydrogen electrolyzers, they had to make them overseas,” Biden said during the visit. “…But now, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, with the tax credits for renewable energy, Cummins is going to manufacture these electrolyzers here in America for the first time.”
By December 2024, Cummins had secured tens of millions of dollars in federal grants related to electrolyzer manufacturing and testing, including around $18 million for a project funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, according to federal records. Around the same time, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., announced that Cummins had also received a $10.5 million tax-credit allocation under the Inflation Reduction Act for investing in electrolyzer manufacturing and testing.
But over the past several months, the Trump administration and Congress have undone much of the climate initiatives in the two bills.
Congressional votes
While Columbus’ largest employer strongly supported the hydrogen provisions in the two Biden-era bills, the city’s congressional delegation opposed the legislation.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and then-Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, while then-Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind., voted against it twice, according to congressional records.
Braun, who is now Indiana governor, said in a tweet on X on Aug. 10, 2021, “Through borrowing from our kids and grandkids we’re going to take this country to a level of debt and deficits we’ve never been to before, and Republicans are complicit in it for going along with this infrastructure bill that’s part of it.”
The delegation also opposed the Inflation Reduction Act. Young and Braun voted against the bill, while Pence voted against an initial version of the bill but did not cast a vote on the final version, according to congressional records.
At the same, Columbus’ congressional delegation unanimously supported Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” according to congressional records.
Young and Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., voted in favor the bill, as did Rep. Jefferson Shreve, R-Ind., and Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind. Both Shreve and Houchin said following the vote that the bill “unleashes American energy consumption.”
At least for now, the outlook for green hydrogen in the United States is “pretty negative,” experts said.
“The overall impact is having major consequences for the use of electrolyzers, the production of green hydrogen and green ammonia,” Moberg said. “There are so many consequences, and some of them are outside of the (Inflation Reduction Act). So, the fact that the president has been very negative on offshore wind and on solar, that also slows down the development of the production of renewable energy. And of course, you need a lot of renewable energy to run these electrolyzers. …I think the overall current situation, in particular in the U.S., is pretty negative.”
Falling behind China
While the Trump administration is pulling back from clean hydrogen, China is going in the opposite direction, experts said.
Last month, the Chinese government announced plans ramp up its green hydrogen capacity by the end of the decade. The country is already home to the largest green hydrogen project in the world, as well as roughly 40% of all hydrogen refueling stations, according to a report by the World Economic Forum in January. Almost 60% of the world’s electrolyzers are made in Chinese factories, according to Bloomberg.
U.S. and China green hydrogen forecasts once tracked closely. But since the policy reversal in Washington, the gap is expected to sharply widen. S&P Global Commodity Insights now projects China will produce 33.4 million metric tons of green hydrogen by 2050, almost three times its previous estimate before Trump took office in January.
By comparison, the United States was estimated to be on track to reach 9.3 million metric tons by 2050 before Trump’s reelection. SP Global Commodity Insights has since sliced that projection in half.
“We’re already well behind,” Fillipelli said. “All the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill were going to do is kind of get us slightly more caught up. We were already losing ground. And frankly, the country we’re losing ground to is China. …They’re investing so much in this. It’s shocking.”
“If you look across the board, they, where we’ve been pulling back, they’ve been leaning in,” Fillipelli added. “…Had we maintained the funding that we had set aside for this in the last administration, we very well might be able to catch up. Now, it seems less likely that we’ll be able to catch up.”
In the short run, the shake-up in federal clean-energy policy could have an impact on engineering and research efforts in Columbus — particularly when paired with the Trump administration’s recent move to raise the cost of an H-1B visa for skilled foreign workers to $100,000, experts said.
“As Cummins goes, we go — we have to say that up front,” Mohler said, referring to the local economy. “But the most impact I would see for our area would probably be in innovation (and) engineering activity. …The H-1B visa may have an impact on that as well. …With H-1B visas going up so high, and this hydrogen technology not readily accepted in the U.S., but it is in the Asia Pacific Area, you wonder if this doesn’t benefit those economies. Because Cummins (could) go ahead and hire the engineers and the scientists, let them stay where they’re at, do things remotely, and produce this technology for the growing China market.”
“Clean energy is something that will continue to move forward because climate change is becoming more and more evident,” Mohler added. “But without government support and assistance, we may consider … that progress will slow temporarily. …Who knows what the next administration will do? …The Biden administration put a lot of U.S. dollars behind it. The Trump administration is stepping back from that.”