By Bianca Flowers
(Reuters) – Union Pacific Corp plans to buy 10 battery locomotives from Caterpillar Inc, Caterpillar’s CFO Andrew Bonfield said in an interview on Friday.
The deal, which had not previously been announced, comes as customers of the world’s largest construction and mining equipment try to reduce their carbon emissions by relying less on gas and diesel for transportation. It was not immediately clear how much the deal was worth.
Union Pacific has been transitioning away from diesel fuel to meet more stringent U.S. emissions standards.
“We have other transactions in the transportation space around locomotives,” Bonfield said in an interview to discuss Caterpillar’s earnings.
“All of those (sustainability) efforts are helping other parts of our business.”
Caterpillar’s CEO Jim Umpleby said during the company’s earnings call that Union Pacific, the largest U.S. railroad operator by market value, is the fourth customer for Caterpillar’s rail battery electric locomotive technology.
On Wednesday, Canadian mining company Teck Resources Ltd said it was deploying 30 of Caterpillar’s zero-emissions large haul trucks as it works to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
(Reporting by Bianca Flowers; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Nick Zieminski)
