New report highlights Cummins’ sustainability performance in 2019

The report includes a special section on Cummins’ actions during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect the health and job security of its employees.

“The pandemic and protests have revealed a fundamental truth about sustainability: companies and institutions are only as strong as the communities, countries and the world around them,” Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger writes in the report. “To be successful for our shareholders over the long run, we must ensure the health and prosperity of all of our stakeholders.”

In light of protests demanding social justice that have swept across the United States and elsewhere, Linebarger says the company in 2020 will actively fight against systemic racism, honoring the legacy left by longtime CEO J. Irwin Miller, who was a leader in the campaign for civil rights in the 1960s.

“While I’m proud of the accomplishments included in this report, there’s much work to be done,” Linebarger says. “You can count on Cummins to strive for a more prosperous and just world.”

The report outlines the company’s many accomplishments in 2019, including:

•    A new environmental strategy, PLANET 2050, which includes science-based goals that meet or exceed the goals in the United Nations’ Paris agreement on climate change.
•    Reaching three of the company’s 2020 environmental sustainability goals a year early and narrowly missing a fourth.
•    Offsetting nearly all of the company’s energy use in Cummins’ headquarters state of Indiana with renewable energy thanks to a wind farm expansion the company supported.
•    Achieving the lowest health and safety Incidence Rate since 2015.
•    Reaching the 50% level for women’s representation on the company’s top senior leadership team.
•    Impacting the lives of 100,000 people through the company’s global Cummins Powers Women Program to promote equality.
•    Investing a record $1 billion in research, development and engineering as the company advances current technology and brings to market new products fueled by hydrogen and other low-carbon sources.
•    Achieving record profitability.

Cummins’ New Power segment, which combines the company’s investments in electrified powertrains, fuel cells and hydrogen production technology, also completed its first full year in 2019. 

The group successfully brought zero emissions electrified powertrains to bus markets in North America in 2019. Cummins also has more than 2,000 fuel cell installations across a variety of on and off highway applications as well as more than 500 electrolyzer installations to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

These technologies will play a key role in the company’s PLANET 2050 aspiration to ultimately power customer success through carbon-neutral technologies.

The 2019 Sustainability Progress Report is the first of the company’s planned reports on sustainability. By the end of July, the company expects to post reports aligned to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the United Nations’ Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).