Cummins is back with another rendition of its zero-viewer podcast series Power Onward – the corporate lullaby no one asked for. The latest episode, Keeping the Cloud and Planet Online, is nineteen minutes of self-congratulation disguised as innovation. It’s a sermon on how diesel keeps AI alive, voiced like a bedtime story for shareholders who still think soot is a colour of progress.
Fossil Fuel In A Tech Hoodie
The premise is simple: AI needs power, grids are strained, and Cummins is here to “help” with cleaner, smarter energy. Translation: the same combustion engines, now with a sustainability sticker. The guest, Bhargava, calls data centres “the heartbeat of the digital economy”. Cute phrase – except the heartbeat runs on diesel. This isn’t energy transition; it’s reputation rehab with an audio filter.
Grid Constraints As The Great Excuse
When the grid can’t cope, Cummins doesn’t see a crisis, it sees a sales opportunity. The episode paints backup generation as heroism, not dependency. “Bring your own power”, Bhargava beams, meaning plug in a Cummins gen-set and let the PR team call it resilience. They talk of “untapped energy pockets” like explorers discovering virtue in burning fuel. The logic is stunning: if you can’t clean the system, sell the pollution locally.
HVO, BESS And Other Acronyms For Hope
Hydrogen, HVO, BESS, Tier Four – a bowl of buzzwords to feed the press release. Each one dangled like salvation while the core product remains a metal block built to burn. Cummins promises battery systems and modular reactors, but the heart of every sentence beats diesel. You can’t offset that with optimism, no matter how many times you say “net zero roadmap”.
Reliability Meets Sustainability
The show’s favourite myth is that reliability and sustainability “go hand in hand”. They don’t. They collide. Reliability sells engines that never stop; sustainability begs them to. Cummins insists the two are partners, like a smoker claiming health benefits from menthols. They speak of “partnerships with data centres” while ignoring the partnership with the atmosphere – the one being steadily poisoned.
The New Religion Of Smog
The host smiles through every line, the guest reads from the corporate catechism, and the listener – if any exist (we think not) – is meant to believe that burning fuel for servers is climate leadership. This is faith-based energy: believe hard enough and diesel becomes green.
The Verdict
Keeping the Cloud and Planet Online isn’t a podcast. It’s an advert in drag, selling combustion to an industry that pretends to be digital. Cummins has mastered the art of saying “clean” without ever meaning it. The only thing they keep online is the smog.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project