I’ve talked about hydrogen powered lift trucks and forklifts a dozen times over the past few years. And, I’m about to add to this total, making it a baker’s dozen.
A company called Genco was awarded $6.1 million as part of the U. S. government’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to purchase 25 hydrogen fuel cell lift trucks from Plug Power. The lift trucks will be equipped with Plug Power’s GenDrive fuel cell system.
The H2 lift trucks will go to the Kimberly-Clark plant in Graniteville, SC. The government stimulus money, however, will create jobs and be used to deliver 350 total GenDrive units to Kimberly-Clark and other companies.
With all the talk about hydrogen cars and the difficulty of building a nationwide hydrogen highway refueling infrastructure, the U. S. warehouses are quietly shifting to their own internal hydrogen highway systems.
Companies are starting to see the wisdom of cutting down on indoor air pollution and that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles provide quick refueling, zero emissions and longer hours of operation between refuelings than do their battery-electric counterparts.