An independent educational organisation has taken note of forklifts in a 106-page report on the state of fuel cells in the US.

"More fuel cell-powered forklifts were deployed at warehouses and distribution centres," notes the report from the Fuel Cells 2000 activity of the Washington, DC-based Breakthrough Technologies Institute (BTI).

The report says the US is the world leader in fuel cell forklift deployments and that more than 1,500 forklifts were deployed, or ordered, in more than a dozen states during one year.

Repeat forklift fuel-cell customers include units of broad-based corporations Coca-Cola in California and North Carolina; Wal-Mart in Ohio, Missouri and Canada's Alberta; and Sysco in Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

The report notes "new (forklift fuel cell) customers" such as BMW in South Carolina, EARP Distribution in Kansas and WinCo Foods LLC in California.

Forkliftaction.com News has published a number of articles about these forklift fuel cell programs.

The researchers underscored the plethora of fuel cell programs in California, Connecticut, New York, Ohio and South Carolina, involvement for the technology in 35 states but an absence of fuel cell or hydrogen-related activities in 10 other states during the one-year report period.

The US Department of Energy's energy efficiency and renewable energy fuel cells technologies program provided BTI with support for the report, which Fuel Cells 2000's Sandra Curtin, Jennifer Gangi and Elizabeth Delmont wrote and compiled.

BTI was established in 1993 to ensure that emerging technologies have a voice in environmental and energy policy debates. Currently, BTI focuses on air quality, climate change, energy efficiency and energy independence.