When To Change

I just finished an interesting study concerning hydrogen fuel cells. A large client of ours was considering a switch to hydrogen fuel cells for their forklift fleet and asked us to make recommendations. It's not a large fleet and they don't use them 24/7 but thought it worth a study. Several nearby companies have made the switch and have found that they can reduce operating costs to a degree and reap some pretty big PR benefits as well. One, BMW, has even gone to using landfill gas to lessen the impact of hydrogen even further. They can take their momentum with their hydrogen cars and tout the strides they're making on other fronts as well.

But what do you do when it doesn't make economic sense and the environmental and social impacts are negligible? Do you go ahead with an expensive retrofit, add an expensive refueling station and scrap all your old lead acid batteries? Or do you sit tight, continue to operate as efficiently as you can and plan for a point in the future that a change makes financial and environmental sense?

We told them to sit tight and find less expensive ways to save money and lessen their impact because sometimes knowing when to hold them is the smartest thing to do.