Electric Forklifts Aren’t as Clean as You Think

Propane forklifts operate cleaner than both electric and gasoline options.

If your goal in 2019 is to clean up your business’s environmental impact, you can do better than electric. Propane forklifts do a better job of reducing your contribution to emissions without sacrificing power or productivity.

Many material handling professionals believe electric forklifts are the cleanest equipment option available. While electric performs cleaner than conventional fuels like diesel and gasoline, the manufacturing, transportation, and recharging of batteries — combined with the losses in transmission and distribution of electricity — have a significant impact on the environment that can’t be ignored

Compared with electric, propane forklifts reduce SOx emissions by 75 percent. SOx, or sulfur oxides, is a category of emissions monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency. According to the EPA, SOx emissions can join with other compounds in the atmosphere to form particulate matter pollution. These small particles can penetrate into the lungs, and at high volumes, contribute to health problems. Using propane forklifts is one of the ways material handling professionals can reduce their contribution to SOx emissions.

As you might expect, propane forklifts also operate much more cleanly than diesel and gasoline forklifts. Diesel exhaust is recognized as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and diesel-fueled forklifts cannot operate indoors.

Tier-4-compliant clean diesel applications have also driven up the acquisition costs for diesel forklifts, on top of complicating maintenance procedures and making maintenance more expensive. When compared with gasoline, propane also reduces greenhouse gases by 16 percent, SOx emissions by 15 percent, NOx emissions by 17 percent.

NOx, or nitrogen oxides, are a family of gases that play a major role in atmospheric reactions that produce ozone (or “smog”) on hot summer days, according to the EPA.

In fact, propane forklifts operate so cleanly that, when well-maintained, they may be used for indoor applications including food handling. Combined with their powerful performance that doesn’t fade — unlike the batteries powering electric forklifts — they’re a trusted, proven option for material handling.

Learn more at Propane.com/Forklifts.