Small solutions go global

Is there a missing link between traditional commodities, i.e. coal, uranium, natural gas, even their business models and cleantech (short for clean technology) companies, providing electricity and industrial required process energy? Do we really need liquefied methane gas? Can it be the missing link? Is not methane itself considered a traditional commodity? Yes, no and maybe.

Originally, starting in the 1960ies, liquefied methane gas, or more precisely Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), is related to the process of liquefying natural gas, found mostly at remote areas. The gases will be pretreated, processed, cooled and stored as LNG; awaiting to be shipped to energy hungry markets, i.e. the US, Europe and Asia. Big piles of money and efforts are established; equipments are designed and moved to set up base-load LNG plants and everything related to it.

Since the 1990ies, liquefaction technologies retrieved from base-load LNG plants were used and down-sized to carve a new market niche: Small-scale LNG. Intentionally, Norway, among others, was pioneering the set-up of several small-scale LNG plants, driven by several decision, i.e. remotely placed industrial and private customers, introduction of leaner, less CO2 emitting, technologies compared to heavy oil and, of course, diversifying the existing energy market.

Since the new millennium, size matters even more and small-scale LNG plant became even smaller; now called mini-LNG, creating and carving new markets with a plethora of possibilities and difficulties to deal with. New gas sources, i.e. biogas, landfill gas, even coal bed methane gas became interesting for liquefaction and distribution. Shortcuts like liquefied biogas (LBG) and liquefied methane gas (LMG) were introduced and became pending slogans.

If not considering LMG produced from small-scale and mini-LNG plants seriously at the present, the future may show on thing: The cruel comes and go, like cities and thrones and power, leaving their ruins behind. They had no permanence. Who is the cruel, who is to blame? Certainly, the cruel is considered to be rather ignorant than cruel, driven by blindness towards a more decentralized energy provision including many players, even teams, arbitrators and, of course, different play grounds, i.e. solar, wind, geothermal energy, water and biomass. The latter contributes to produces biogas, which, in fact, will be processed to LNG/LBG/LMG – the missing link. Are you ready to LNG your life and the life of others?