People hate to hear unpleasant statistics, but there are many such statistics when it comes to alternative energy. Biofuels, for example, have a negative energy balance. They require more energy to produce than their consumption provides.

And even ignoring this science, if all of the corn grown in the US were to be used to produce motor vehicle fuel, it would still be less than 20% of gasoline demand— and a lot of the world would go hungry.

Here is another unsavory fact: if we triple current electricity output from wind every year for the next 20 years, it will still be less than 20% of the nation’s electricity demand.

The radical solution, that is both plausible and environmentally logical, will come, but it will be from something staring the world in the eye: natural gas, the use of which will increase dramatically over the next two decades, especially in the two fastest growing countries in Asia, China, and India. Japan is already greatly dependent on natural gas. Galloping China, which draws 70% of its energy from coal, a share that Europeans and Americans have not seen since the nineteenth century, will have to clean up its act and leap a century. Natural gas will provide the means.

In connecting sources with markets today, natural gas is transported using two well-established technologies: 70% by pipeline and 30% by liquefied natural gas (LNG). Pipelines traversing land masses, when feasible, are the better option. Offshore, pipelines have a distance limit and a terrain restriction. LNG facilities (both the liquefaction process at the source and the re-gasification process at the receiving end) are expensive to construct, and the entire process is complicated, costly, and energy wasteful. LNG is only applicable for long haul sea distances and large volumes of gas.

Waterways-going compressed natural gas (CNG) is an alternative that many people have proposed in recent years, but it has not made substantial headway for two reasons. First, the emphasis for investments worldwide has been primarily on LNG. Second, CNG vessel designs and projects have been envisioned to take a bite out of the LNG pie, which is not necessarily a good approach.

CNG is compressed and sometimes chilled (but not liquefied) at pressures of 2,000 to 3,000 psi. CNG ships are in effect “floating pipelines.” This is a technology that does not need proof. At least six companies have come up with a new generation of CNG ships optimized to transport varying quantities of gas.

Calculations suggest that CNG can have a substantial impact in shorter distances and smaller offshore markets that are not connected to large pipelines or baseload LNG accepting facilities. For distances of about 620 miles (1,000 km) and small volumes (100 to 200 MMcf/d) LNG cannot compete with CNG. Before the recent economic crisis, the resulting demand destruction, and new surplus LNG from places like Qatar— a total estimated by some to be as high as 10 Bcf/d — CNG appeared to be attractive even at distances of 1,240 miles (2,000 km) and bigger volumes (600 MMcf/d). Larger CNG bullishness will have to be shelved for a while if LNG can be delivered for “Henry Hub plus 50 cents,” as an LNG executive said recently, is possible.

But the current situation may actually help CNG by forcing it to become the fuel of the masses, an egalitarian energy source piggy-backing on now plentiful LNG. CNG can take gas to places it has never gone before.

Using something we called “hub-and spoke” and “milk-run” deliveries, CNG can be transported on barges and smaller vessels. Instead of trying to compete with
LNG, it can join it by targeting considerably smaller markets. The hub can be the LNG terminal itself. The Caribbean, the Greek islands, the Indonesian archipelago, and China’s “third coast,” the Yangtze River, can enjoy the good life that plentiful and clean energy can provide as CNG.