Benefiting from the clean technology revolution

Its value comes in part from its very diversity, from solar and wind power, biogas technology, energy-saving devices, geothermal energy to fuel cells and green cars. 

Globally it is attracting interest from governments incentivising companies to develop clean technology.

In the US alone, the clean technology category was one of the largest recipients of venture capital funding, raising over $US3.3billion in 2009.

New Zealand companies have an enviable track record to draw on and positive support from a global perception of New Zealand’s environment.

Twenty-five year old Flotech had its beginnings in New Zealand’s energy conscious 1980s, supplying machinery installation services to the then fast-growing compressed natural gas (CNG) industry. 

Today the company operates in two main sectors: the rapidly developing use of biogas as non-fossil renewable fuel and the more conventional industries of heat transfer and compression of energy gases. 

It employs around 170 people world-wide and its ‘Greenlane’ clean technology is tipped to be the single most significant contributor to the company’s revenues within 10 years: it contributed 60 percent of the company’s revenues in 2010.

Greenlane has been the world leader in biogas upgrading technology since its inception in the early 1990s.

Biogas upgrading was initially driven by a desire for an eco-friendly, sustainable and economically viable vehicle fuel, but market demand is now shifting to much larger capacity units that inject upgraded biogas into existing gas pipeline networks.

Right place, right time

And, according to Flotech’s Steve Rowntree, it is simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the business set to benefit from the twin global drivers for renewable fuels and self sufficiency.

Rowntree predicts the company to at least triple in size within the next five years – a growth prediction shared by analysts watching clean technology companies worldwide.

Flotech’s offices in Sweden, Spain, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Australia support its international operations. It has been helped, according to Rowntree, by NZTE with support for its R&D and with market interfacing, especially in Europe.

In 2009 the company opened its first North American biogas plant, taking waste from an eco-farm outside Vancouver. 

It is believed also to be the first in North America to use Greenlane’s proprietary water scrubbing process and to cycle upgraded bio methane into the national grid.

A number of commercial-scale Greenlane biogas installations also operate in Europe where they produce vehicle fuel as an alternative to natural gas supplies. 

Flotech was also behind the largest biogas upgrading plant in France, which produce four million cubic metres of bio methane annually and supply 180 buses with fuel.

Flotech/Greenlane has also delivered the world’s two largest biogas upgrading plants – in Madrid, Spain and Gustrow, Germany. The latter plant produces the liquid equivalent of 5,000 litres of liquid fuel per hour.