Ecofriendly LLC develops natural gas station for home, farm
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Paul Gianakas' EcoFriendly LLC installs natural gas fueling stations at homes and businesses. He has a fueling station in his own garage, which compresses natural gas from his home's service line to fuel his Honda Civic. -
The hose end fits over the fuel tank opening.
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Paul Gianakas saw a business opportunity in the cars of the future. To finance it, he had to part with cars of the past.
His 1965 Chevrolet El Camino left the garage and never came back. His 1968 Ford Mustang moved on to greener driveways.
The sale of those two hot rods and several others helped raise the $100,000 that Mr. Gianakas needed to launch Ecofriendly LLC, a 3-year-old company in Gibsonia meant to capitalize on a future of natural gas-fueled cars.
Ecofriendly installs personal pumps that unload compressed natural gas (CNG) into equipped vehicles, often installing the pump next to the car in an owner's garage. The option of at-home fueling comes at a time when enthusiasm for the cheaper fuel is undercut by a lack of infrastructure and significant upfront costs.
In 2008, Mr. Gianakas started to see an alchemy of factors setting the stage for his new business: enthusiasm for natural gas ballooned as drilling in the Marcellus Shale accelerated; the price of gasoline went up and took drivers' tempers with it; and the CNG car market began to develop on the West Coast.
PG VIDEO: NATURAL GAS STATIONMr. Gianakas, who co-owns a construction company in addition to being Ecofriendly's president, sold his hot rods and started reading everything he could find on the CNG market: reports on natural gas reserves, how-to conversion articles, even bills before Congress touting the energy source.
He claims to need about four hours of sleep per night.
Though Ecofriendly technically has been around for three years, Mr. Gianakas and his two partners didn't see much activity until this past January. That's because their initial supplier of the at-home pump, a Honda-owned subsidiary in Toronto called FuelMaker Corp., filed for bankruptcy in April 2009.
The bankruptcy was a major blow to an already-shaky CNG market, especially since it came from a company owned by Honda, the only current manufacturer of commercial CNG cars.
First Published September 23, 2011 12:00 am
