Energy

Methane Is Low-Hanging Fruit For Biden


At present, it seems clear that a Biden Presidency is imminent and, while I’m sure he is receiving lots of advice on energy and the environment, much of it unwanted, I will take this opportunity to put in my ten cents worth. (Used to be two cents, but, inflation.)

First, don’t just assume that every policy the Trump Administration adopted is wrong and should be reversed. (I made a similar plea four years ago to the incoming Trump Administration but they ignored me.) This is a lesson of history that is too often ignored, as when Donald Rumsfeld resisted using U.S. troops for ‘nation-building’ as the Clinton Administration was presumed to have done, and this translated into having American soldiers stand aside as looters swarmed in Iraq. The Trump Administration behaved similarly, although it is worth noting exceptions: after initially proposing to abolish requirements for automakers to improve vehicle efficiency, they agreed instead merely to adopt more moderate standards.

Lately, press coverage seems to imply that methane is the number one climate enemy, whether it’s methane leakage, flaring of methane or use in buildings. The last is particularly foolish, as it treats methane usage as ‘bad’ without consideration for the change in net greenhouse gas emissions such a policy would generate. Direct usage of natural gas for heating and cooking can be more efficient than usage of electricity, depending on a variety of factors. (Personal note: I have electric heating and cooking, not out of choice but because the neighborhood has no gas pipeline.)

In a future column, the contribution methane can make in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be discussed, but here the issue is methane leakage. First and foremost, leakage and flaring are not the same thing, a mistake some media make. Flaring means burning off natural gas that cannot be sold in order to produce oil from a field that contains gas dissolved in the liquids. Flaring is done deliberately based on relative economics, specifically to avoid the higher cost of leaving an oil well unproductive while waiting for a natural gas hookup. It produces CO2 which is a greenhouse gas, but less damaging than methane.

Leakage involves methane, CH4, going directly into the atmosphere; it is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, albeit more short-lived. Burning the leaking methane would actually reduce the greenhouse effect. But leakage is typically unintentional and occurs in many places—along with natural emissions, from termite mounds, wetlands and yes, natural gas deposits which can leak into the air without human involvement, just as oil sometimes seeps out of the ground.

What confuses some is that many in the oil industry oppose regulating methane leakage while also insisting that the industry opposes it as wasteful and thus, in theory, tries to minimize it. This should not be a surprise: many will oppose any regulation even if they agree with the goals, because they dislike the additional paperwork involved. And small companies may find that their diseconomies of scale make it more expensive for them to monitor leakage in their operations.

But technological advances mean that it has become much cheaper and easier to locate methane leaks. New sensors are available, including mobile equipment that can be put on vehicles, planes and drones, as well as on-site sensors that report remotely to operators. On a global scale, satellites can detect leakage on a real-time basis, allowing repairs and/or maintenance that can reduce leakage (and other emissions) and save producers and distributors significant amounts of money.

Which highlights another fact: much of the leakage takes place overseas. Attention in the U.S. has been on leakage from the gas shales (or in rare cases, storage sites), partly because ‘that’s where the gas is’ as Willie Sutton would say, but also because fossil fuel companies are held in low regard by most environmental advocates. The figure below, courtesy of Kayrros, a company that uses satellite data to locate methane emissions, shows that while U.S. shale basins are a major source of emissions, they are only a fraction of global leakage.

Some low-hanging fruit seems visible in the figure, including major methane sources in Northeast China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where leakage rates appear out of proportion to local gas production. The line of emissions from northern Siberia towards western Europe would appear to be from the massive Russian gas pipelines and should be very cost-effective to reduce. Emissions in the Caspian and parts of the Middle East probably reflect poor maintenance practices, especially in cash-strapped countries like Iran.

This also supports another contention made by methane monitors like the Environmental Defense Fund, namely that much of the leakage comes from a small percentage of sources, so-called ‘super-leakers,’ which would be the best targets for regulation. If ten percent of sources account for the bulk of the emitted methane, the implication is that there are significant gains that can be made in a cost-effective way. Regulation should initially target these large leaks rather than attempting to eliminate every single possible source of emissions. 

A tweet today claimed centrists were those who equated the extreme left position of ‘Medicare for all’ with the extreme right position of ‘white supremacy’ which is nonsense. In the case of methane leakage, the extremes are ‘leave it in the ground’ versus ‘no regulation,’ neither of which is sensible from a cost-benefit point of view. Much better would be to use the advanced monitoring tools that are now available to detect and reduce the leakage of methane, starting with the larger sources but not pretending that emissions can be completely eliminated, especially since only oil and gas are only responsible for 15% of methane emissions (IEA estimate). Much of the rest is from agriculture and wetlands, as the figure above shows.

Increased methane usage can also be a valuable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (subject for a later column), but this is a case where the Biden Administration can be guided by the science, including cost-benefit analysis, and produce significant progress towards achieving climate change policy goals without adopting an extreme position based on either ideological extreme.

IEASources of methane emissions – Charts – Data & Statistics – IEA

KayrrosMethane Watch



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.