Targeting methane “ultra-emitters” could cheaply slow climate change

THE ECONOMIST
by Medium Publishers
February 3, 2022

Feb fifth 2022

ON FEBRUARY 15TH 2018 a fuel properly blew up in Ohio’s Belmont county. Flying overhead shortly earlier than 1pm, a state highway-patrol helicopter captured photographs of a column of flames and a billowing plume of soot and gases rising excessive into the sky from the rolling hills. Although the flames have been quickly put out, the bust wellhead was not patched up for 20 days. A subsequent research utilizing satellite tv for pc knowledge calculated that in that point, some 58,000 tonnes of methane was launched, equal to one-quarter of what Ohio’s total oil-and-gas infrastructure reportedly produces yearly and greater than the annual methane emissions of comparable fossil-fuel infrastructure in most European nations.

Methane is a colourless, odourless greenhouse fuel that makes up the majority of the pure fuel burned to warmth properties, cook dinner meals and generate electrical energy. It can also be the second largest driver of world warming after carbon dioxide, answerable for a minimum of one-quarter of the rise in world common temperatures because the Industrial Revolution. Once emitted, methane molecules degrade in round a decade so they don’t pile up within the environment in the identical manner as carbon dioxide, which might persist for lots of of years.

Slashing methane emissions, due to this fact, could assist cut back the general atmospheric quantity of greenhouse gases and slow the tempo of world warming within the close to time period. Patching up leaky oil-and-gas infrastructure, answerable for 22% of all man-made methane emissions, would assist meet these targets. This has led to efforts to quantify methane leaks.

According to a brand new research printed this week within the journal Science, prolonged blow-ups on pipelines and at wellheads—as occurred within the Belmont county explosion—are behind the discharge of roughly 8m tonnes of methane yearly. That is equal to between 8% and 12% of the estimated whole launched from the worldwide oil-and-gas infrastructure annually. By figuring out and mapping the leaks in such element, the research gives a chance: concentrate on tackling these massive leaks and a big chunk of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions could be eliminated.

Thomas Lauvaux, an atmospheric scientist on the University of Saclay in France, and his colleagues used imagery and knowledge collected in 2019 and 2020 by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) which is flying aboard an Earth-monitoring satellite tv for pc launched by the European Space Agency. The researchers discovered greater than 1,800 single “ultra-emitting” occasions, outlined as producing 25 tonnes or extra of methane every hour. Some occasions launched a number of hundred tonnes of the greenhouse fuel per hour, producing plumes that spanned lots of of kilometres.


Two-thirds of the ultra-emitting occasions have been co-located with oil and fuel manufacturing websites and pipelines; the remainder got here from coal manufacturing, agricultural or waste-management services. Accounting for 1.3m tonnes of methane per 12 months, Turkmenistan was house to among the largest sources. Dr Lauvaux and his colleagues famous that the occasions they documented weren’t included in nationwide emissions inventories and recommend that official numbers could underestimate whole emissions by half. After Turkmenistan, the most important emissions have been discovered over Russia, America, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria.

The 8m tonnes of methane picked up within the newest research have the identical warming impact because the carbon footprint of 18m Americans. Eliminating all these emissions would keep away from between 0.003°C to 0.007°C of warming over the following one to 3 many years, in keeping with Dr Lauvaux.

Improving monitoring and patching up leaky infrastructure would even be within the pursuits of fossil-fuel producers in locations together with Algeria, America, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan. The researchers calculated that firms forgo income of between $100 and $400 per tonne of methane that leaks out.

At the United Nations COP26 climate negotiations, held final November in Glasgow, leaders of greater than 100 nations made a pact to scale back world emissions of methane by 30% by 2030. The least expensive, most cost-effective manner of doing this can be to patch up oil-and-gas infrastructure, beginning with the ultra-emitters recognized by Dr Lauvaux. Inventories like his, and additional knowledge from a brand new technology of satellites able to detecting level sources of methane, are essential steps in assembly these world ambitions. ■

This article appeared within the Science & know-how part of the print version underneath the headline “Methane mission”