Breathe Deep, People. Fill Your Lungs With Lovely Methane – CleanTechnica

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For more than two generations, we have obsessed over carbon dioxide. Isn’t that the stuff that is causing all these hotter temperatures everywhere around then globe? Yes it is, but that is only part of the story. There are lots of other substances we humans allow to escape into the atmosphere in the name of progress that are equally as destructive. Many of the refrigerants we use to keep us cool cause havoc when they are allowed to escape. But the elephant in the room, the one that almost no one wants to talk about, is methane.

Chemically, methane is known as CH4 — one carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms. When burned, it releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than coal, which is why it is touted as a “bridge fuel,” something we can use now while the transition to renewable energy takes place. There is only one problem. Climate scientists tell us it is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to warming the planet we all live on. While it is true that it does not stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide — a few decades as opposed to a century or more — it has an exponentially greater impact on global heating than does carbon dioxide.

More Methane Emissions Than Ever

A study published July 29, 2024 in the journal Frontiers In Science puts a spotlight on methane emissions and the damage they cause to the environment. Here’s the introduction to that study.

Worldwide efforts to limit climate change are rightly focused on carbon dioxide (CO₂), the primary driver. However, since humanity has failed to adequately address climate change for several decades, keeping warming below agreed goals now requires that we address all major climate pollutants. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas driving climate change. Out of a total observed warming of 1.07°C during the period 2010 to 2019, the Working Group I 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report attributed 0.5°C to methane emissions.

However, in many respects, methane mitigation has been neglected relative to CO₂. For example, only ~2% of global climate finance is estimated to go towards methane abatement. Similarly, only about 13% of global methane emissions are covered by current policy mechanisms. With dramatic climate changes already occurring and methane providing substantial leverage to slow warming in the near future and reduce surface ozone pollution, political will to mitigate methane has recently increased, especially following the Global Methane Assessment published by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition in May 2021.

The Assessment showed that reducing methane was an extremely cost effective way to rapidly slow warming and contribute to climate stabilization while also providing large benefits to human health, crop yield, and labor productivity. The GMA also demonstrated that various technical and behavioral options were currently available to achieve such emission cuts. Drawing upon that Assessment and related analysis, the United States and European Union launched the Global Methane Pledge in November 2021 at the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which countries set a collective goal of reducing anthropogenic methane emissions by at least 30% (relative to 2020 levels) by 2030. By COP28 in November 2023, participation in the GMP had increased to 155 countries that collectively account for more than half of global anthropogenic methane emissions.

However, far more needs to be done if the world is to change the current methane trajectory and meet the goals of the GMP and other national pledges. This article presents three imperatives supported by a series of analyses (detailed further in Methods):

● Imperative 1 — to change course and reverse methane emissions growth — describes changes in methane observed during the recent past and projected for the near future and compares these with low warming scenarios (Analysis A).

● Imperative 2 — to align methane and CO₂ mitigation — discusses methane targets and metrics (Analysis B), investigates the connections between methane emissions and CO₂ mitigation efforts (Analysis C), and assesses their impacts (Analyses D–F).

● Imperative 3 — to optimize methane abatement options and policies — presents analyses of the mitigation potential of national-level abatement options (Analysis G) and evaluates their cost effectiveness (Analysis H) across the 50 countries with greatest mitigation potential by subsector (i.e., landfill, coal, oil, and gas) using a novel tool. We also compare profit versus pricing from controlling methane emissions from oil production (Analysis I) and describe ongoing efforts to support national and regional decision-making.

Finally, we outline paths forward for improving scientific understanding of methane emissions, abatement opportunities, and physical processes that will affect future methane levels in the atmosphere.

We Need More Robust Methane Policies

Accumulated methane emissions since 1850 up to 2019 have caused about two-thirds as much global heating as carbon dioxide, the researchers say, noting that if all such emissions were stopped tomorrow, 90% of accumulated methane would have left the atmosphere by 2050. That in turn would go a long way toward avoiding an increase in global average temperatures. The alternative, of course, is geoengineering, which will cost trillions of dollars and may have unintended consequences. On a cost/benefit basis, eliminating methane emissions might be a far better economic proposition than mucking about with the atmosphere, but of course the energy producers would not be in favor of that approach because, you know, profits!!!

Methane is emitted primarily by leaks and flaring during fossil fuel production, animal and rice agriculture, and the decaying of organic matter. The authors considered what had caused its production to spike in the early 2020s specifically, and concluded that the two main drivers were fossil fuels — primarily oil and gas production — and an increase in decomposition rates from wetlands as higher temperatures interacted with La Niña conditions in the tropics.

So far in the current decade, about 30 million tons more methane emissions have been released each year compared with the previous decade. The growth rate since 2020 has “far exceeded” forecasts. Lead study author and Duke University climate scientist Drew Shindell told The Guardian, “The growth rate of methane is accelerating, which is worrisome, It was quite flat until around 20 years ago, and just in the last few years we’ve had this huge dump of methane. It’s made the job of tackling anthropogenic warming all the more challenging.”

He added, “Methane is the strongest lever we can quickly pull to reduce warming between now and 2050. There’s just such a rapid response to cutting it. We’ve already seen the planet warm so much that if we are to avoid worse impacts we have to reduce methane. Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren — reducing methane will protect us now.”

“This study shows that emissions are expected to continue to increase over the remainder of the 2020s if no greater action is taken and that increases in atmospheric methane are thus far outpacing projected growth rates,” the authors wrote. Each ton of methane emitted in 2020 caused between $470 and $1,700 in damages, without considering methane’s contribution to deadly air pollution. If that is taken into account, the true cost per ton could be $7,000 or more, according to Common Dreams.

The Takeaway

What is hard to understand is why energy producers are reluctant to capture methane emissions, feed them into their pipelines and sell them. After all, methane is their primary product. If you were in the milk business, would you allow a significant proportion of the raw milk you have on hand to go sluicing down the drain? If you were a clothing manufacturer, would you let tons of fabric go into the dumpster? Of course not. But when it comes to methane, producers think nothing of letting it escape into the atmosphere because doing so comes at no cost to them.

The bottom line is that we can’t do much about decaying organic matter, but we can do something about adjusting the economic equation so letting methane escape costs more than harvesting it and keeping it out of the atmosphere. This is where policy considerations can have a powerful impact. Energy producers will scream about the deep state and government overreach, of course, but the truth of the matter is the current economic system allows them to use our atmosphere as a toilet — a place they can dispose of their waste products at no cost to them. That’s insane but standard business practice in the distorted business model prevalent today.

We are not talking about banning fossil fuels. We are talking about making polluters pay — whether it is abandoning old oil and gas wells so taxpayers have to foot the bill to cap them, or letting millions of tons of greenhouse gases escape into the atmosphere because there is no economic incentive not to. In essence, we need energy producers to be good citizens. Reasonable and responsible economic policies can help shape their conduct to make that happen.