The big methane hunt
Why there's a lot of new activity around an invisible gas
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action. I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this newsletter grows by word-of-mouth. Someone share or forward this edition with you? Sign up here. You can also read and share this edition online.
If all goes well, this time next week I’ll have a new story to share, one that expands on a climate issue long-time readers of The Planet You Save read about last year. Here’s another hint: it’s about methane, and this week, I’m using the bonus subscriber edition to help readers (and me) get our heads around some big efforts to cut methane leaks from gas & oil production, efforts that are likely going to ramp up this year, and how some are local.
(This terrifying image is from the UN's most recent methane report)
Remind me again: what's methane?
Let’s take a brief step back: among other things, methane is a greenhouse gas driving climate change. But methane is a bit different than your classic Co2. Its ability to warm the planet is much greater, but it operates on shorter time scales. While new carbon dioxide humans emit will stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, methane is gone within a decade or so.
But in that time it’s doing a lot of damage: an estimated 30% of all global warming since the industrial revolution. Methane comes from a variety of sources: produced from landfills from decomposing waste (much of it food-based), from the burps of cattle raised from dairy and meat and other agricultural sources.
In the US, about a third of methane emissions come producing, transporting and storing oil and gas. The vast amount of these methane emissions are avoidable: they come from leaky wells and pipelines, older technology to reduce pressure within wells, abandoned coal mines, and routine flaring that doesn’t burn all the gas its supposed to.
While researchers have also found that “super-emitters” make up a large proportion of the methane leaks accounted for, there’s probably a lot of everyday leaks we don’t know about.
Enter the methane hunters
First, let’s go with Reuters to the Permian basin, one of America’s major sources of fossil fuels — and the top single source of known methane emissions from oil & gas.
Charlie Barrett walks through an oilfield in New Mexico's southeastern desert, where the air smells of rotten eggs and old pumpjacks sit among shrub oaks, and turns on an infrared camera that can detect emissions from oil and gas equipment. Barrett, who works for environmental group Earthworks, is hunting for methane. …
He points the $120,000 camera at a thin metal pole sticking out of the ground near a rusty storage tank. The rotten egg smell is a telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide, which can be found in the state's natural gas alongside the main component, methane, meaning gas is seeping out somewhere nearby. Sure enough, the camera's viewfinder captures a dark stream of methane spewing out of the pole.
In 2022 alone, Earthworks made nearly 80 reports of potential methane leaks in New Mexico to the state’s regulator, which opened 22 investigations from those complaints. While the regulator doesn’t share the outcome of those investigations, the state fined six oil & gas producers the following year.
But there’s been limitations on how much impact organizations like Earthworks can have:
Environmentalists like Barrett have searched for leaking wells and pipelines for years. But they cannot trespass on private property - where most oil and gas infrastructure resides - and their cameras are not equipped to measure the volume of methane coming from a facility, information that regulators need to decide whether to pursue their complaints. That is about to change: [In 2024], an affiliate of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a climate activist group that aims to slash methane emissions from energy and farming by 30% this decade, will launch a satellite dedicated to finding methane emissions. Unlike existing commercial operators that operate on subscription, MethaneSAT will freely provide its location and methane scale data to the public. The company aims to scan 80% of the world’s oil and gas producing regions.
Of course, finding the methane leak is only the first part. Then you’ve got to actually stop it.
The Two Permians
In the US, methane hunters will have more wind at their back. Late last year, the EPA published its methane rule, a giant document that covers updating infrastructure standards, phasing out flaring and regular leak monitoring. But it also includes something entirely new, Grist reports:
The rule also includes the “super-emitter program,” in which outside organizations certified by the EPA can use approved remote-sensing technologies, including airborne spectrometers and satellites, to monitor oil and gas facilities and detect large releases.
Under the program, watchdogs will report super-emitter events — defined as a release of more than 100 kilograms per hour — to the EPA, which vets the data and informs the operator. The owner must investigate and report back to the EPA within 15 days, explaining how and when it will fix the problem.
The EPA will also post verified super-emitter events on the program’s website, allowing those in frontline communities to monitor their possible exposure to dangerous gasses.
Parts of the new methane rule actually updates federal regulations closer to increased state monitoring Colorado and New Mexico, Jon Goldstein, the senior director of regulatory & legislative affairs at EDF, said on webinar hosted by ClimateXChange earlier this month. He compared efforts to cut methane emissions in New Mexico with the lack of regulation and enforcement in the other part of the Permian: “Texas is a great example of not responding,” he says, arguing the state's regulators rubberstamp flaring permits.
A related stick
There’s also a separate bit of regulation in the works: the “waste” emissions fee — charging oil & gas operators per ton for methane emissions over a specific threshold, representing potentially millions of dollars in fees for what would be historical large leaks. Of course there’s caveats here, including exemptions and specific parts of the industry it doesn’t cover — but the fee program has received more push back from lobby groups like the American Petroleum Institute than the EPA’s wider methane rules.
Local, from space
I want to back up to the line quoted above about the EPA posting data about super-emitters to its website so communities can be informed. Methane reduction is gaining a lot of attention for an invisible gas, but it’s not just a climate change issue. These leaks also mean other pollution: it’s also an air quality issue. Having things like MethaneSAT, CarbonMapper and other publicly available data is not just a cool mapping project (although it absolutely is that too) but having more actionable and easily-readable data for people who are concerned about these issues. Outside of the Permian, I’m interested what happens in Appalachia, Cancer Alley and yes, your local landfill.
(A screenshot of suspected methane plumes in 2023 from Carbon Mapper)
More local climate action stories
- Instead of moving away from coal, Wyoming's utilities are making customers pay for reducing carbon dioxide from power plants (Wyofile)
- Alaska’s most populous corridor can generate most of its electricity through renewable energy, a report from University of Alaska researchers finds, but would require significant upfront capital investment. (Alaska Beacon)
- Southwestern tribes and a major environmental group ask US court to block a transmission project in Arizona intended to bring power from wind farms further west (AP)
- Potential ballot measure to repeal Michigan's renewable permitting law can start taking signatures(Bridge Michigan)
- Want to vacation in Hawaii? The state's governor would like to charge you $25 for the climate impact. (Honolulu Civil Beat)
- A big moment for deciding what replaces coal in the southeast (E&E News)
- To Slash Carbon Emissions, Colleges Are Digging Really Deep. Literally. (NY Times)
- Will Chicago join the cities banning gas hookups in new construction? (Chicago Sun-Times)