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December 6, 2023
5 minute read
As the world meets in Dubai for COP28, the following is the third in a three-part series of thought pieces to encourage discussion and debate
As we approach the end of the first week of COP28, we have already seen a flurry of announcements related to reducing methane emissions. On December 2nd, 50 global oil and gas companies were announced as charter signatories of the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, a pledge to eliminate methane emissions in their operations by 2030. On the same day, the United States announced the finalization of standards to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
Other countries followed suit, including Brazil, Egypt and Canada, which announced a target on Monday of reducing oil and gas methane emissions by 75 percent from 2012 levels by 2030. In all, at least 86 countries now have regulatory frameworks in place to reduce oil and gas methane emissions. And in November, the EU announced methane import standards, which would limit the methane content of any fuels coming into the EU. All of this follows on the 2021 Global Methane Pledge, which now includes 155 countries that have made commitments to reduce global methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
Why methane matters
As a company with a strategic focus on Immediacy of Impact, CarbonAi is keenly focused on methane reductions in both our project development efforts and our measurement and monitoring solutions.
Why do we think methane is so critical? First off, Impact. Methane is a potent GHG, with up to 86 times the global warming impact of CO2 over its first twenty years in the atmosphere. This means that for every tonne of methane that you prevent from reaching the atmosphere, it is equivalent to reducing up to 86 tonnes of CO2.
The second reason is Value-add. When combusted as part of natural gas, methane is a valuable, lower carbon fuel for electricity generation, heating and cooking. An important energy transition fuel, methane can reduce emissions by displacing coal in electricity generation, and inefficient and unhealthy wood burning for home cooking in developing countries. However, for methane to be part of the climate solution, the critical part is that it needs to be combusted, which turns into water vapour and a smaller fraction of CO2. If it is not combusted, and instead leaks or vents to the atmosphere, methane is a major problem.
Third is Speed of Implementation. Many tools and technologies to reduce methane emissions are readily available, commercially proven and cost-effective. Methane is commonly emitted in the extraction, production and transportation of natural gas, particularly from venting and flaring of “waste gas” and leaks from valves and other equipment throughout the value chain.
As John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, stated this week, “It’s not complicated technology. It’s mostly plumbing…tightening the screws, shutting off leaks, stopping the flaring, stopping the venting.”[1] And while this might be a slight oversimplification—methane can be notoriously difficult to detect and quantify, let alone mitigate—we’ve proven it can be done.
The founders of CarbonAi have deep experience in successfully mitigating methane emissions, having planned and executed one of the largest methane reduction programs in the world, replacing over 12,500 methane emitting devices in the Alberta oil and gas sector over a four-year period. And our software solutions are designed to help simplify the task of tracking and implementing leak detection and repair programs (LDAR) for methane.
Turning down the methane thermostat
We believe that methane is the thermostat: the more of it we have in the atmosphere, the more global temperatures will rise. If we want to turn down the heat or slow the rate of warming, we need to rapidly increase methane mitigation efforts now.
Reductions that take place now, are more important than reductions that take place in five, ten or fifteen years because emissions that occur today linger in the atmosphere for 20 years (in the case of methane). A reduction now effectively eliminates 20 years of climate change impact. Immediate methane mitigation allows us time to commercialize technologies to address hard-to-abate emissions sectors like cement and steel.
Stepping on the (methane mitigation) gas
So how do we accelerate methane mitigation? The great thing about methane is that due to its high global warming value, it is well suited to market-based approaches to mitigation, and specifically carbon price signals, where there is an economic price per tonne because you literally get more bang for your buck.
This is particularly true if policy is structured to provide financial incentives—such as high-value carbon credits—that will mobilize capital to reduce emissions in regions where raising such capital is difficult. For CarbonAi, that’s why our Projects group is focused on large methane mitigation projects in the oil & gas sector, where there are large sources of methane to be tackled, where existing technology solutions are readily available, and where we can accurately measure and prove reduction volumes and impact.
Letting science prevail over ideology
The key thing here is that we can’t let ideology overtake science when it comes to methane policy. Certain groups are trying to limit which sources of methane emissions could be eligible to take advantage of these highly efficient market-based tools. A great example would be favouring methane mitigation in agriculture over methane mitigation in the oil & gas sector. If this is a climate emergency, it doesn’t matter for the atmosphere if a methane molecule is coming from an agricultural source or an oil & gas source. Our goal should be to provide policy and market-based tools to mitigate the maximum amount of methane, in the shortest period of time possible.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/un-climate-cop28-methane-leak-agreement-rcna127496