Methane is supercharging the climate crisis

From Our World in Data

From The Hill

In the fight against climate change, the focus is usually on carbon dioxide, or CO2 — and for good reason. It’s a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for [thousands of] years, trapping in heat for generations to come. Yet there is an even more potent planet-warming gas whose destructive powers have long gone hidden — until now.

Methane traps heat in the atmosphere with 80 times the power of CO2 over 20 years. While it breaks down in the atmosphere faster than carbon dioxide, the damage it does is more immediate.

The good news is that, thanks to recent developments in leak monitoring, we can halt much of the methane emitted from various human activities before it reaches the atmosphere, a tactic that, because of methane’s potency and short shelf life, could have an almost immediate impact.

Scientists around the world now have tools at their disposal to trace otherwise invisible methane leaks. With spectrometers, satellite surveillance, drones and handheld devices, they can now create sophisticated, multilayered maps that reveal how and where methane plumes are entering the atmosphere. The aggregation of this data is so precise, in fact, that scientists can pinpoint methane leaks down to the exact location.

What they’ve discovered is telling.

The fossil fuel industry has been drilling and refining oil and its byproducts for over 150 years, and it has left behind a legacy of pollution and dodged accountability. So-called “orphaned” wells, or wells that have been abandoned by the oil companies that originally drilled them, litter the United States, including my home state of Louisiana. When these wells aren’t abandoned outright, ownership is transferred to a shell company without the funding to clean them up. They can remain uncapped for generations, leaking carcinogens and other toxic chemicals into the surrounding area and unleashing plumes of methane into the atmosphere.

Last month, I testified in Baton Rouge on behalf of important legislation to hold oil companies accountable for the wells they previously drilled. Under current law, the expense of eventually capping wells is left to taxpayers. Passing abandoned well accountability legislation in state after state is a workable solution to halting this contributor to climate change.

Beyond avoiding accountability for its methane emissions, the industry also engages in “greenwashing,” or making their products seem cleaner than they are. Nowhere is this more apparent than the case of “LNG” or “liquified natural gas,” as the industry calls it.

Here’s the truth: “natural” gas is methane. It’s not a pure product and contains elements of other toxins, but methane is the active ingredient. That’s because when methane is not leaked or wasted, it can be a powerful fuel due to its high combustibility.

The industry’s process for extracting gas through fracking, moving it through pipelines, liquefying it and shipping it overseas is an energy intensive and wasteful process. From the well head through the pipeline to the export terminal and beyond, methane is leaked into the atmosphere. To regulate pressure along the pipeline and in the liquefaction plant, companies flare, or burn off the excess, just above ground level, releasing methane along with any other particulate matter.

Here too, the fossil fuel industry needs to be held to account. Sending a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere while marketing it as a “green” alternative to oil is dishonest.

The Department of Energy’s report on the federal “pause” on LNG permitting has just been released. In her statement, Secretary Jennifer Granholm confirmed what so many of us have long known: LNG exports are a ticking greenhouse gas time bomb. “An LNG project exporting 4 billion cubic feet per day – considering its direct life cycle emissions – would yield more annual greenhouse gas emissions by itself than 141 of the world’s countries each did in 2023,” she noted.

It’s time to end federal permitting of new LNG gas export terminals. Absent federal action, state and local officials must refuse zoning, land use, public interest and other permits to stop the industry’s reckless expansion.

Methane in the atmosphere has shot up in the past two decades, and it continues to be emitted in quantities that make a stable climate impossible. Manmade emissions have warmed the planet so much that melting permafrost and wetlands are now also releasing methane, causing a “doom spiral” that will soon become uncontrollable.

There is hope. By exposing the industry’s emissions, mandating the capping of wells and downscaling the use of fossil fuels, we can draw down this potent greenhouse gas — and we must. Our future depends on it.

Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré (Ret.) is a former commanding officer of the U.S. First Army. He led Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans following the devastating Category 5 hurricane. He is currently head of The Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.

About 1/3rd of the rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times (by convention, taken to mean 1850-1900 for the purposes of calculating the rise in temperature, currently already at 1.5 degrees C) is due to higher levels of methane in the atmosphere. If we slashed emissions from agriculture and "fugitive emissions" (gas leaks), the level of methane in the atmosphere would start falling immediately (it decays within 12 years to CO2), and we would stop temperatures rising for two decades, giving us more time to cut CO2 emissions. 

LNG produces more emissions than coal

From The Guardian

Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia.

Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels when combusted for energy, with oil and gas producers for years promoting cleaner-burning gas as a “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution” amid a glut of new liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US.


But the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.

“The idea that coal is worse for the climate is mistaken – LNG has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel,” said Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell University and author of the new paper.

“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong. It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”

Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process, the research finds.

The large resulting emissions mean there is “no need for LNG as an interim energy source”, the paper says, adding that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority”.

The peer-reviewed research, published on Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal, challenges the rationale for a huge surge in LNG facilities along the US Gulf coast, in order to send gas in huge tankers to overseas markets. The US is the world’s leading LNG exporter, followed by Australia and Qatar.

Previous government and industry estimates have assumed that LNG is considerably lower emitting than coal, offering the promise that it could replace it in countries such as China, as well as aiding European allies menaced by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major gas producer.

“US LNG exports can help accelerate environmental progress across the globe, enabling nations to transition to cleaner natural gas to reduce emissions and address the global risks of climate change,” Dustin Meyer, director of market development at the American Petroleum Institute, has said.

But scientists have determined that LNG expansion is not compatible with the world avoiding dangerous global heating, with researchers finding in recent years the leakage of methane, a primary component of gas and a potent planet-heating agent, from drilling operations is far higher than official estimates.

Howarth’s paper finds that as much as 3.5% of the gas delivered to customers leaks to the atmosphere unburned, much more than previously assumed. Methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though it persists for less time in the atmosphere, and scientists have warned that rising global methane emissions risk blowing apart agreed-upon climate goals.

Howarth’s research found that during LNG production, around half of the total emissions occur during the long journey taken by gas as it is pushed through pipelines to coastal terminals after it is initially drilled, usually via hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from areas such as the US’s vast shale deposits.

The energy used to do this, along with the leaks, causes pollution that is exacerbated once the gas gets to the export facilities. There, it is supercooled to -162C (-260F) to become a liquid, which is loaded into huge storage containers on tankers. The tankers then travel long distances to deliver the product to client countries, where it is turned back into a gas and then burned.

“This whole process is much more energy intensive than coal,” said Howarth. “The science is pretty clear here: it’s wishful thinking that the gas miraculously moves overseas without any emissions..”

Howarth’s paper has caused something of a firestorm before its publication, with a draft of the study highlighted by climate campaigners such as Bill McKibben to the extent it was reportedly a factor in a decision earlier this year by the Biden administration to pause all new export permits for LNG projects.

This pause has enraged the oil and gas industry – prompting lawsuits – and its political allies. Last month, four congressional Republicans wrote to the US energy department demanding correspondence between it and Howarth over what they called his “flawed” and “erroneous” study.

Gas-friendly groups have also argued that the paper overstates emissions from LNG, an stance echoed by some energy experts. “It’s hard to swallow,” said David Dismukes, a leading Louisiana energy consultant and researcher. “Does gas have a climate impact? Absolutely. But is it worse than coal? Come on.”

Howarth said the result of this unusual scrutiny was “more peer review than I’ve ever had before”, with five rounds of review being conducted by eight other scientists. Howarth said: “I don’t consider the criticism valid at all – it feels like a political job.”

Howarth said the US has a “huge choice” to make in the presidential election, with Donald Trump vowing to undo Biden’s pause on his first day back in the White House to allow a raft of new LNG projects. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has backed away from a previous plan to ban fracking but has promised action on the climate crisis.

More than 125 climate, environmental and health scientists wrote to the Biden administration last month to defend Howarth’s research and urge a continuation of the pause on LNG exports.

The Howarth paper’s findings are “plausible”, said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, who was not involved in the research.

“Bob’s study adds to a lot of literature now that shows the industry’s argument for gas is undermined by the option to go to renewables,” Shindell said. “The debate isn’t really about whether gas is slightly better or worse than coal, though. It should be about how both are terrible and that we need to get rid of both of them.”

So from two causes:

1.  Leaks.  Methane is +-80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as coal.  So even quite small leaks (as a percentage) will undo the benefits of switching to gas.
2. Refrigeration, pumping and transport.   

Together, these are likely to substantially reduce or (as this analysis says) completely undo the benefits of gas over coal.  However, gas still has the advantage that it is much easier to ramp up and down than coal, which means that it is a good complement to renewables.

US LNG exports are booming

 An interesting video from the FT (Financial Times, of London) about the boom in LNG exports from the US, mostly to Europe to substitute for the losses of gas from Russia.  It explains the process of creating LNG from natural gas, and shows how the US is now the world's largest exporter, with further increases likely.

Is the world locking in gas?  Prolly not, or at least not in the quantities implied in the question.  A grid powered by wind and solar will still need gas for cold, gloomy, windless periods  ("Dunkelflaute").    In countries with enough hydro, gas may not be needed, but even then gas will be necessary as back-up.  Until power-to-gas, i.e., converting surplus electricity to methane, becomes widespread, we will still need natural gas.  Producing surplus green electricity will require overcapacity in wind and solar, and we are a long way away from that now.  But by 2030, the need to curtail renewable output will be frequent, and in order not to waste it, we'll use it to make synthetic natural gas via the Sabatier process.  At that point, natural gas production will start to fall, and its place in the grid will be replaced by SNG.

Japan to cut fossil fuels & up renewables

 From a Twitter feed by Stephen Stapczynski, a Bloomberg business reporter

Japan revises its 2030 power mix targets, cutting fossil fuels and raising renewables in a bid to reduce pollution

The biggest loser? LNG

Under the draft plan, annual LNG power generation is slated to fall roughly 50% by the end of the decade. That's more than coal.  

This is a surprising shift for Japan, the world's top LNG importer that pioneered the industry.

Japan will require less LNG in 2030 than its previous plan, posing a potential dilemma for its suppliers from Qatar to Australia.  

Nuclear power's role in Japan's energy mix remains unchanged from the previous plan: 20-22% of power generation by 2030.  Japan will require 27 of its remaining 36 reactors to resume operations to hit this target.  That won't be easy. only 10 have restarted.

The renewable energy target is just as ambitious.  Japan wants renewables (solar, wind, hydro) to make up 36-38% of the power mix by 2030. That's nearly double current levels and will require solar panels on millions of rooftops. The old target was 22-24%

Japan aims for hydrogen and ammonia-fired power generation to make up 1% of the 2030 power mix.  That's a new addition to the nation’s energy plan. Over the long-term, utilities aim to shift to green hydrogen/ammonia to meet 2050 net-zero goals.

So why is Japan revising its power mix targets?

It is all about its Paris deal commitments.  Earlier this year, Japan strengthened its 2030 Paris goals, raising its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 46% by 2030 from 2013 levels.

Looking further out, Japan will need to significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to hit its 2050 net-zero pledge

That means they must:

> Build a whole lot of offshore wind

> Consume a ton of green hydrogen/ammonia

> Boost energy efficiency

There is no doubt that Japan's revised 2030 energy targets are ambitious. It's unclear if they will be able to meet them.  But the new plan does indicate that the government is shifting its view on LNG, which for a very long time it touted as a cleaner alternative to other fuels.

The 20% nuclear target is incredibly challenging to meet, said Woodmac’s Whitworth, who sees atomic generation only hitting 9% in 2030.  “Over-optimism on nuclear makes the plan look unrealistic and could undermine plans to reduce coal and gas share”

Great analysis from

@BloombergNEF

on Japan's revised 2030 power mix targets BNEF analysts expect gas to make up just 15% (!) of the power mix by 2030, well below coal. Japan seen missing nuclear target, and that gap will be filled with coal (not LNG)

A few thoughts about this plan:

• Is it plausible that the nuclear power stations will be restarted?  It's true that the marginal (operating) cost of nuclear is much lower than those of coal and gas, even if the cost of new-build nuclear is much higher.  But after Fukushima ......?
• Stanczynski talks about rooftop solar.  Surely utility-scale solar will play at least as important a part.   Net solar additions have slowed .  Even at current growth rates, the percentage of solar will more than double by 2030.  At 15% per annum, solar's contribution could exceed 30%.
• Growth in wind power in Japan has been low over the decade.   If the growth rate doubles to 15% p.a., then wind's contribution will reach 8% up from 2% now.  
• A price on carbon will accelerate these shifts.  With the EU introducing carbon border tariffs, Japan, like other countries, will have to decide whether to pay taxes on its exports to the EU, or to levy its own taxes which will be  returned to itself.  It's obvious what makes sense, and indeed the country is cautiously supportive of the EU's carbon border tax.
• None of this is good news for LNG/coal  exporters such as Australia.