Comment pubs.acs.org/est
Sniffing Out Solutions
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monitoring costs, the Department of Energy fast-tracked ARPA-E’s MONITOR program to develop methane measurement tools that would be 10−100 times less expensive than existing approaches. Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation and private organizations, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, simultaneously invested in research to demonstrate how methane leaks could be detected efficiently. In addition to providing better ways of sniffing out methane leaks, the researchers discovered that cities have an important role to play in controlling methane. For example, by outfitting a fleet of Google Maps cars with cavity ring-down spectrometers, researchers from Colorado State University developed a lowcost method for finding methane leaks in Boston, where poorly maintained pipes were losing close to 3% of the gas used by the city. Deploying new technologies to identify leaks does more than fight climate change; by pinpointing weaknesses in natural gas infrastructure, utilities may be able to prevent catastrophes like the pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. Sensitive methane detection technologies have also proven their worth in efforts to identify methane leaks unrelated to natural gas. For example, using airplane-based measurements, researchers recently demonstrated that landfills account for about a third of Indianapolis’ methane emissions. Once a city knows about a landfill that is a major source of methane, it can create incentives for industries and utilities to install gas recovery systems. Similarly, in the near future, inexpensive measurement technologies will be critical to deciding whether or not it makes sense to expand the use of anaerobic wastewater treatment processes as a means of recovering energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the urban water sector. It will be unfortunate if the EPA pulls back from enforcing the Obama Administration’s methane rules, but the Trump Administration’s plans to eliminate the ARPA-E coupled with their proposed pullback from other research and development activities may ultimately prove to be more damaging to the planet. Because a relatively small number of hard-to-find leaks account for much of the methane emitted, an effective strategy for fighting climate change requires a less expensive means of measuring methane. If the U.S. government steps back from its historic role in leading the research and development effort, some of the slack needs to be taken up by instrument manufacturers, private foundations, and funding agencies in other countries. In addition, natural gas producers, who spend tens of millions of dollars annually on Washington lobbyists who fight monitoring requirements, might want to consider redirecting those funds toward solving their methane emission problem. Natural gas is not a long-term solution to climate change, but with responsible stewardship it could play a constructive role in our energy transition.
ike it or not, natural gas is going to be one of the world’s main sources of energy for the next few decades. Despite local opposition to fracking, there is little sign that the United States is losing its appetite for the shale gas mining technologies that decreased the price of natural gas by over 50% over the past decade and stimulated an otherwise sluggish economy. As these new mining technologies spread to the rest of the world, the world’s consumption of natural gas is expected to increase by about 1.7% per year for the next 25 years. The expanded use of natural gas is a mixed blessing for the environment. Because gas burns cleaner than other petroleum products, it offers a means of combatting smog and particulate matter pollution, which is especially attractive to developing countries plagued by severe air pollution from coal-fired power plants. It is also a step in the right direction with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, because natural gas-fired power plants produce less carbon dioxide than plants that burn other fossil fuels. Unfortunately, not all aspects of the natural gas boom are positive. In addition to making it harder for renewable energy to gain a toehold in the market, leaks that occur during well development, gas storage, and pipeline transmission release hundreds of teragrams per years of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As a result, losses of only a few percent of the gas that we burn can counteract many of its environmental benefits. The development of effective strategies for controlling fugitive methane releases is critical to achieving the greenhouse gas emission targets of the Paris Agreement. This is particularly important in China, where development of the country’s vast shale gas resources could result in the creation of a lot of new infrastructure in the near future. For China, the breakeven point when producing electricity from natural gas results in less greenhouse gas emissions than using coal, occurs when the methane leakage rate for the entire natural gas cycle is between 4 and 6%. Due to differences in geologic conditions and mining practices, the climate breakeven point for coal-to-natural-gas conversion in the United States is even lower. The United States began taking steps to control fugitive methane emissions back in the early 1990s. Initially, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) partnered with industry to encourage relatively painless, voluntary measures that resulted in reductions in tropospheric ozone that have already had cumulative benefits in excess of $250 billion. Rules made by the Obama Administration in 2016 would have further reduced methane losses in the natural gas sector. But due to the high costs of monitoring drilling sites and transmission pipelines, the industry lobbied against the new rules. When the Trump Administration arrived, the methane control rules were among the first environmental programs slated for elimination. Looking back at the development of the methane control strategies, it is clear that the Obama Administration and its supporters knew that the high costs of identifying methane leaks could jeopardize their control strategy. To reduce the © 2017 American Chemical Society
Published: May 5, 2017 5355
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b02246 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, 51, 5355−5356
Environmental Science & Technology
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Comment
David Sedlak, Editor-in-Chief AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. The author declares no competing financial interest.
5356
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b02246 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2017, 51, 5355−5356
