TRANSKRIPTIO 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:13.839
Getting methane under control is easy in relation to other greenhouse gas reducing measures.
00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:16.160
You can be optimistic when you work on methane.
00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:17.679
We know what needs to be done.
00:00:17.839 --> 00:00:21.839
Like really, it's not a secret, and it's not that complicated, and it's actually extremely cost-efficient.
00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:28.480
Because we haven't been paying attention to it, and a lot of it's quite easy.
00:00:28.719 --> 00:00:37.359
And that from a climate perspective is really good news because you have this issue that is huge, not very well known, and easy to fix.
00:00:42.799 --> 00:00:55.600
Welcome to Methane, a podcast about the world's second most important greenhouse gas, and if the scientists and campaigners are right, the best chance we have to actually cut global warming.
00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:03.359
The show is brought to you by the 2Celsius Association, and I'm your host, Francesca Fazy.
00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:09.040
Let's start with what you may know already.
00:01:09.359 --> 00:01:16.719
You probably already know that methane is a greenhouse gas, and it is a really powerful one.
00:01:16.959 --> 00:01:28.879
It's only a trace gas, about 200 times less common than carbon dioxide, for example, and it makes up less than a ten thousandth of the atmosphere's overall volume.
00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:33.200
But like carbon dioxide, its levels are climbing.
00:01:33.680 --> 00:01:40.159
Methane concentrations in the atmosphere today are about three times higher than they were before the industrial age.
00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:49.359
And as it turns out, this growing backlog of methane, small though it may be, has been packing quite the climate punch.
00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:53.680
So methane is the second most important greenhouse gas.
00:01:54.079 --> 00:01:55.599
That's Kim O'Dowd.
00:01:55.760 --> 00:02:03.359
She's a campaigner focused almost exclusively on methane for an organization called the Environmental Investigation Agency.
00:02:14.639 --> 00:02:17.360
I just want to make sure that you heard Kim right.
00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:22.400
A third of all global warming experienced to date.
00:02:22.639 --> 00:02:25.599
That number varies depending who you talk to.
00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:27.840
Plenty say it's even more than that.
00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:31.680
Here's John Kerry, for example, the US envoy for climate.
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:39.680
Amazingly, when I was in Paris, I remember well, there was not any interest in a broad discussion about methane.
00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:47.520
And methane was hardly mentioned, ironically, amazingly, because methane is responsible for 50% of the warming of the planet.
00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:52.080
Some estimates put it more conservatively, at around 25%.
00:02:53.520 --> 00:03:04.800
Either way, though, over a quarter of the world's warming caused by something that is not carbon dioxide and apparently a lot easier to deal with.
00:03:05.199 --> 00:03:25.199
On top of being uh just super pollutant, the good news is that it's also been identified as the easy solution uh to solve the climate situation, particularly in the energy sector, because most measures to mitigate methane in the oil and gas sector are very cost effective and also very well known by the industry already.
00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:32.639
So it's kind of considered as the low-hanging fruit to reach our goal of reducing war like limiting global warming to 1.5.
00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:41.919
For a long time, we didn't pay that much attention to methane, especially because its lifetime in the atmosphere is tiny.
00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:50.240
Between 10 and 15 years, compared to centuries for carbon dioxide, and for a good proportion of it, millennia.
00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:54.479
But it's now being replaced faster than it's being cleared.
00:03:54.719 --> 00:03:58.000
And that is essentially making global warming speed up.
00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:09.759
One way to think about it is that methane determines how quickly the planet warms, and CO2 determines what temperature we end up with.
00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:25.839
And since we have now both problems, because essentially we started mitigating climate change much, much too late, we both need to deal with methane in order to slow down the warming a little bit, and with CO2.
00:04:26.639 --> 00:04:27.360
That is Dr.
00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:28.560
Roland Coopers.
00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:38.240
He is one of the architects behind the United Nations International Methane Emissions Observatory, and is someone you'll be hearing from a lot on this podcast.
00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:41.199
Why suddenly does the world care about methane?
00:04:41.279 --> 00:04:42.959
Why didn't we care about it before?
00:04:43.279 --> 00:04:45.439
Yeah, no, it's a very good question.
00:04:45.600 --> 00:05:00.079
Uh there was uh the focus was on CO2, because for a century we've known that, or more than a century, we've we've almost a century and a half, we've known that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere causes warming.
00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:03.360
And so the focus was, you know, let's reuse that.
00:05:04.079 --> 00:05:20.959
Um the other reason was that we've used something like the global warming potential over a hundred years as a standard in the IPCC and all of the policy recommendations, which means you look at the amount of warming that a gas causes over a century.
00:05:22.079 --> 00:05:30.560
The problem with that is when you look at these gases that don't linger in the atmosphere, they look trivial because they disappear in 10 or 15 years.
00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:39.199
And over a hundred years, you essentially average over a period in which they provide a lot of warming, and then a period when they're not there.
00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:50.319
And so one of the things that the IPCC has noted is if you look at the global warming potential over 20
Load full transcript
years, then for example, methane is 84 times CO2.
00:05:50.480 --> 00:06:00.720
And so the management tools that we're using actually caused us to underestimate or cause the you know, the global climate effort to underestimate methane.
00:06:01.279 --> 00:06:09.759
Now that being said, you know, it appeared sort of in the in the newspaper headlines over the past couple of years with the global methane pledge, etc.
00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:22.480
But in the you know, the climate community, I mean the UNEP, and as I mentioned, the Environmental Defense Fund, et cetera, it's been more than a decade that there's been lots of scientific work, etc.
00:06:22.959 --> 00:06:27.040
And it's due to that work that it emerges onto the public stage.
00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:32.720
And so there's there's always a lot of preparation before it becomes a public issue.
00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:44.399
So I guess it's no surprise then that global leaders desperate for ways to start making inroads towards our net zero goals are starting to wake up to the promise of tackling methane emissions.
00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:52.480
And at the UN COP conference in Glasgow in 2021, the world's first global initiative on methane was announced.
00:06:52.879 --> 00:06:56.800
Here's Kimmo Dowd again from the Environmental Investigation Agency.
00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:03.680
If you can just give us a brief snapshot of what the Global Methane Pledge is and why was it important.
00:07:04.399 --> 00:07:04.639
Sure.
00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:11.120
So the Global Methane Pledge was launched at COP26 at Glasgow by the EU and the US.
00:07:11.279 --> 00:07:16.720
It's an initiative to globally reduce uh methane emission by 30% by 2030.
00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:22.399
It was a big moment uh when it was launched because this was the first international initiative on methane.
00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:28.800
And it kind of put methane forward as an important thing that countries started needed to start looking into.
00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:32.879
A 30% reduction in methane by 2030.
00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:43.680
If we can meet that, the International Energy Agency says, it would have the same effect on climate change as getting the entire world's transport sector to net zero.
00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:50.240
It's only a pledge, but in the last two years, more countries and governments are getting on board.
00:07:50.399 --> 00:07:55.519
What started as 111 signatories is now up to 155.
00:07:56.079 --> 00:07:57.199
One after the other.
00:07:57.439 --> 00:08:01.199
Countries are announcing plans to tackle their own methane emissions.
00:08:01.680 --> 00:08:06.000
We have the US that's currently developing their methane regulation, Canada as well.
00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:08.879
We have Nigeria who has one now, Mexico.
00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:11.120
There's definitely, yeah, there's momentum.
00:08:11.759 --> 00:08:17.279
The most advanced of these plans was passed at the European Union in November last year.
00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:31.360
After over two years of intense negotiations with industry, governments, lobbyists, and environmentalists, the EU's first and the world's most comprehensive, regulation on methane emissions was enacted.
00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:39.360
Jutta Paulus is a member of the European Parliament, and she was one of the co-rapporteurs on the parliamentary position paper on that regulation.
00:08:39.840 --> 00:08:58.720
So, first of all, it's of course about monitoring and reporting and verifying emissions, which is very important as we have learned from the International Energy Agency that all states worldwide are basically underreporting their methane emissions.
00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:05.440
And secondly, it's of course also about reducing emissions because we should not stop at just accounting.
00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:10.480
We have to do something about this second most important climate force.
00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:13.919
So, why a podcast about methane?
00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:17.679
To answer that, I need to introduce you to my colleague.
00:09:18.559 --> 00:09:37.600
I suppose what I'm trying to do is make the comparison while focusing on CO2, any payback, any reward for mitigation measures that we put in place now, we are only likely to see the actual results of those changes quite a long way in the future, right?
00:09:38.559 --> 00:09:40.799
Contrast that with methane.
00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:51.600
When it comes to CO2, it's it's all clear in the sense that the complexity of it is mind-blowing because we're gonna have to change literally everything that we are doing, you know.
00:09:51.759 --> 00:09:52.000
Right.
00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:57.120
From heating up our apartments to to mobility or whatever, you know.
00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:04.320
But when it comes to methane, it's a quick and an immediate action that we can take.
00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:16.080
Raul Kazan is the founder and director of the Two Celsius Association, an environmental NGO registered in Bucharest in Romania, which is where he's originally from.
00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:19.600
And he is also the brains behind this podcast.
00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:23.840
You came up with this idea for this podcast about methane.
00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:27.120
What do you want people to get from listening to it?
00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:37.120
Well, when I came with the idea was uh essentially the um methane regulation in Brussels were in deep institutional discussions.
00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:45.600
Uh now that it kind of passed, the bigger problems uh pop up and these are the implementation in each member state.
00:10:45.919 --> 00:11:06.159
Why I want to make this European approach from my personal Romanian perspective is that Romania is a very singular case at European level because it's a quite a significant producer and uh owner of uh gas reserves.
00:11:06.639 --> 00:11:07.919
And why do you care?
00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:09.360
Why do I care?
00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:12.639
Well, why do you care and why should anybody else care?
00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:24.720
We know scientifically that methane is the gas that produces I mean is the is the the most powerful greenhouse gas, right?
00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:29.759
We found it to Celsius uh 14 years ago.
00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:40.639
And ever since methane wasn't really tackled in in any sort of industry or agriculture or or or waste management or whatever, you know.
00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:43.600
It just wasn't tackled seriously.
00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:49.039
And right now we started to actually see some action, some movement.
00:11:49.759 --> 00:11:53.360
Of course, at UN level, and we're gonna see further in the podcast.
00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:54.240
I know about that.
00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.639
And also at European level, obviously.
00:11:57.200 --> 00:12:02.399
So basically it's something that that lags behind a couple of decades.
00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:06.480
And you want people to understand it.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:11.919
Well, yes, this very podcast is part of our communications strategy.
00:12:12.159 --> 00:12:16.559
It it was it was my idea to have a podcast and to have you on it.
00:12:17.039 --> 00:12:23.440
Uh because I think since podcasts are so popular, that would be the the easier way to go through.
00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:30.000
I we didn't want to have this social media strategy because social media is here and then puff it goes away.
00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:31.919
Tomorrow nobody knows about it.
00:12:32.399 --> 00:12:34.559
So the podcast is is audio.
00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:40.559
We exchanged some smart ideas with the smartest people in uh you know methane mitigation today.
00:12:40.879 --> 00:12:43.759
Um and this is gonna last for a longer time, at least.
00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:45.120
That's lovely.
00:12:45.279 --> 00:12:46.159
Thank you very much.
00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:49.919
Methane is not an either-or, campaigners are saying.
00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:53.200
Carbon dioxide is still the ultimate climate challenge.
00:12:53.519 --> 00:13:04.960
But what methane is is a new and so far fairly untested lever that has the potential to actually move the dial on climate change within our lifetimes.
00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:09.919
Not in one or two or three hundred years' time, but now, in the next ten or twenty.
00:13:10.399 --> 00:13:19.120
And while you might think that tinkering around with the emissions of something that makes up less than a ten thousandth of the atmosphere doesn't seem that worthwhile.
00:13:19.679 --> 00:13:28.320
Getting rid of the methane emissions that we can and we know how to do will shave about a quarter of a degree warming off of the planet.
00:13:28.399 --> 00:13:32.639
And that's is absolutely worth doing and is completely doable.
00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:38.799
Roland Cooper's again from Imeo, the International Methane Emissions Observatory.
00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:45.360
Which, uh as you started the interview with, is you know, why didn't we pay more attention to this?
00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:49.279
The flip side of that argument is it's a massive opportunity.
00:13:49.759 --> 00:13:54.080
Because we haven't been paying attention to it, and a lot of it's quite easy.
00:13:54.399 --> 00:14:03.279
And I think that from a climate perspective is really good news because you have this issue that is huge, not very well known, and easy to fix.
00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:09.919
You know, instead of complaining about it, we should just get on with it and actually fix this one because it's fixable.
00:14:11.679 --> 00:14:18.080
That word opportunity is something that continues to come up when you speak to people working in the methane world.
00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:23.120
Which, let's be honest, from a climate perspective, is a little unusual.
00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:27.600
You can be optimistic when you work on methane.
00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:29.360
We know what needs to be done.
00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:33.519
Like really it's not a secret, and it's not that complicated, and it's actually extremely cost efficient.
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:39.840
So that means that you can actually cut methane by a lot without being really an issue.
00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:54.240
And that is, I think, it's rare when we talk about climate topics that everyone kind of know what's too needs to well, we know what needs to be done for everything, but here it's cost effective, it's it can be done quickly, and we can get like real wins easily.
00:14:54.399 --> 00:14:58.159
You can easily be di a bit depressed when you work on climate.
00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:01.600
And I think I see hope in my thing, I guess.
00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:18.080
But there are also some less optimistic warnings about why methane needs to be taken more seriously now.
00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:26.399
Human emissions may be bad enough, but the Earth has its own complex cycle of methane.
00:15:26.639 --> 00:15:36.559
The major concern when it comes to natural methane emissions has always been the threat from the thawing of frozen permafrost soils in the Arctic.
00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:49.120
But recent research has suggested that methane emissions from wetlands are more of an immediate threat, and scientists have seen that they are already driving a steep rise in the growth of atmospheric methane.
00:15:49.279 --> 00:15:57.120
We'll speak about this in a bit more detail further on too, including to scientists like Ben Poulter from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the US.
00:15:57.679 --> 00:16:11.600
The mitigation of methane from wetlands is uh incredibly complicated, sort of given the fact that uh wetlands provide us with all sorts of uh important benefits for biodiversity and for society.
00:16:11.679 --> 00:16:20.399
And so we obviously don't want to uh start destroying wetlands uh to drain them and to prevent them from producing methane.
00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:37.600
Uh there's there are discussions about changing the chemical
state of the soil so that the microbes uh don't produce as much methane or or other trace gases, but I think that there's probably other sorts of unintended consequences that could come from that sort of uh manipulation.
00:16:37.759 --> 00:16:55.200
So I think looking at methane capture and and methane mitigation options is is, I think, a really important part of the portfolio of society in aiming to stay below 1.5 degrees if we haven't exceeded it already, uh, and definitely two degrees warming.
00:16:55.679 --> 00:17:04.240
Another implication of understanding the methane problem is its potential impact on the direction we choose for the future of our own energy systems.
00:17:04.480 --> 00:17:12.240
As we'll hear in the next episode, a huge source of methane emissions is leaks from the oil and natural gas industries.
00:17:12.480 --> 00:17:28.400
But natural gas is currently enjoying a major moment in the sun as the supposedly clean fossil fuel that will enable our transition from an energy system based on coal and oil to a cleaner one based on renewables.
00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:35.599
But a few methane leaks and any gains from investing in gas from a climate perspective are wiped out.
00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:47.359
If you have a 0.2 leakage intensity on um on your on your pipeline, for example, then gas has the same climate impact than coal.
00:17:48.799 --> 00:17:54.880
So you imagine on a on what it can do if you have a lot of leakages on a pipeline, for example.
00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:57.519
Gas literally becomes worse than coal.
00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:04.079
You can't say that this is a transition fuel if it's worse than the thing it was supposed to transition from.
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:11.519
There are undisputed benefits of uh of gas when it comes to, as I said, local air pollutants.
00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:21.920
Because if you use natural gas that comes with um uh uh small amounts of NOX, uh negligible amounts of SOX, right?
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.559
Like NOx and SOCs, it's less, right?
00:18:24.880 --> 00:18:27.599
Almost no particulate matter whatsoever.
00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:35.279
All these are uh essential contributors to to smog and to poor air quality, especially in cities, right?
00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:48.400
However, it's it's a fossil fuel, and we gotta point to the mounting concerns about fugitive methane emissions.
00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:58.160
Without managing methane leaks, we face the possibility of investing huge sums in switching from coal to gas, only to get no climate benefit.
00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:06.640
Deborah Gordon is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the States.
00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:14.559
She was the lead author on the study that established that 0.2 gas leakage threshold, which Kim referred to a few moments ago.
00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:35.440
For a long time it's been considered that natural gas is a bridge fuel, and that this 19th-century fuel of coal, which really started up in the 1800s, is so outmoded and out of date and so dirty that we should do anything in our power to get off of coal, which I very much agree with.
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:37.680
The question is, what should we replace it with?
00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:40.240
And the answer is renewables.
00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:47.440
The question about natural gas being a substitute here has everything to do with its methane leakage.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:50.480
We'll speak to her about that study in more detail.
00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:59.119
And to energy insiders like Jonathan Stern, a distinguished research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies in the UK.
00:19:59.440 --> 00:20:08.720
Let's imagine a world where we do embrace the idea of natural gas as the kind of sort of green fossil fuel, and we say, yes, we're going to phase out coal.
00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:14.960
Looking at the United States as an example, a huge shift from coal to gas as a as a fuel.
00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:22.000
Can you spell out for people the climate consequences of not getting methane emissions under control in that scenario?
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:34.960
Not specifically, but I think the easiest way to say this is getting methane under control is easy in relation to other greenhouse gas reducing measures.
00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:42.480
This can make a big and immediate contribution to reducing overall gas overall greenhouse gas emissions.
00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:46.400
It's not expensive and it's not technically difficult.
00:20:47.039 --> 00:20:57.519
So if we can't do that, if companies can't do that, and if governments can't require companies to do that, it's hard to see that we're going to be able to do much else.
00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:12.000
So now you know that the world has a bit of a meth problem and that getting it under control could make a massive difference to the temperature rises we're experiencing now, quickly, cheaply, and relatively easily.
00:21:12.319 --> 00:21:15.680
But where is all this methane actually coming from?
00:21:16.079 --> 00:21:27.519
How can something that seems to be a big deal for the oil and gas industry also be something that we know is kind of relative to cows barting and burping?
00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:31.039
That's next.