WEBVTT
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Now with thermocameras, it's something else.
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You you go on the site and it's right on the spot that you see them, you know.
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You cannot really measure them and all that, you know, but but you you could actually, you know.
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But at least you see them.
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It's all being visualized, and I think I think this is the most important thing.
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It's something that does exist.
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You cannot deny it.
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A huge part of the methane emissions challenge is that leaks are invisible, and many go undetected for years.
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Methane hunters or methane detectives make solving this aspect of the methane problem look cool.
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We put our investigative gaps, arriving by car, scouting a bit the site.
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Using a dizzying array of equipment, they not only make an invisible gas visible, but create a methane emissions map of where leaks are occurring so that they can be stopped.
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You can set all kinds of targets, but you need to know at which places you can actually achieve this target.
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And in this episode, so do we.
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So that is literally as we're going gas leak, gas leak, yeah, gas leak.
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Yeah, these sources would be would be gas leak.
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Welcome to the third episode of Methane, a podcast about the world's second most important greenhouse gas.
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Last time, we laid out the groundwork of where different methane emissions come from.
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Before we talk about how we can tackle those emissions, though, we need to find them first.
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Methane hunters do just that.
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In this episode of the podcast, we introduce you to some of them and some of the tools they use trying to put these pictures together.
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The show is brought to you by the Two Celsius Association, and I'm your host, Francesca Fazy.
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Fifty years ago, methane was barely a footnote in climate concerns, certainly not in policy circles.
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Even by 2015, at the signing of the Paris Agreement, it hardly registered.
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So what changed?
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The answer?
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Technology.
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Satellites, aircraft, drones, chemical sniffers, lab instruments, but particularly thermal cameras, have in some ways quite literally opened our eyes to the scale of the methane challenge.
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Methane hunters, as they are now called, are usually environmentalists, scientists, and sometimes regulatory officials who use some or all of this technology to call attention to leaking methane sources, usually on oil and gas plants.
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Theophil Human is one of them.
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So my name is Theophil Human.
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I'm leading the campaign work in Europe and across the globe to help cut methane emissions and methane pollution in the oil and gas industry.
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I've been working to increase regulation on methane pollution in the oil and gas industry for around two to three years now.
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And I have been documenting using specialized type of equipment in around 10 countries since I started.
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Theo is a specialist thermographer who works on detecting methane emissions for an international group called the Clean Air Task Force.
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The CATF has been raising awareness of methane emissions internationally for over 20 years.
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Theo is based in Athens in Greece, but his work takes him to sites in multiple countries.
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We asked him what a typical experience detecting methane at an oil or gas site was like.
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We put our investigative caps, arriving by car, scouting a bit the site.
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As a thermographer, I know the pieces of equipment that might release methane.
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I will look at them firstly, turning on the camera, putting on the settings, controlling with either it's foggy or humid, uh sunny.
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I would try to take into account all these parameters in order to get the best shots and be sure that I visualize methane.
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OGI stands for optical gas imaging.
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It's a thermal camera that uses the difference in energy reflected by the molecules of different gases, in this case methane, in order to make them visible like night goggles against the surrounding air.
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These cameras are being used by a growing number of environmental and regulatory agencies to get a visible picture of methane leaks.
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Even our own Raul Kazan was impressed when he first saw what cameras like this could demonstrate.
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Now with thermal cameras, it's something else.
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You cannot really measure them and all that, you know, but but you you could actually, you know.
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But at least you see them.
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It's all being visualized, and I think I think this is the most important thing.
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It's something that does exist.
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You cannot deny it.
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You see it on the screen.
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So, what information can these cameras give us?
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The point of this kind of equipment is to do uh leak detection and repair, meaning you can spot a leak and then fix it depending on like the type of equipment in uh good timing.
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So I cannot calculate the quantity of methane leaving.
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As a thermographer with experience, we get to know if uh the emission is significant or not.
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But this is empirical, it's not based on any sort of calculation.
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If the cameras only give qualitative confirmation of leaks, how can teams like Theo's move from just spotting them to knowing how serious the level of emissions are?
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Well, now you have to bring in a combination of techniques.
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In order to have a comprehensive approach on mass and emissions coming from a site, you will try to combine uh different types of equipment like sniffers, uh, remote sensing, airborne remote sensing, meaning a plane flying over using a spectrometer over the site or the oil field, gas fields, as well as OGI cameras to have an overall uh idea of the number of sources.
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You combine them in a way that someone using a spectrometer, meaning like an instrument that actually gives uh the particle million of methane every few seconds.
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It will give you a sort of estimate, but you won't know what's the source.
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An OGI, an optical gas imaging camera can give you the source but cannot give you an estimate, and it's the combination of all these tools that can give you a comprehensive and broad idea of methane emissions in the site.
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But what do you do if you don't have a camera?
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Okay, so on top of the vehicle, we have this thing that looks like a big claw at the front.
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Dave Lowry is a professor of geoscience at the University of Royal Holloway in London.
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He's been studying atmospheric methane for over 30 years.
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I'm Dave Lowry.
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I'm a reader in stabilised topes and greenhouse gases in the Earth Sciences Department at Royal Holloway.
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Together with another world expert on methane, Ewan Nisbet, he set up the UK's first monitoring station for atmospheric methane right on the roof of their very own building.
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And I set up the lab with Ewan Nisbet, Greenhouse Gas Lab, back in 1995.
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Today, the readings from Royal Holloway provide one of the longest running records of atmospheric methane in Europe.
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Dave works closely with another atmospheric scientist, Dr.
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Rebecca Fisher, and about 10 students to help identify and understand methane sources from sites all over the world.
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Here's Dr.
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Fisher.
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So we get air samples sent into our lab from a number of sites globally.
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I started off looking at Arctic methane.
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So we've got measurements coming, air samples coming from Spitsbergen, for example, part of the Spaubards archipelago, northern Norway.
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We have air canisters filled there several times a week, sent to our lab where we measure the methane concentration and the isotopes in the methane.
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We also have air samples from Ascension Island, 8 degrees south of the equator.
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And then more recently the Halley station in Antarctica is another site where we've been receiving air.
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So it's it really is global.
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While Dave and Rebecca have been measuring and analysing methane from around the world for many years now, what they're really interested in showing me is this vehicle with the thing that looks like a big claw on the top.
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That's an anemometer, a sonic anemometer for measuring wind speeds as we're driving along.
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So that's important when you're trying to calculate an emission.
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The claw, or sonic anemometer, is not the only thing that's special about this vehicle.
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It works with a rare and expensive piece of technology called a mobile laser spectrometer.
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Remember the spectrometer that Theo Human mentioned?
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A device that can give you the actual concentration of methane within a sample every few seconds?
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Well, this is exactly that, except for one key advantage.
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It's mobile.
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That means you can quote unquote see methane leaks as you go through them, turning a normal car into a sophisticated mobile meth lab.
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Meth for methane, not that kind of meth lab.
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Anyway, according to Dave and Rebecca, this laser-based tech was one of the most important jumps forward in our understanding of methane emissions.
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We would have to collect samples of air in flasks and hope that our knowledge of the wind and the source would allow us to predict where the emission was, and then we would bring back the tanks to the lab and make an analysis on the gas chromatograph.
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But as soon as the like the laser-based instruments were commercialized, we didn't need the carrier gases, and suddenly everything was mobile.
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We could even set up at remote sites without carrier gases, so we set up sites in in Ascension Island and in the Falklands and left instruments running and just logged in remotely to those because we didn't need the consumables.
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It's a technology like this that has started to show us, not just from the top down, but from the bottom up, just how much bigger a problem methane leaks are than we had realized.
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And I was here for a little taste of what it was like to be a methane detective on the move.
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First up, a layman's explanation of how the machine works and some of the smart calculations it has to do to give a reliable reading.
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So you've got to then calculate back to try and understand how much is leaking.
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At the back we have a GPS receiver, so that tells us the concentration of methane at at a fixed point.
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It's measuring methane and uh GPS coordinates ten times every second.
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And with that, it was time to get on the road and start looking for leaks.
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Uh where should I go?
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Front?
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Front or back?
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Do you want to go in the back and want to look at the data?
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Yes.
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Uh which is the best side?
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I I to be I don't know.
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Inside, the car felt like any ordinary, fairly comfortable car, except for the massive battery packs and instruments in the boot, and the wires coming over the seats.
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Looking at the data meant watching lines move across a tablet screen that connected to the spectrometer.
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There's a baseline at roughly 2,000 parts per billion as we're driving along, and then we've just gone through some peaks.
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The biggest one we've been to through so far was over 3,000 parts per billion.
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This is making one measurement every second, so you can see as we go through a leak, we maybe see a few measurements.
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So for a few seconds we could be up above 3,000 parts per billion.
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It was amazing to watch the methane profile around me change in real time just by driving along a suburban road in London.
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And concerning to see how many gas leaks were emitting steady puffs of methane all around us.
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So that is literally as we're going gas leak, gas leak, yeah, gas leak.
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Yeah, these sources would be would be gas leaks.
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I asked Rebecca how high they had seen these peaks go.
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How high would it go if we were next to, let's say, a gas leak on a you know a major pipeline or you know how high have you seen it go?
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Probably um 10,000 um parts per billion.
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Um when we were when we took the instrument into a cow barn, um then it can go even higher.
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A hundred thousand.
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And women's a very big space.
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I know this is not the focus.
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One thing our methane detection expedition brought home to me was just how much the mobility of their equipment meant.
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They can essentially look for and measure methane anywhere.
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Where are you going for tomorrow's survey?
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We're going up to to Cheshire, so it's an area we've been to once before, and um it's an area that's a mixture of sources from uh landfill sites, uh above ground gas infrastructure on the distribution network, um, and it's a site that has lots of um like oil refineries and chemical industry.
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So it's it's um a mixed source region.
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And when you say you've been once before, is it uh a part of a regular monitoring program or you just went once before you're interested to go and see it again?
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Well we're doing this as part of um um a project funded by the UK uh RI.
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It was initially set up to look at the effects of of fracking.
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Um so we surveyed to identify all the existing sources so that if there was an emission from fracking, we could identify that as an extra source because we knew where that site was.
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The challenge of detecting methane with the mobile laser spectrometer isn't necessarily finding the emissions, the challenge becomes working out one source from another.
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That was in the middle of um of dairy farming land, so we had cow barns, manure piles, uh, gas leaks along the main road, uh, and a big old landfill that was closed within the region, so there are lots of different sources contributing, and we use our measurement techniques to distinguish all the different ones in the region.
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Those special techniques are the measurements of methane isotopes, which Dave and Rebecca happen to specialise in.
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That word isotopes.
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Does it sound familiar?
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Here's Professor Philippe Sies again from the last episode.
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He's a climate researcher at the Climate and Environment Science Laboratory in Paris.
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When we see methane increasing uh just with the concentration signal, we're not able to split it into oh, this is agriculture, this is waste, this is uh oil and gas.
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However, we still have some atmospheric toolkits which are called methane isotopes.
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Isotopes mean two specimens of the same atom, just that one has more neutral particles or neutrons in its nucleus than the other.
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In the case of isotopes of methane, it's the carbon atom in the middle of the methane molecule that bears the telltale difference.
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So um we're looking at methane, and depending on how that methane was formed, um, the methane can be slightly heavier or slightly lighter.
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Most carbon is carbon 12.
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What does the 12 mean?
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It's uh the number of um protons and neutrons within within the carbon atom.
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Okay.
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Six protons, six neutrons.
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Um but you can have uh carbon with one extra um neutron, and that's slightly heavier than the carbon-12.
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Making them carbon-13, six protons, seven neutrons.
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These are also stable atoms, but they're a lot more rare.
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And it just so happens that thermogenic methane, that's the methane given off by oil, gas, and coal, has more carbon-13 than biogenic methane formed by bacteria decomposing organic matter.
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Philippe Siez again.
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So it's not able to separate rice from wetlands or livestock from rice, but uh it can classify the emissions into two categories the uh bacterial uh processes and the uh leaking of oil and gas.
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Back to Rebecca Fisher.
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So using a mass spectrometer, we can measure the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 within um the methane in an air sample, and that very, very small changes um in that ratio tell us whether there is a little bit more of a biogenic source or a little bit more of a thermogenic source, the methane formed at higher temperature.
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What would a totally biogenic source look like in terms of acid?
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Um that has mostly carbon-12.
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They all have mostly carbon 12, but there's more carbon-12 than very little carbon-13 in a logical biogenic source.
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Okay.
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Um if that methane is formed at higher temperature, thermogenic fossil fuel gas or methane um formed during coal formation, um, then there would be um a little bit more carbon-13.
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Um, and if it's a combustion source, so um this could be forest fire or it could be combustion from a vehicle, um, then there would be more carbon-13 again, so it's slightly heavier.
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So you're going from you'd always have more carbon-12 than more carbon than carbon-13.
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99% of the carbon is carbon 12.
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Right.
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Very small um differences in the ratio depending on the source.
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So you the lowest amount of carbon-13 that would suggest a biogenic source.
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Yes.
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Slightly more carbon-13 like would suggest a fossil fuel source, a thermogenic.
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Okay.
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And then slightly more again would suggest a combustion source.
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Today, Dave and Rebecca work in partnership with students and scientists all over the world, stepping up our baseline knowledge of methane emissions profiles in different areas using these isotopic distinctions.
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We speak to one of these scientists in the next segment.
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Back in London, my own methane detective expedition is coming to an end.
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So we're now driving back into campus.
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2,000 parts per billion.
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That's not that far off the global average of about 1,900.
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But some of the peaks on the profile of our journey went way beyond that.
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And if we look at the total journey.
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Oh, we had a few.
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Quite a lot of peaks.
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We did.
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There was one that was above 4,000 parts per billion.
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When you uh zoom out like that, it looks like a sort of, I don't know, the skyline of Dubai or something.
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The difference when a simple pipe had been replaced was stark.
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I could see right there on the screen the very different profile that such a simple measure could achieve.
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Yeah, and we had periods where there weren't many leaks at all, yeah.
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Um potentially because they have been here and maybe they've fixed this section, but they haven't fixed that section.
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There was a you know, pipeline has been replaced in that area.
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Probably is.
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You do see improvements when um pipelines have been replaced.
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Oh right, so they might have just had a whole like switch that's newer.
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Yep.
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With these two areas with the peaks, if they were to replace the pipelines in those, then I mean if you if you target that well enough, you could change the overall methane profile of a large region if you just carbon dioxide.
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Ah yes, that was lots of traffic.
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And the water's done some odd things.
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Oh no, no, it hasn't.
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It's just been what?
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We drank through rain.
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No, it's all just been roughly 13,000 parts per million for the water.
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A baseline of around 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and a baseline of 2,000 parts per billion for methane.
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Yep.
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Amazing, thank you.
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And finally, Thomas Rookman is a professor of atmospheric physics and chemistry at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
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When the realization started to dawn.
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Internationally, that methane emissions from oil and gas could be a much bigger climate problem than we realized.
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Professor Rookman was charged with coordinating a huge international contingency to conduct a study of the emissions from one country's oil and gas sector in particular, Romania.
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The idea was simple.
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Romania has a centuries-long history of oil and gas production and has for many years reported its methane emissions to the United Nations.
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But, like most oil and gas reported emissions, these were estimated or calculated based on potentially outdated emissions factors.
00:22:48.160 --> 00:22:55.519
Actually, measuring them offered the chance to compare estimates of a country's methane emissions with actual measurements.
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:32.000
Could you summarize the project in a few words, please?
00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:34.079
Yes, uh, thank you.
00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:50.160
Um the Romanian project on methane emissions from oil and gas was carried out by a large group of scientists from more than 10 European countries, also US scientists, and it was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program.
00:23:50.559 --> 00:23:57.119
They asked our scientific group to come to Romania and carry out measurements in the oil and gas infrastructure.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:02.559
Prior to the Second World War, Romania was the largest oil and gas producer in Europe.
00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:15.839
Today its output has dwindled, but its processing capacity is still significant for its Eastern European context, with over nine refineries and an extensive array of onshore and offshore infrastructure in the Black Sea.
00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:29.119
It also has ambitions to reinvigorate its energy producing credentials, with huge investments in its offshore capacity and funding from the EU for major pipeline extensions to its existing network.
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:34.720
But much of that existing infrastructure is old and has been poorly maintained.
00:24:34.960 --> 00:24:41.920
Environmental groups and regulators are concerned about the impacts, not least, of fugitive methane emissions.
00:24:42.319 --> 00:24:50.319
Old infrastructure means leaky infrastructure, and vast networks of pipes mean vast networks of leaks too.
00:24:50.559 --> 00:24:55.680
From a scientific point of view, then Romania's situation offered a great opportunity.
00:25:01.759 --> 00:25:08.319
And so since Romania is so important, it also reports high emission rates to the United Nations.
00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:12.319
The question is, is that true and what are these reports based on?
00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:24.000
So they asked us to use our new techniques that we have developed to come to Romania, and there we visited many locations, and we first tried to find out how many of them actually emit methane.
00:25:24.160 --> 00:25:36.960
So you can see that from the outside, or can measure from the outside what are the components that are emitting the methane, how much methane is emitted, and that's what we have finished now and compared it to what actually the countries report.
00:25:37.119 --> 00:25:39.839
But we have now quite a good idea on all these aspects.
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:46.799
So what is leaking, where is it leaking, how much is leaking, and how does it compare to the national estimates?
00:25:47.119 --> 00:26:02.480
Some of the technology used included drones and aircraft that could survey sites from the air, chemical detectors called sniffers to assess minute changes in methane concentration, thermal cameras that can make the gas plumes of methane suddenly visible.
00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:09.200
Even satellites can now detect large methane plumes from leaks, vents, or flares from space.
00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:22.319
Combining all these findings and then running them through still more sophisticated instruments for analysis created one of the most comprehensive measurement studies to date of methane emissions from an oil and gas industry.
00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:24.160
And what did they find?
00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:26.559
You've probably guessed already.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.640
And is it scary?
00:26:28.799 --> 00:26:32.960
I mean the the emissions are higher than you have expected, right?
00:26:33.599 --> 00:26:41.359
Yes, the emissions are higher than what is reported to the International Energy Agency and also the United Nations.
00:26:41.759 --> 00:26:42.640
How high?
00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:49.440
Looking just at oil, the study found methane emissions of 5.5 kilograms per hour per site.
00:26:49.599 --> 00:26:52.799
That's about 120,000 tons per year.
00:26:53.039 --> 00:26:55.680
Compare this to the reported emissions.
00:26:55.920 --> 00:27:01.359
46,000 tons is what Romania reported to the United Nations for the same period.
00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:05.359
23,000 is what the IEA had calculated.
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:12.400
What's more, the study found that almost three-quarters of the detected emissions were from gas being vented.
00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:19.440
When it came to leaks, there were over 230 leaks identified that hadn't been accounted for.
00:27:20.640 --> 00:27:22.720
But here's the positive angle.
00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:29.920
That means that what the EU thought in the past years on what they had already achieved in Romania is not achieved yet.
00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:48.559
It also means that now we have the chance, since we know now from the measurements, how high the emissions are, now we have the chance to actually reduce these emissions and help the EU or well, Romania and the EU to fulfill some of the obligations that we have to do in the Paris Agreement and this global methane pledge, for example.
00:28:17.599 --> 00:28:25.519
It highlighted the fact that to fix the problem, you do need to know what and where the problem exists first.
00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:31.599
And this is something Professor Rookman has found time and time again in his other methane studies as well.
00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:35.359
You cannot easily extrapolate from one region to another.
00:28:35.599 --> 00:28:39.440
You have to go to the regions and actually measure what you find.
00:28:39.599 --> 00:28:45.519
We have measured in total in Europe in 11 cities, and we find that all cities are different, for example.
00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:50.960
So there's no, we have been in Bucharest as part of our project here in Romania.
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:53.920
We have measured methane emissions in Bucharest.
00:28:54.079 --> 00:28:59.759
We found quite a number of gas leakages, but we also find quite some methane emissions from the wastewater system.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.319
That was quite special from Bucharest.
00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:10.799
In comparison, for example, to Utrecht, where I live, where we find very little wastewater emissions, but the most of the emissions are dominated by the fossil fuels.
00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:17.759
So in Bucharest, the emissions are overall larger, but also a larger fraction is coming from biological or microbial sources.
00:29:18.079 --> 00:29:29.119
We have also measured in in Paris, and in Paris we found out that actually gas boilers and restaurants have higher emission rates, which is different from Romania.
00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:30.880
We haven't found that very much here.
00:29:31.119 --> 00:29:35.599
So each city also needs to know what is the best way to reduce the emissions.
00:29:35.759 --> 00:29:42.480
You can set all kinds of targets, but you need to know at which places you can actually achieve this target.
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:48.240
So you need to know again where the emissions are and how large they are, and at which place which emissions are most important.
00:29:48.559 --> 00:29:52.240
And also then the feasibility options, so what is technologically possible.
00:29:52.480 --> 00:30:01.839
So our role as scientists is to help guide this process, this political process in the end, because we want to find out.
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:11.119
Well, we want we want to provide data, solid scientific data that can be used as the basis of this policy, of these political goals.
00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:29.759
So, fellow methane hunters, that rounds off the first half of our podcast, where we've covered the main human sources of methane and the threat from its invisible leaks, many of which are lurking all around us.
00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:44.079
But before we open a new chapter on tackling these emissions, one more investigation into the origins of methane emissions awaits, for which we need to turn to the biggest source, the Earth itself.
00:30:44.559 --> 00:30:50.319
When we look at the cycles of greenhouse gases on our planet, we face a sobering reality.
00:30:50.559 --> 00:30:55.440
Natural processes release staggering amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
00:30:55.759 --> 00:30:57.759
Why should we be concerned?
00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:08.240
The answer lies in the ominous concept of methane climate feedbacks, a cycle of events that can accelerate climate change to unprecedented levels.
00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:20.079
From permafrost to wetlands, we'll uncover the hidden mechanisms driving methane emissions in nature and confront the looming specter of methane climate feedbacks head on.
00:00:02.319 --> 00:00:04.400
Now with thermocameras, it's something else.
00:00:04.639 --> 00:00:09.519
You you go on the site and it's right on the spot that you see them, you know.
00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:14.320
You cannot really measure them and all that, you know, but but you you could actually, you know.
00:00:14.480 --> 00:00:15.599
But at least you see them.
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:19.519
It's all being visualized, and I think I think this is the most important thing.
00:00:20.079 --> 00:00:22.399
It's something that does exist.
00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:24.079
You cannot deny it.
00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:33.840
A huge part of the methane emissions challenge is that leaks are invisible, and many go undetected for years.
00:00:37.119 --> 00:00:44.399
Methane hunters or methane detectives make solving this aspect of the methane problem look cool.
00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:50.320
We put our investigative gaps, arriving by car, scouting a bit the site.
00:00:50.799 --> 00:01:02.240
Using a dizzying array of equipment, they not only make an invisible gas visible, but create a methane emissions map of where leaks are occurring so that they can be stopped.
00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:09.280
You can set all kinds of targets, but you need to know at which places you can actually achieve this target.
00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:11.439
And in this episode, so do we.
00:01:11.599 --> 00:01:17.359
So that is literally as we're going gas leak, gas leak, yeah, gas leak.
00:01:17.599 --> 00:01:20.560
Yeah, these sources would be would be gas leak.
00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:28.640
Welcome to the third episode of Methane, a podcast about the world's second most important greenhouse gas.
00:01:30.319 --> 00:01:35.439
Last time, we laid out the groundwork of where different methane emissions come from.
00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:40.000
Before we talk about how we can tackle those emissions, though, we need to find them first.
00:01:40.239 --> 00:01:42.640
Methane hunters do just that.
00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:51.439
In this episode of the podcast, we introduce you to some of them and some of the tools they use trying to put these pictures together.
00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:58.799
The show is brought to you by the Two Celsius Association, and I'm your host, Francesca Fazy.
00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:10.800
Fifty years ago, methane was barely a footnote in climate concerns, certainly not in policy circles.
00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:16.240
Even by 2015, at the signing of the Paris Agreement, it hardly registered.
00:02:16.879 --> 00:02:18.080
So what changed?
00:02:19.039 --> 00:02:19.680
The answer?
00:02:20.080 --> 00:02:20.879
Technology.
00:02:21.280 --> 00:02:33.840
Satellites, aircraft, drones, chemical sniffers, lab instruments, but particularly thermal cameras, have in some ways quite literally opened our eyes to the scale of the methane challenge.
00:02:34.159 --> 00:02:49.840
Methane hunters, as they are now called, are usually environmentalists, scientists, and sometimes regulatory officials who use some or all of this technology to call attention to leaking methane sources, usually on oil and gas plants.
00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:52.879
Theophil Human is one of them.
00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:55.120
So my name is Theophil Human.
00:02:55.280 --> 00:03:02.879
I'm leading the campaign work in Europe and across the globe to help cut methane emissions and methane pollution in the oil and gas industry.
00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:11.840
I've been working to increase regulation on methane pollution in the oil and gas industry for around two to three years now.
00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:20.639
And I have been documenting using specialized type of equipment in around 10 countries since I started.
00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:28.639
Theo is a specialist thermographer who works on detecting methane emissions for an international group called the Clean Air Task Force.
00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:34.000
The CATF has been raising awareness of methane emissions internationally for over 20 years.
00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:49.439
Theo is based in Athens in Greece, but his work takes him to sites in multiple countries.
00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:55.039
We asked him what a typical experience detecting methane at an oil or gas site was like.
00:03:55.439 --> 00:04:01.039
We put our investigative caps, arriving by car, scouting a bit the site.
00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:06.080
As a thermographer, I know the pieces of equipment that might release methane.
00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:16.319
I will look at them firstly, turning on the camera, putting on the settings, controlling with either it's foggy or humid, uh sunny.
00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:24.560
I would try to take into account all these parameters in order to get the best shots and be sure that I visualize methane.
00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:28.399
OGI stands for optical gas imaging.
00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:40.639
It's a thermal camera that uses the difference in energy reflected by the molecules of different gases, in this case methane, in order to make them visible like night goggles against the surrounding air.
00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:49.600
These cameras are being used by a growing number of environmental and regulatory agencies to get a visible picture of methane leaks.
00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:55.600
Even our own Raul Kazan was impressed when he first saw what cameras like this could demonstrate.
00:04:56.240 --> 00:04:58.399
Now with thermal cameras, it's something else.
00:05:04.079 --> 00:05:08.079
You cannot really measure them and all that, you know, but but you you could actually, you know.
00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:09.360
But at least you see them.
00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:13.519
It's all being visualized, and I think I think this is the most important thing.
00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:16.240
It's something that does exist.
00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:17.839
You cannot deny it.
00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:20.240
You see it on the screen.
00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:23.600
So, what information can these cameras give us?
00:05:24.319 --> 00:05:37.120
The point of this kind of equipment is to do uh leak detection and repair, meaning you can spot a leak and then fix it depending on like the type of equipment in uh good timing.
00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:40.399
So I cannot calculate the quantity of methane leaving.
00:05:40.639 --> 00:05:47.680
As a thermographer with experience, we get to know if uh the emission is significant or not.
00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:51.920
But this is empirical, it's not based on any sort of calculation.
00:05:52.879 --> 00:06:04.319
If the cameras only give qualitative confirmation of leaks, how can teams like Theo's move from just spotting them to knowing how serious the level of emissions are?
00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:09.279
Well, now you have to bring in a combination of techniques.
00:06:09.600 --> 00:06:33.680
In order to have a comprehensive approach on mass and emissions coming from a site, you will try to combine uh different types of equipment like sniffers, uh, remote sensing, airborne remote sensing, meaning a plane flying over using a spectrometer over the site or the oil field, gas fields, as well as OGI cameras to have an overall uh idea of the number of sources.
00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:44.560
You combine them in a way that someone using a spectrometer, meaning like an instrument that actually gives uh the particle million of methane every few seconds.
00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:48.959
It will give you a sort of estimate, but you won't know what's the source.
00:06:49.199 --> 00:07:02.000
An OGI, an optical gas imaging camera can give you the source but cannot give you an estimate, and it's the combination of all these tools that can give you a comprehensive and broad idea of methane emissions in the site.
00:07:10.879 --> 00:07:13.199
But what do you do if you don't have a camera?
00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:20.399
Okay, so on top of the vehicle, we have this thing that looks like a big claw at the front.
00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:25.680
Dave Lowry is a professor of geoscience at the University of Royal Holloway in London.
00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:30.000
He's been studying atmospheric methane for over 30 years.
00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:31.920
I'm Dave Lowry.
00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:36.959
I'm a reader in stabilised topes and greenhouse gases in the Earth Sciences Department at Royal Holloway.
00:07:37.279 --> 00:07:47.839
Together with another world expert on methane, Ewan Nisbet, he set up the UK's first monitoring station for atmospheric methane right on the roof of their very own building.
00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:54.639
And I set up the lab with Ewan Nisbet, Greenhouse Gas Lab, back in 1995.
00:07:54.959 --> 00:08:01.680
Today, the readings from Royal Holloway provide one of the longest running records of atmospheric methane in Europe.
00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:05.600
Dave works closely with another atmospheric scientist, Dr.
00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:13.839
Rebecca Fisher, and about 10 students to help identify and understand methane sources from sites all over the world.
00:08:14.079 --> 00:08:14.800
Here's Dr.
00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:15.600
Fisher.
00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:20.560
So we get air samples sent into our lab from a number of sites globally.
00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:24.000
I started off looking at Arctic methane.
00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:33.440
So we've got measurements coming, air samples coming from Spitsbergen, for example, part of the Spaubards archipelago, northern Norway.
00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:43.360
We have air canisters filled there several times a week, sent to our lab where we measure the methane concentration and the isotopes in the methane.
00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:47.679
We also have air samples from Ascension Island, 8 degrees south of the equator.
00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:53.120
And then more recently the Halley station in Antarctica is another site where we've been receiving air.
00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:55.200
So it's it really is global.
00:08:55.519 --> 00:09:07.200
While Dave and Rebecca have been measuring and analysing methane from around the world for many years now, what they're really interested in showing me is this vehicle with the thing that looks like a big claw on the top.
00:09:07.759 --> 00:09:13.279
That's an anemometer, a sonic anemometer for measuring wind speeds as we're driving along.
00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:16.639
So that's important when you're trying to calculate an emission.
00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:22.159
The claw, or sonic anemometer, is not the only thing that's special about this vehicle.
00:09:22.399 --> 00:09:28.320
It works with a rare and expensive piece of technology called a mobile laser spectrometer.
00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:31.919
Remember the spectrometer that Theo Human mentioned?
00:09:32.159 --> 00:09:38.159
A device that can give you the actual concentration of methane within a sample every few seconds?
00:09:38.399 --> 00:09:42.240
Well, this is exactly that, except for one key advantage.
00:09:42.480 --> 00:09:43.679
It's mobile.
00:09:43.919 --> 00:09:53.120
That means you can quote unquote see methane leaks as you go through them, turning a normal car into a sophisticated mobile meth lab.
00:09:53.519 --> 00:09:56.159
Meth for methane, not that kind of meth lab.
00:09:56.480 --> 00:10:04.080
Anyway, according to Dave and Rebecca, this laser-based tech was one of the most important jumps forward in our understanding of methane emissions.
00:10:04.559 --> 00:10:21.519
We would have to collect samples of air in flasks and hope that our knowledge of the wind and the source would allow us to predict where the emission was, and then we would bring back the tanks to the lab and make an analysis on the gas chromatograph.
00:10:21.759 --> 00:10:31.840
But as soon as the like the laser-based instruments were commercialized, we didn't need the carrier gases, and suddenly everything was mobile.
00:10:31.919 --> 00:10:45.759
We could even set up at remote sites without carrier gases, so we set up sites in in Ascension Island and in the Falklands and left instruments running and just logged in remotely to those because we didn't need the consumables.
00:10:48.799 --> 00:10:59.360
It's a technology like this that has started to show us, not just from the top down, but from the bottom up, just how much bigger a problem methane leaks are than we had realized.
00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:05.360
And I was here for a little taste of what it was like to be a methane detective on the move.
00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:13.919
First up, a layman's explanation of how the machine works and some of the smart calculations it has to do to give a reliable reading.
00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:37.120
So you've got to then calculate back to try and understand how much is leaking.
00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:44.320
At the back we have a GPS receiver, so that tells us the concentration of methane at at a fixed point.
00:11:44.559 --> 00:11:48.799
It's measuring methane and uh GPS coordinates ten times every second.
00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:56.960
And with that, it was time to get on the road and start looking for leaks.
00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:58.080
Uh where should I go?
00:11:58.320 --> 00:11:58.960
Front?
00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:00.559
Front or back?
00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:02.240
Do you want to go in the back and want to look at the data?
00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:02.639
Yes.
00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:05.039
Uh which is the best side?
00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:07.120
I I to be I don't know.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:17.519
Inside, the car felt like any ordinary, fairly comfortable car, except for the massive battery packs and instruments in the boot, and the wires coming over the seats.
00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:23.600
Looking at the data meant watching lines move across a tablet screen that connected to the spectrometer.
00:12:23.919 --> 00:12:29.919
There's a baseline at roughly 2,000 parts per billion as we're driving along, and then we've just gone through some peaks.
00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:35.039
The biggest one we've been to through so far was over 3,000 parts per billion.
00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:40.480
This is making one measurement every second, so you can see as we go through a leak, we maybe see a few measurements.
00:12:40.639 --> 00:12:45.120
So for a few seconds we could be up above 3,000 parts per billion.
00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:54.159
It was amazing to watch the methane profile around me change in real time just by driving along a suburban road in London.
00:12:54.399 --> 00:13:01.919
And concerning to see how many gas leaks were emitting steady puffs of methane all around us.
00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:07.919
So that is literally as we're going gas leak, gas leak, yeah, gas leak.
00:13:08.159 --> 00:13:11.200
Yeah, these sources would be would be gas leaks.
00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:15.200
I asked Rebecca how high they had seen these peaks go.
00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:24.799
How high would it go if we were next to, let's say, a gas leak on a you know a major pipeline or you know how high have you seen it go?
00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:29.519
Probably um 10,000 um parts per billion.
00:13:29.919 --> 00:13:36.799
Um when we were when we took the instrument into a cow barn, um then it can go even higher.
00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:39.360
A hundred thousand.
00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:44.399
And women's a very big space.
00:13:44.639 --> 00:13:45.679
I know this is not the focus.
00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:52.720
One thing our methane detection expedition brought home to me was just how much the mobility of their equipment meant.
00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:57.039
They can essentially look for and measure methane anywhere.
00:13:57.360 --> 00:13:59.360
Where are you going for tomorrow's survey?
00:13:59.759 --> 00:14:22.480
We're going up to to Cheshire, so it's an area we've been to once before, and um it's an area that's a mixture of sources from uh landfill sites, uh above ground gas infrastructure on the distribution network, um, and it's a site that has lots of um like oil refineries and chemical industry.
00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:27.360
So it's it's um a mixed source region.
00:14:27.759 --> 00:14:36.080
And when you say you've been once before, is it uh a part of a regular monitoring program or you just went once before you're interested to go and see it again?
00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:42.480
Well we're doing this as part of um um a project funded by the UK uh RI.
00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:46.960
It was initially set up to look at the effects of of fracking.
00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:59.919
Um so we surveyed to identify all the existing sources so that if there was an emission from fracking, we could identify that as an extra source because we knew where that site was.
00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:09.279
The challenge of detecting methane with the mobile laser spectrometer isn't necessarily finding the emissions, the challenge becomes working out one source from another.
00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:31.440
That was in the middle of um of dairy farming land, so we had cow barns, manure piles, uh, gas leaks along the main road, uh, and a big old landfill that was closed within the region, so there are lots of different sources contributing, and we use our measurement techniques to distinguish all the different ones in the region.
00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:39.120
Those special techniques are the measurements of methane isotopes, which Dave and Rebecca happen to specialise in.
00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:41.120
That word isotopes.
00:15:41.679 --> 00:15:42.720
Does it sound familiar?
00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:46.000
Here's Professor Philippe Sies again from the last episode.
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He's a climate researcher at the Climate and Environment Science Laboratory in Paris.
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When we see methane increasing uh just with the concentration signal, we're not able to split it into oh, this is agriculture, this is waste, this is uh oil and gas.
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However, we still have some atmospheric toolkits which are called methane isotopes.
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Isotopes mean two specimens of the same atom, just that one has more neutral particles or neutrons in its nucleus than the other.
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In the case of isotopes of methane, it's the carbon atom in the middle of the methane molecule that bears the telltale difference.
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So um we're looking at methane, and depending on how that methane was formed, um, the methane can be slightly heavier or slightly lighter.
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Most carbon is carbon 12.
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What does the 12 mean?
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It's uh the number of um protons and neutrons within within the carbon atom.
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Okay.
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Six protons, six neutrons.
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Um but you can have uh carbon with one extra um neutron, and that's slightly heavier than the carbon-12.
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Making them carbon-13, six protons, seven neutrons.
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These are also stable atoms, but they're a lot more rare.
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And it just so happens that thermogenic methane, that's the methane given off by oil, gas, and coal, has more carbon-13 than biogenic methane formed by bacteria decomposing organic matter.
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Philippe Siez again.
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So it's not able to separate rice from wetlands or livestock from rice, but uh it can classify the emissions into two categories the uh bacterial uh processes and the uh leaking of oil and gas.
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Back to Rebecca Fisher.
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So using a mass spectrometer, we can measure the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 within um the methane in an air sample, and that very, very small changes um in that ratio tell us whether there is a little bit more of a biogenic source or a little bit more of a thermogenic source, the methane formed at higher temperature.
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What would a totally biogenic source look like in terms of acid?
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Um that has mostly carbon-12.
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They all have mostly carbon 12, but there's more carbon-12 than very little carbon-13 in a logical biogenic source.
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Okay.
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Um if that methane is formed at higher temperature, thermogenic fossil fuel gas or methane um formed during coal formation, um, then there would be um a little bit more carbon-13.
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Um, and if it's a combustion source, so um this could be forest fire or it could be combustion from a vehicle, um, then there would be more carbon-13 again, so it's slightly heavier.
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So you're going from you'd always have more carbon-12 than more carbon than carbon-13.
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99% of the carbon is carbon 12.
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Right.
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Very small um differences in the ratio depending on the source.
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So you the lowest amount of carbon-13 that would suggest a biogenic source.
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Yes.
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Slightly more carbon-13 like would suggest a fossil fuel source, a thermogenic.
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Okay.
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And then slightly more again would suggest a combustion source.
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Today, Dave and Rebecca work in partnership with students and scientists all over the world, stepping up our baseline knowledge of methane emissions profiles in different areas using these isotopic distinctions.
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We speak to one of these scientists in the next segment.
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Back in London, my own methane detective expedition is coming to an end.
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So we're now driving back into campus.
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2,000 parts per billion.
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That's not that far off the global average of about 1,900.
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But some of the peaks on the profile of our journey went way beyond that.
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And if we look at the total journey.
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Oh, we had a few.
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Quite a lot of peaks.
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We did.
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There was one that was above 4,000 parts per billion.
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When you uh zoom out like that, it looks like a sort of, I don't know, the skyline of Dubai or something.
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The difference when a simple pipe had been replaced was stark.
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I could see right there on the screen the very different profile that such a simple measure could achieve.
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Yeah, and we had periods where there weren't many leaks at all, yeah.
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Um potentially because they have been here and maybe they've fixed this section, but they haven't fixed that section.
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There was a you know, pipeline has been replaced in that area.
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Probably is.
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You do see improvements when um pipelines have been replaced.
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Oh right, so they might have just had a whole like switch that's newer.
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Yep.
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With these two areas with the peaks, if they were to replace the pipelines in those, then I mean if you if you target that well enough, you could change the overall methane profile of a large region if you just carbon dioxide.
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Ah yes, that was lots of traffic.
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And the water's done some odd things.
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Oh no, no, it hasn't.
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It's just been what?
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We drank through rain.
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No, it's all just been roughly 13,000 parts per million for the water.
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A baseline of around 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and a baseline of 2,000 parts per billion for methane.
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Yep.
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Amazing, thank you.
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And finally, Thomas Rookman is a professor of atmospheric physics and chemistry at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
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When the realization started to dawn.
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Internationally, that methane emissions from oil and gas could be a much bigger climate problem than we realized.
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Professor Rookman was charged with coordinating a huge international contingency to conduct a study of the emissions from one country's oil and gas sector in particular, Romania.
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The idea was simple.
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Romania has a centuries-long history of oil and gas production and has for many years reported its methane emissions to the United Nations.
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But, like most oil and gas reported emissions, these were estimated or calculated based on potentially outdated emissions factors.
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Actually, measuring them offered the chance to compare estimates of a country's methane emissions with actual measurements.
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Could you summarize the project in a few words, please?
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Yes, uh, thank you.
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Um the Romanian project on methane emissions from oil and gas was carried out by a large group of scientists from more than 10 European countries, also US scientists, and it was commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program.
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They asked our scientific group to come to Romania and carry out measurements in the oil and gas infrastructure.
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Prior to the Second World War, Romania was the largest oil and gas producer in Europe.
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Today its output has dwindled, but its processing capacity is still significant for its Eastern European context, with over nine refineries and an extensive array of onshore and offshore infrastructure in the Black Sea.
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It also has ambitions to reinvigorate its energy producing credentials, with huge investments in its offshore capacity and funding from the EU for major pipeline extensions to its existing network.
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But much of that existing infrastructure is old and has been poorly maintained.
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Environmental groups and regulators are concerned about the impacts, not least, of fugitive methane emissions.
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Old infrastructure means leaky infrastructure, and vast networks of pipes mean vast networks of leaks too.
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From a scientific point of view, then Romania's situation offered a great opportunity.
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And so since Romania is so important, it also reports high emission rates to the United Nations.
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The question is, is that true and what are these reports based on?
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So they asked us to use our new techniques that we have developed to come to Romania, and there we visited many locations, and we first tried to find out how many of them actually emit methane.
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So you can see that from the outside, or can measure from the outside what are the components that are emitting the methane, how much methane is emitted, and that's what we have finished now and compared it to what actually the countries report.
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But we have now quite a good idea on all these aspects.
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So what is leaking, where is it leaking, how much is leaking, and how does it compare to the national estimates?
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Some of the technology used included drones and aircraft that could survey sites from the air, chemical detectors called sniffers to assess minute changes in methane concentration, thermal cameras that can make the gas plumes of methane suddenly visible.
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Even satellites can now detect large methane plumes from leaks, vents, or flares from space.
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Combining all these findings and then running them through still more sophisticated instruments for analysis created one of the most comprehensive measurement studies to date of methane emissions from an oil and gas industry.
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And what did they find?
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You've probably guessed already.
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And is it scary?
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I mean the the emissions are higher than you have expected, right?
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Yes, the emissions are higher than what is reported to the International Energy Agency and also the United Nations.
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How high?
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Looking just at oil, the study found methane emissions of 5.5 kilograms per hour per site.
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That's about 120,000 tons per year.
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Compare this to the reported emissions.
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46,000 tons is what Romania reported to the United Nations for the same period.
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23,000 is what the IEA had calculated.
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What's more, the study found that almost three-quarters of the detected emissions were from gas being vented.
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When it came to leaks, there were over 230 leaks identified that hadn't been accounted for.
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But here's the positive angle.
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That means that what the EU thought in the past years on what they had already achieved in Romania is not achieved yet.
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It also means that now we have the chance, since we know now from the measurements, how high the emissions are, now we have the chance to actually reduce these emissions and help the EU or well, Romania and the EU to fulfill some of the obligations that we have to do in the Paris Agreement and this global methane pledge, for example.
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It highlighted the fact that to fix the problem, you do need to know what and where the problem exists first.
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And this is something Professor Rookman has found time and time again in his other methane studies as well.
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You cannot easily extrapolate from one region to another.
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You have to go to the regions and actually measure what you find.
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We have measured in total in Europe in 11 cities, and we find that all cities are different, for example.
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So there's no, we have been in Bucharest as part of our project here in Romania.
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We have measured methane emissions in Bucharest.
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We found quite a number of gas leakages, but we also find quite some methane emissions from the wastewater system.
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That was quite special from Bucharest.
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In comparison, for example, to Utrecht, where I live, where we find very little wastewater emissions, but the most of the emissions are dominated by the fossil fuels.
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So in Bucharest, the emissions are overall larger, but also a larger fraction is coming from biological or microbial sources.
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We have also measured in in Paris, and in Paris we found out that actually gas boilers and restaurants have higher emission rates, which is different from Romania.
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We haven't found that very much here.
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So each city also needs to know what is the best way to reduce the emissions.
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You can set all kinds of targets, but you need to know at which places you can actually achieve this target.
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So you need to know again where the emissions are and how large they are, and at which place which emissions are most important.
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And also then the feasibility options, so what is technologically possible.
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So our role as scientists is to help guide this process, this political process in the end, because we want to find out.
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Well, we want we want to provide data, solid scientific data that can be used as the basis of this policy, of these political goals.
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So, fellow methane hunters, that rounds off the first half of our podcast, where we've covered the main human sources of methane and the threat from its invisible leaks, many of which are lurking all around us.
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But before we open a new chapter on tackling these emissions, one more investigation into the origins of methane emissions awaits, for which we need to turn to the biggest source, the Earth itself.
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When we look at the cycles of greenhouse gases on our planet, we face a sobering reality.
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Natural processes release staggering amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
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Why should we be concerned?
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The answer lies in the ominous concept of methane climate feedbacks, a cycle of events that can accelerate climate change to unprecedented levels.
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From permafrost to wetlands, we'll uncover the hidden mechanisms driving methane emissions in nature and confront the looming specter of methane climate feedbacks head on.
