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Many years ago, something like ten years ago, I visited these uh research stations in the at upper altitudes in the Alps.
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You know, they were they were measuring concentrations of methane in the upper atmosphere, and they would keep growing and growing and growing.
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And at the time uh it was clear that there was a connection between uh fracking for gas in the United States in in full Obama uh presidency, you know.
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And uh no matter how much they were claiming that they were capturing all the methane that was leaking, uh it was mumbo jumbo because it was a lot of methane leaking into the atmosphere.
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If you missed him in the first episode, that is my colleague, Raul Kazan.
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He's an environmental campaigner based in Romania and the brains behind this podcast.
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And he's also right.
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The fracking boom in the US that coincided with the Obama presidency was indeed leaking methane into the atmosphere.
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It took scientists a few years to confirm it, but by 2019, US shale gas extraction was believed to have increased global methane emissions by over a third.
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But how does gas extraction cause methane leaks?
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What are its other sources?
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That's the focus of this episode.
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When you have a field that's largely developed for oil and you have what's called associated gas, essentially it's a problem.
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You need to get rid of it.
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Gas is invisible, it's odorless until it's in the final stage of transmission, and it's under pressure.
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So its natural tendency is too leak.
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And how does that all fit with the only thing many people know about methane, which is that it somehow gets burped out by cows?
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So the basic process is that you have important bacteria on Earth that live under a low oxygen environment, and those bacteria like to produce methane.
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If you've stumbled upon us for the first time and aren't sure where you've landed, this is Methane, a podcast about the world's second most important greenhouse gas, and I'm your host, Francesca Fazy.
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It might not get a lot of airtime, but methane is fast rising up the climate policy agenda.
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And if you're curious to know why, we'd suggest heading back to the first episode and starting there.
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For those of you who have been there done that, let's jump in.
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Where do methane emissions come from?
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It's important to note there are five sectors which emit methane.
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Just before we hear what they are, I introduced you in the first episode to Dr.
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Roland Coopers from the United Nations Environmental Methane Emissions Observatory.
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So my name's Roland Coopers.
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Um, I'm an advisor to uh UNEP, uh UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory.
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And I've been working on this issue of methane mitigation for about 10 years.
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But his knowledge of oil and gas and methane issues from the oil and gas sector goes a little further than that.
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Before that, I spent a decade with Shell.
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I was the head of the LNG business, and at the time nobody knew what LNG was, but that somewhat changed.
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Um I was also the head of sustainable development for the Shell Group, so that also gave me quite a perspective.
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Going backwards, originally I'm a theoretical physicist, and I've always been interested in system change, and I've written a number of books on the consequences of complex systems on public policy.
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So I've both a practical interest in getting things done like reducing methane, but also understanding how systems work and how you can change them.
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So now you know a little more about who you're hearing from.
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Let's find out what those five sources of methane emissions are.
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So oil and gas is one, is big, is about a third.
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Uh waste, so landfills emit quite a bit of methane.
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The production of coal emits methane.
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And then there's also livestock, mostly cows who burp a lot of methane as they break down the grass that they eat.
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And then finally rice is an important source of methane.
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The emissions from oil, gas, and coal are called thermogenic methane.
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They come from organic matter being broken down by temperature.
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In this case, the extreme heat created deep in the Earth's crust.
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Those from cows, rice, and from waste add to the world's natural sources of methane, produced by the breakdown of organic matter by certain types of bacteria.
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This is called biogenic methane.
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You do get one more type formed by the incomplete breakdown of organic matter when it's combusted or burnt, and this is called pyrogenic methane.
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But pyrogenic methane is relatively small in comparison to the other sources, so we're going to keep our focus here on the first two.
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Let's start with the thermogenic kind, methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal.
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So methane, for people who don't know, is the largest component of gas.
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So the fossil gas that we use in our kitchens and power plants is mostly methane.
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There's a little bit of other gases, but the bulk of it's methane.
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Um so that's really it's when you think gas, think methane.
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It's responsible for about a quarter of the warming we experience today.
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So it is a very heavy greenhouse gas.
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But in contrast with CO2, which rightfully gets a lot of attention, it lingers in the atmosphere for a much shorter time.
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So after about 10 or 15 years, most of it's disappeared.
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But in the in the time it's there, it creates an enormous amount of warming.
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And when we mine coal.
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How?
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Two ways.
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It either gets released deliberately or it leaks.
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Releasing gas deliberately as a routine part of operations is mostly an oil industry thing.
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And it's done in one of two ways venting or flaring.
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Both have been practiced routinely for over a century, and both are terrible from a climate perspective.
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The numbers are highly uncertain because many companies still don't measure how much they release.
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But the International Energy Agency estimates that around eight million tons of methane gets transferred to the atmosphere by flaring, and another eight million again by venting every year.
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From somebody who's been in the industry, can you just give an explanation of what is venting and what is flaring?
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How important are they?
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Yeah, so the first thing is to say that these companies there are different cultures in these companies.
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There's an oil culture and there's a gas culture.
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And I've titled a chapter in one of my books, I think, called Real Men Don't Find Gas, right?
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There's a real machine role almost.
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In most places, finding gas is a nightmare because there are very few places where there's a market for gas.
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Whereas oil is really simple, you just put it in a ship or in a barrel and then you ship it somewhere.
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But but packaging gas is extraordinarily difficult and expensive.
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You need to build a very long pipeline or an LNG plant for tens of billions.
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And so what happens when you have a field that's largely developed for oil and you have what's called associated gas, essentially it's a problem.
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You need to get rid of it.
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And what you can do is you can either burn it, which is flaring, or uh you can vent it, you just let it escape to the atmosphere.
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Or the other thing you can do is, and sometimes it's necessary, you re-inject it into the field in order to increase the pressure to pull out the oil.
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But when you have this excess gas that you don't know what to do with, there's often very few options but to flare it.
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Flaring looks worse.
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Those flames on top of the tall stacks that permanently haze the air around oil operations, those are flares.
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But flaring at least burns the methane, and that converts some of it into carbon dioxide.
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CO2 has a global warming potential that is in the short term at least 84 times lower than methanes.
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The problem is Many flares are inefficient.
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So they don't burn a hundred percent of the gas.
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It varies between fifty percent and almost a hundred, which means that when they're flaring, there's still a lot of gas that escapes.
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This is usually because the quality of the flaring process itself isn't always that good.
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Any number of factors can reduce the burning efficiency of flares from the age of equipment being used to the weather.
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You know, the numbers are unclear because there's so few measurements.
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We're only getting to the era of empirical measurement now, right?
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Uh there's one paper that has measured almost all US flares.
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It's the only place where it's comprehensively surveyed, and the average efficiency in the US is 91%.
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Okay.
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It's pretty good.
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Terrible.
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Really?
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It's terrible, right.
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It could it could be 99.8.
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So there's 9% of the gas is is vented, and they're huge volumes.
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I suppose, yeah, percentages matter when you're talking about the volumes that you're talking about.
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The volumes are enormous, and so if we could get all of the world's flares to more than 99%, it would have an enormous climate contribution instantaneously.
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And there have been huge moves afoot already in recent years to ban non-emergency flaring in the oil and gas industry.
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Policymakers often suggest that unwanted gas should be captured and sold into the market instead of flared.
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But for oil producers, often in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't always work.
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I mean, let's take the US.
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The US flares an enormous amount of gas.
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It is by far the most efficient and liquid gas market, and yet also there they can't manage to get their the gas to market.
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For Dr.
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Cooper's regulating flaring efficiency so that more methane gets burnt off is far more likely to achieve results.
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I think there should be equal focus on flaring well as on eliminating flaring.
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It's actually not that hard to get to 100% flaring efficiency.
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I mean it costs, you know, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to tweak your flare to get to to 100% almost 100% flare efficiency.
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It costs untold billions to put out the flare and bring the gas to market.
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Literally, by the end of this year, technically you could get all US flares at 99.8%.
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There is no way by the end of this year you could get all that, eliminate the flares and get the gas to market.
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So my view is let's do both, right?
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Let's immediately improve the efficiency of all flares and look at eliminating them in the medium to long term.
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And even better is eliminating the use of fossil fuels entirely, which is where I need to go to anyway.
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While inefficient flaring is bad enough, venting or allowing the gas to simply escape is even worse from a climate warming perspective.
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Instead of converting methane into CO2 with yes, some methane left over in the plume, now you really are delivering the whole volume of methane with its far higher climate impact straight into the atmosphere directly.
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Venting happens frequently for safety reasons too, but it's sadly also a long-running feature of routine operations on oil and gas infrastructure.
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So there are two kinds of venting.
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There's routine venting, and that should be completely eliminated instantly and replaced with high efficiency flaring.
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And then there's security venting, is basically, you know, if there's a pressure overbuilt in some part of the system, sometimes there's a security valve that pops and gas is released.
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You know, that's largely unavoidable because it's a safety mechanism.
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But those are relatively small volumes.
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So there's emergency venting, which is just part of the safety of the plant.
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But routine venting should be absolutely stopped instantaneously.
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But one of the unforeseen consequences of these campaigns against uh flaring is that we know of a number of companies that have said, sure, we'll turn off the flares and we'll just vent the gas.
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Which makes the problem almost a hundred times worse from a climate perspective, right?
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If if you know, if you turn it from a vent to high efficiency flare, the climate impact is reduced 84 fold.
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So it's a huge climate improvement.
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And so this is a really unforeseen consequence of this strong campaign against flaring is that people some companies say, okay, we'll just vent it, then we'll get these NGOs off our back.
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Monitoring deliberate venting and flaring of methane gas from the extractive sector is one thing.
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But as anyone who has opened a gas hose will know gas can leak by accident too.
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Someone else who keeps a close watch over methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is Professor Deborah Gordon, based at Brown University's Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs in the US.
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So I think the first very simple thing for someone to understand is methane is mostly gas.
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The gas that we produce, and gas is invisible, it's odorless until it's in the final stage of transmission, and it's under pressure.
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So its natural tendency is to leak.
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Gas leaks, also known as fugitive methane emissions, can occur at any stage of the production line, moving from one transport vessel to another, extracting, reheating, and ultimately end use too.
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So coal leaks methane, but from the mine.
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Gas leaks methane everywhere in the supply chain, potentially, from the production, from the well, from the actual extraction site, through all of these gathering lines and transmission lines, and then also in terms of the utility and home appliances, and if you add liquefied natural gas from liquefaction terminals, from ships, regasification, and pipelines at the other end.
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So the gas supply chain is very complex, way more complex than coal.
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And we haven't successfully yet mastered it.
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And it's growing in its reach and it's leaky, and it's variably leaky all over the place.
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The scale of the total gas leak problem, we don't really know.
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On average, from what satellites have found, what would you say are this the current gas leakage rates that we're seeing?
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The leakage rates are hugely varying, which to my mind, and I started my career in the in this industry, is the story of this industry.
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High variance, very high variance, both in terms of operators, in terms of resources and what they are into the ground, and now in terms of methane leakage, the leakage rates that have been cited in studies that we have in the paper, and we cite them all, are from 0.6% to 66%.
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So that's a thousand-fold difference.
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Who who is leaking, who is leaking their gas, 66% of what they're like extracting?
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Who is doing that?
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It's a great question.
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And I think it's it's it might be a relatively limited number of producers, but they're still important.
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It turns out that that 66% came from offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in state waters.
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And what's happening there is that these are oil platforms.
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Now, this is really common in the UK and the North Sea on the UK side.
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These are oil platforms that were designed sometimes 30 or 40 years ago to produce oil.
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They're not designed to contain the gas and they don't have takeaway capacity for the gas.
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So over time, as the fields might become more gassy, and these resources change underground as you produce them, you don't have anything to do with the gas but to throw it into the atmosphere.
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Getting a handle on quantifying these emissions is harder than it might seem.
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In fact, it's only recently with some mammoth investigation efforts that scientists have been able to start putting some accurate numbers together.
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This might seem like it's academic, but it has ramifications when it comes to trying to mitigate.
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Roland Cooper's again from IMAO, the International Methane Emissions Observatory.
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If it's between leaks, venting and flaring in terms of emissions, do you do we have any sense of which contributes most?
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We have a sense, but they're based on these emission factors that we're trying to get rid of.
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We're trying to get people to measure.
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I mean, our chief scientist says that, you know, half of the emissions can be fixed by a guy with a wrench.
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And and and this is a powerful image because it's actually true.
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A lot of this is is really silly stuff.
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Valves that are open that should be closed.
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And of course, you know, when you get to the second 50%, it becomes harder, right?
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You have to swap out, you have to have different equipment and design, etc., and it becomes more difficult.
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But the initial reductions tend to be really easy.
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So, the challenge?
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Leaks need to be found to be stopped.
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Emissions need to be monitored and quantified.
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And since methane is colourless, odorless, and otherwise undetectable without equipment, that requires a massive detection effort.
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Methane hunters, as they are now called, are usually environmentalists, scientists, or regulatory officials who use a range of sophisticated technology to call attention to methane leaks.
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Next up, we meet some methane hunters and find out about some of the equipment they use to spot methane one leak at a time.
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But before we get there, there's a whole other category of methane that has nothing to do with energy at all.
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All of the methane emissions from energy are thermogenic.
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There's another kind.
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Biogenic methane.
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To talk us through this and how methane gets produced and recycled naturally, I'd like to introduce you to Philippe Siez.
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I spoke to him about the natural and biological sources of methane.
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And even though all CH4 does the same thing when it reaches the atmosphere, we also talked a little about the tricks scientists can use to tell the difference between methane from the different origins.
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When we're talking about emissions from agriculture, like from livestock and rice, those seem like very uh different kinds of agricultural products.
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What is it that they have in common that creates these methane emissions?
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They have in common the same bacteria because uh what is producing methane is specific bacteria.
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They live in the guts of livestock animals when they digest grass.
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There is no oxygen in the guts of the animals, and this is favorable for the bacteria living in their body to produce methane that escapes to the atmosphere.
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In most common preconceptions, it's cow farts that generate the methane.
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But burps are actually the bigger problem, caused by a process called enteric fermentation.
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Plus, there's cow manure, around a quarter of the methane from cows, emanates from the decomposition of their waste.
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And here's the thing, cow numbers have risen from 410 million to almost 1.5 billion over the past 130 years.
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According to one study in the US, one cow can emit up to 220 pounds or 100 kilograms of methane every year.
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It isn't just cows, of course.
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Sheep and goats have these methane-producing bacteria in their stomachs too.
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Every ruminant does.
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But because the number of cows on the planet is so large and each cow is so big, cows produce more.
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More, in fact, than all other ruminants combined.
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So that's livestock.
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What about rice?
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Rice is very similar.
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It's the same kind of bacteria, simply they live at the bottom of the soil.
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The soil is flooded, and it's the same story.
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There is no oxygen.
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There is organic matter at the bottom of the rice paddies, and the bacteria eat it and they produce methane that you know makes small bubbles and escapes to the atmosphere from the rice paddies.
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So the basic process is that you have important bacteria on Earth that live under a low on oxygen environment, and those bacteria like to produce methane.
00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:38.000
So, three preconditions bacteria living off organic matter and an absence of oxygen.
00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:50.160
These bacteria, also known as methanogens, as in methane generating, are responsible for the methane emissions in landfill sites too, and from liquid wastes like sewers.
00:22:50.480 --> 00:23:00.400
It's not the waste itself that gives off methane, it's bacteria feeding on the organic waste, old food basically, or vegetation as it's decomposing.
00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:12.720
In normal conditions, the digesting of organic waste happens aerobically, as in with oxygen, and it's performed by your standard run-of-the-mill all-around us bacteria.
00:23:12.799 --> 00:23:20.799
But they've evolved to give off CO2 because the carbon that they're chomping down on reacts with the oxygen in the air around them.
00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:25.359
They take that oxygen away and there's nothing left to make CO2.
00:23:25.599 --> 00:23:27.680
So those microbes move out.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:33.680
And what I think of as the more hardcore oxygen-defying methanogens take over.
00:23:34.240 --> 00:23:39.359
Most of the bacteria, most of the microbes which live in the soil, they emit CO2.
00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:52.160
And when you have no oxygen, those uh CO2 emitting bacteria cannot live, and they leave place to methane emitting ones that have the capability to live in low oxygen environments, and those are producing methane.
00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:56.559
So that's the difference, a low or a high oxygen environment.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:57.440
Exactly.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:04.559
And there is no oxygen in the guts of the ruminants and also at the bottom of the rice bodies.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:17.279
And uh generally also in wetlands, wetlands are also waterlogged, there is no oxygen, and this is the reason why natural wetlands beyond rice bodies, which are like agricultural wetlands, are also emitting wetlands.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.480
Wetlands can take many forms.
00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:29.519
Swamps, lakes, rivers, marshes, estuaries, even waterlogged soils in forests count as types of wetland.
00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:37.519
From a CO2 storage and a biodiversity perspective, these ecosystems are priceless.
00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:43.279
But at the same time, they are also one of the world's largest sources of methane.
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:54.799
Methane is produced at the bottom of wetlands which are permanently flooded system because of those famous bacteria that uh, you know, like low oxygen environment.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:08.559
Wetland methane emissions and natural sources in general are fascinating in their own right, not least because they are incredibly sensitive to the rising temperatures that are being caused by climate change already.
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:13.599
Methane is uh in particular methane from wetlands, it's very sensitive to climate change.
00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:17.680
You have a processed bacteria which is emitting uh emissions.
00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:26.000
It depends on temperature, and if you change the temperature, if you change the precipitation, uh you know nothing prevents emissions to increase.
00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:34.480
Uh there is no, you know, strong limit to uh uh the amount of carbon that can be produced and released at methane in uh in wetlands.
00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:38.000
There is a lot of carbon as a substrate for bacteria to eat.
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:43.200
So the process is not going to be limited by the exhaustion of food for bacterias.
00:25:43.359 --> 00:25:47.920
It's only going to be limited by uh temperature and precipitation conditions.
00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:59.039
This creates a worrying threat of methane feedback on the climate, which we look at with Philippe and others in more detail in a whole episode on the topic later on.
00:25:59.359 --> 00:26:06.160
But as far as our own human-driven sources of biogenic methane, there's something we need to acknowledge.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:14.240
We can't control these methanogens and stop them feeding on buried or waterlogged bio waste where they find it.
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:24.559
We can only limit the environments in which they thrive, reduce the organic waste they use for food, or turn their deoxygenated environments into oxygenated ones.
00:26:24.799 --> 00:26:25.359
Here's Dr.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:30.799
Roland Cooper's again on some of the strategies that are being thought through to deal with these problems.
00:26:31.279 --> 00:26:40.240
On waste, there's a practical solution which is to run pipes through landfills and suck out the methane and either flare it or use it.
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:48.799
The structural solution long term is keeping organic waste out of landfills because it's the organic waste that rots and create the methane.
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:56.799
So if you don't put it in there in the first place, but you use it to compost and other things, then you you actually have no more methane emission issue.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:01.680
Um there's one country, for example, uh South Korea has done that very successfully.
00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:09.839
They separate almost all organic waste from and none of the organic waste goes into landfill, so the landfills have no methane emissions.
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:13.119
So this is but but that's obviously not a trivial task, right?
00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:17.039
It's easier said than done to roll this out across the population.
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:27.119
Agricultural and waste methane emissions barely feature in regulatory and policy plans to cut our methane emissions.
00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:28.000
Why?
00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:32.480
I put that question to some of our contributors who work in methane industry.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:35.839
I focus on oil and gas strongly.
00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:38.000
We also look at the others.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:40.720
Because it's a very different system.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:52.799
The oil and gas industry is is constituted of very large companies that have access to technology who are well capitalized.
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.839
So they have a lot of agency to fix this.
00:27:56.319 --> 00:28:05.039
If you if you want to get you know hundreds of millions of rice farmers to change their habits, and you know, it's a very different kind of problem.
00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:09.359
The solutions may be known, but the theory of change is very different.
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:18.400
So this is the reason we focus on uh most strongly and first and foremost on oil and gas, but we shouldn't forget these other sectors.
00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:24.079
And Kim O'Dowd, a methane campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency.
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:28.720
Why is tackling agriculture and waste so much harder?
00:28:29.279 --> 00:28:33.759
And what would need to happen for us to be able to start tackling that?
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:36.079
For agriculture, it's complicated.
00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:45.440
When we talk about agriculture methane, we have to think mostly of countries in the global north where we overconsume meat.
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:51.759
And it's difficult to talk about this subject because people don't want to be told that they should eat less meat, for example.
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:59.839
It touches more on personal habits than energy, for example, where it's just companies.
00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:11.920
We can look into technical solutions for agriculture, but from research, we know that the actual way to reduce math animation from the agriculture sector is just reducing our consumption of meat in developed countries.
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:15.119
And putting that into policies is very complicated.
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:27.200
And it's not impossible, and countries have taken steps towards that, uh, notably the Netherlands, who is trying to promote alternative proteins and trying to kind of balance animal protein and plant-based proteins.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:37.920
Um, so it's possible, but we just need more, I guess, more idea, but also just a bit of um courage.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:41.359
I don't know if courage is the right term, but I mean it's it's a tricky thing.
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:43.519
We don't need to all become vegetarian vegans.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:44.559
That's not what we're saying.
00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:46.160
Just we need to reduce methane.
00:29:46.240 --> 00:29:52.000
Uh we just need to reduce uh meat consumption, align with what the World Health Organization actually recommends.
00:29:52.079 --> 00:29:54.319
So it's not just a climate issue, but it's also a health issue.
00:29:54.400 --> 00:30:02.480
And we we need to communicate around those things to show that there's enormous co-benefits in reducing methane in the agriculture sector.
00:30:03.039 --> 00:30:15.200
And finally, here's what my own colleague, Raul Kazan, had to say about it when I challenged him on whether or not it was fair for the oil and gas industry to bear the brunt for the world's methane problem.
00:30:15.759 --> 00:30:17.359
My response is the following.
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:21.279
Uh this is a part-to-hole relationship.
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:28.079
I mean, uh the industry or energy production has to has its own part.
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:32.880
Uh agriculture has its own part, and waste has its own part.
00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:37.920
So everybody have uh their parts, their of responsibility.
00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:39.599
So there you have it.
00:30:39.839 --> 00:30:45.920
The main anthropogenic sources of methane, and a little on its biggest natural source too.
00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:56.079
Before we finish and head into the next episode, there's one more question on methane from its different sources that you might be wondering, and that's worth answering here.
00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:59.119
How do we know which emissions come from where?
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:11.839
Obviously we can track that certain activities like drilling for oil, transporting gas or mining coal give off methane, but how do we know how much of the rise is due to which source?
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:34.880
Here's Philippe Sears again with a quick version of the answer from the records that we have, from atmospheric records, knowing where the methane is coming from, agricultural sources, livestock, rice, or oil and gas, for example, leaks, how do we can you track in the atmosphere where the where that methane has come from?
00:31:35.119 --> 00:31:36.160
Uh it's a good question.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:47.839
We would like to, but uh 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.
00:31:48.079 --> 00:32:03.119
Uh for this uh we have to use uh inventories, so we have to use reconstructions of the activity of uh humans in the past, like uh how many livestocks were there in the last century and how much gas we have extracted.
00:32:03.359 --> 00:32:13.279
However, we still have some atmospheric toolkits which are called methane isotopes because uh there are a few uh heavier carbon atoms.
00:32:13.519 --> 00:32:19.119
Methane is CH4, there is one carbon atom and it's surrounded by four hydrogen ones.
00:32:19.279 --> 00:32:23.039
And sometimes this carbon atom is a bit uh heavier.
00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:28.079
Uh it contains uh 13 uh neutrons instead of 12 normally.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:33:02.319
And this abundance of methane isotope uh tells us unfortunately not about oil and gas versus agriculture, but it tells us about all the bacterial processes, or everything which is produced by bacteria means wetland and livestock and rice together, versus everything which is produced by oil and gas, because oil and gas has a distinct isotopic color, isotopic label compared to bacterial production, which happens both for livestock and rice and wetlands.
00:33:02.559 --> 00:33:25.519
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 uh and also coal mines, uh coal extraction is also emitting methane.
00:33:25.759 --> 00:33:30.640
So this is very useful to have those additional like isotopic data.
00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:38.160
We'll leave Philippe for now to get on with his dinner and a clearly very hungry cat.
00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:42.720
But if all of that talk of isotopes got your head spinning, don't worry.
00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:48.799
It's something we'll unpack a little more when we head out hunting for methane in the next episode.
00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:15.839
Many years ago, something like ten years ago, I visited these uh research stations in the at upper altitudes in the Alps.
00:00:17.839 --> 00:00:24.960
You know, they were they were measuring concentrations of methane in the upper atmosphere, and they would keep growing and growing and growing.
00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:39.759
And at the time uh it was clear that there was a connection between uh fracking for gas in the United States in in full Obama uh presidency, you know.
00:00:40.399 --> 00:00:51.920
And uh no matter how much they were claiming that they were capturing all the methane that was leaking, uh it was mumbo jumbo because it was a lot of methane leaking into the atmosphere.
00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:57.920
If you missed him in the first episode, that is my colleague, Raul Kazan.
00:00:58.079 --> 00:01:03.280
He's an environmental campaigner based in Romania and the brains behind this podcast.
00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:05.200
And he's also right.
00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:14.400
The fracking boom in the US that coincided with the Obama presidency was indeed leaking methane into the atmosphere.
00:01:14.959 --> 00:01:25.359
It took scientists a few years to confirm it, but by 2019, US shale gas extraction was believed to have increased global methane emissions by over a third.
00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:31.920
But how does gas extraction cause methane leaks?
00:01:32.079 --> 00:01:33.519
What are its other sources?
00:01:33.680 --> 00:01:35.599
That's the focus of this episode.
00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:42.480
When you have a field that's largely developed for oil and you have what's called associated gas, essentially it's a problem.
00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:43.840
You need to get rid of it.
00:01:44.239 --> 00:01:51.920
Gas is invisible, it's odorless until it's in the final stage of transmission, and it's under pressure.
00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:54.959
So its natural tendency is too leak.
00:01:55.120 --> 00:02:03.200
And how does that all fit with the only thing many people know about methane, which is that it somehow gets burped out by cows?
00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:17.280
So the basic process is that you have important bacteria on Earth that live under a low oxygen environment, and those bacteria like to produce methane.
00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:37.840
If you've stumbled upon us for the first time and aren't sure where you've landed, this is Methane, a podcast about the world's second most important greenhouse gas, and I'm your host, Francesca Fazy.
00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:43.120
It might not get a lot of airtime, but methane is fast rising up the climate policy agenda.
00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:48.080
And if you're curious to know why, we'd suggest heading back to the first episode and starting there.
00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:52.159
For those of you who have been there done that, let's jump in.
00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:54.319
Where do methane emissions come from?
00:02:54.639 --> 00:02:58.240
It's important to note there are five sectors which emit methane.
00:02:58.719 --> 00:03:03.360
Just before we hear what they are, I introduced you in the first episode to Dr.
00:03:03.439 --> 00:03:08.879
Roland Coopers from the United Nations Environmental Methane Emissions Observatory.
00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:11.199
So my name's Roland Coopers.
00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:17.520
Um, I'm an advisor to uh UNEP, uh UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory.
00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:22.319
And I've been working on this issue of methane mitigation for about 10 years.
00:03:22.719 --> 00:03:30.240
But his knowledge of oil and gas and methane issues from the oil and gas sector goes a little further than that.
00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:33.280
Before that, I spent a decade with Shell.
00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:39.120
I was the head of the LNG business, and at the time nobody knew what LNG was, but that somewhat changed.
00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:45.680
Um I was also the head of sustainable development for the Shell Group, so that also gave me quite a perspective.
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:57.439
Going backwards, originally I'm a theoretical physicist, and I've always been interested in system change, and I've written a number of books on the consequences of complex systems on public policy.
00:03:57.680 --> 00:04:05.680
So I've both a practical interest in getting things done like reducing methane, but also understanding how systems work and how you can change them.
00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:08.639
So now you know a little more about who you're hearing from.
00:04:08.879 --> 00:04:12.159
Let's find out what those five sources of methane emissions are.
00:04:12.639 --> 00:04:16.079
So oil and gas is one, is big, is about a third.
00:04:16.319 --> 00:04:20.319
Uh waste, so landfills emit quite a bit of methane.
00:04:20.639 --> 00:04:23.360
The production of coal emits methane.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:30.639
And then there's also livestock, mostly cows who burp a lot of methane as they break down the grass that they eat.
00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:34.639
And then finally rice is an important source of methane.
00:04:35.120 --> 00:04:40.160
The emissions from oil, gas, and coal are called thermogenic methane.
00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:44.240
They come from organic matter being broken down by temperature.
00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:49.360
In this case, the extreme heat created deep in the Earth's crust.
00:04:51.040 --> 00:05:01.279
Those from cows, rice, and from waste add to the world's natural sources of methane, produced by the breakdown of organic matter by certain types of bacteria.
00:05:01.519 --> 00:05:03.600
This is called biogenic methane.
00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:12.639
You do get one more type formed by the incomplete breakdown of organic matter when it's combusted or burnt, and this is called pyrogenic methane.
00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:20.160
But pyrogenic methane is relatively small in comparison to the other sources, so we're going to keep our focus here on the first two.
00:05:20.319 --> 00:05:25.680
Let's start with the thermogenic kind, methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal.
00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.480
So methane, for people who don't know, is the largest component of gas.
00:05:30.639 --> 00:05:35.680
So the fossil gas that we use in our kitchens and power plants is mostly methane.
00:05:35.759 --> 00:05:38.959
There's a little bit of other gases, but the bulk of it's methane.
00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:42.639
Um so that's really it's when you think gas, think methane.
00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:47.360
It's responsible for about a quarter of the warming we experience today.
00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:50.480
So it is a very heavy greenhouse gas.
00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:58.639
But in contrast with CO2, which rightfully gets a lot of attention, it lingers in the atmosphere for a much shorter time.
00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:02.879
So after about 10 or 15 years, most of it's disappeared.
00:06:03.279 --> 00:06:08.160
But in the in the time it's there, it creates an enormous amount of warming.
00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:18.319
And when we mine coal.
00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:19.040
How?
00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:20.079
Two ways.
00:06:20.319 --> 00:06:24.160
It either gets released deliberately or it leaks.
00:06:24.639 --> 00:06:31.279
Releasing gas deliberately as a routine part of operations is mostly an oil industry thing.
00:06:31.439 --> 00:06:36.720
And it's done in one of two ways venting or flaring.
00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:43.920
Both have been practiced routinely for over a century, and both are terrible from a climate perspective.
00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:49.199
The numbers are highly uncertain because many companies still don't measure how much they release.
00:06:49.439 --> 00:07:01.759
But the International Energy Agency estimates that around eight million tons of methane gets transferred to the atmosphere by flaring, and another eight million again by venting every year.
00:07:02.079 --> 00:07:08.399
From somebody who's been in the industry, can you just give an explanation of what is venting and what is flaring?
00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:09.759
How important are they?
00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:17.920
Yeah, so the first thing is to say that these companies there are different cultures in these companies.
00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.959
There's an oil culture and there's a gas culture.
00:07:21.279 --> 00:07:26.800
And I've titled a chapter in one of my books, I think, called Real Men Don't Find Gas, right?
00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.079
There's a real machine role almost.
00:07:30.399 --> 00:07:37.600
In most places, finding gas is a nightmare because there are very few places where there's a market for gas.
00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:43.120
Whereas oil is really simple, you just put it in a ship or in a barrel and then you ship it somewhere.
00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:47.680
But but packaging gas is extraordinarily difficult and expensive.
00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:53.199
You need to build a very long pipeline or an LNG plant for tens of billions.
00:07:53.360 --> 00:08:01.680
And so what happens when you have a field that's largely developed for oil and you have what's called associated gas, essentially it's a problem.
00:08:01.759 --> 00:08:03.439
You need to get rid of it.
00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:15.920
And what you can do is you can either burn it, which is flaring, or uh you can vent it, you just let it escape to the atmosphere.
00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:25.279
Or the other thing you can do is, and sometimes it's necessary, you re-inject it into the field in order to increase the pressure to pull out the oil.
00:08:25.519 --> 00:08:32.240
But when you have this excess gas that you don't know what to do with, there's often very few options but to flare it.
00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:34.159
Flaring looks worse.
00:08:34.399 --> 00:08:41.039
Those flames on top of the tall stacks that permanently haze the air around oil operations, those are flares.
00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:46.960
But flaring at least burns the methane, and that converts some of it into carbon dioxide.
00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:54.240
CO2 has a global warming potential that is in the short term at least 84 times lower than methanes.
00:08:54.559 --> 00:08:58.559
The problem is Many flares are inefficient.
00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:01.840
So they don't burn a hundred percent of the gas.
00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:12.000
It varies between fifty percent and almost a hundred, which means that when they're flaring, there's still a lot of gas that escapes.
00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:17.840
This is usually because the quality of the flaring process itself isn't always that good.
00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:25.279
Any number of factors can reduce the burning efficiency of flares from the age of equipment being used to the weather.
00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:29.200
You know, the numbers are unclear because there's so few measurements.
00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.720
We're only getting to the era of empirical measurement now, right?
00:09:32.879 --> 00:09:38.320
Uh there's one paper that has measured almost all US flares.
00:09:38.559 --> 00:09:43.679
It's the only place where it's comprehensively surveyed, and the average efficiency in the US is 91%.
00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:44.559
Okay.
00:09:44.639 --> 00:09:45.200
It's pretty good.
00:09:45.759 --> 00:09:46.159
Terrible.
00:09:46.399 --> 00:09:46.720
Really?
00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:48.000
It's terrible, right.
00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:50.080
It could it could be 99.8.
00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:55.360
So there's 9% of the gas is is vented, and they're huge volumes.
00:09:55.679 --> 00:09:59.279
I suppose, yeah, percentages matter when you're talking about the volumes that you're talking about.
00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:09.759
The volumes are enormous, and so if we could get all of the world's flares to more than 99%, it would have an enormous climate contribution instantaneously.
00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:16.159
And there have been huge moves afoot already in recent years to ban non-emergency flaring in the oil and gas industry.
00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:22.240
Policymakers often suggest that unwanted gas should be captured and sold into the market instead of flared.
00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:27.360
But for oil producers, often in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't always work.
00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:29.120
I mean, let's take the US.
00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:32.240
The US flares an enormous amount of gas.
00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:41.840
It is by far the most efficient and liquid gas market, and yet also there they can't manage to get their the gas to market.
00:10:42.159 --> 00:10:42.639
For Dr.
00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:50.879
Cooper's regulating flaring efficiency so that more methane gets burnt off is far more likely to achieve results.
00:10:51.279 --> 00:10:57.600
I think there should be equal focus on flaring well as on eliminating flaring.
00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:03.200
It's actually not that hard to get to 100% flaring efficiency.
00:11:03.519 --> 00:11:13.840
I mean it costs, you know, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to tweak your flare to get to to 100% almost 100% flare efficiency.
00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:19.200
It costs untold billions to put out the flare and bring the gas to market.
00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:27.039
Literally, by the end of this year, technically you could get all US flares at 99.8%.
00:11:28.159 --> 00:11:34.080
There is no way by the end of this year you could get all that, eliminate the flares and get the gas to market.
00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:37.600
So my view is let's do both, right?
00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:47.039
Let's immediately improve the efficiency of all flares and look at eliminating them in the medium to long term.
00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:54.000
And even better is eliminating the use of fossil fuels entirely, which is where I need to go to anyway.
00:11:55.039 --> 00:12:04.159
While inefficient flaring is bad enough, venting or allowing the gas to simply escape is even worse from a climate warming perspective.
00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:18.720
Instead of converting methane into CO2 with yes, some methane left over in the plume, now you really are delivering the whole volume of methane with its far higher climate impact straight into the atmosphere directly.
00:12:19.039 --> 00:12:28.240
Venting happens frequently for safety reasons too, but it's sadly also a long-running feature of routine operations on oil and gas infrastructure.
00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:30.799
So there are two kinds of venting.
00:12:30.879 --> 00:12:37.919
There's routine venting, and that should be completely eliminated instantly and replaced with high efficiency flaring.
00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:49.519
And then there's security venting, is basically, you know, if there's a pressure overbuilt in some part of the system, sometimes there's a security valve that pops and gas is released.
00:12:49.759 --> 00:12:53.600
You know, that's largely unavoidable because it's a safety mechanism.
00:12:53.679 --> 00:12:55.679
But those are relatively small volumes.
00:12:55.759 --> 00:12:59.840
So there's emergency venting, which is just part of the safety of the plant.
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:05.679
But routine venting should be absolutely stopped instantaneously.
00:13:05.919 --> 00:13:19.039
But one of the unforeseen consequences of these campaigns against uh flaring is that we know of a number of companies that have said, sure, we'll turn off the flares and we'll just vent the gas.
00:13:19.919 --> 00:13:24.240
Which makes the problem almost a hundred times worse from a climate perspective, right?
00:13:24.399 --> 00:13:32.159
If if you know, if you turn it from a vent to high efficiency flare, the climate impact is reduced 84 fold.
00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:35.200
So it's a huge climate improvement.
00:13:35.360 --> 00:13:46.159
And so this is a really unforeseen consequence of this strong campaign against flaring is that people some companies say, okay, we'll just vent it, then we'll get these NGOs off our back.
00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:55.759
Monitoring deliberate venting and flaring of methane gas from the extractive sector is one thing.
00:13:55.919 --> 00:14:02.960
But as anyone who has opened a gas hose will know gas can leak by accident too.
00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:15.120
Someone else who keeps a close watch over methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is Professor Deborah Gordon, based at Brown University's Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs in the US.
00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:23.120
So I think the first very simple thing for someone to understand is methane is mostly gas.
00:14:23.759 --> 00:14:33.519
The gas that we produce, and gas is invisible, it's odorless until it's in the final stage of transmission, and it's under pressure.
00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:36.720
So its natural tendency is to leak.
00:14:37.279 --> 00:14:51.200
Gas leaks, also known as fugitive methane emissions, can occur at any stage of the production line, moving from one transport vessel to another, extracting, reheating, and ultimately end use too.
00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:54.240
So coal leaks methane, but from the mine.
00:14:54.960 --> 00:15:17.679
Gas leaks methane everywhere in the supply chain, potentially, from the production, from the well, from the actual extraction site, through all of these gathering lines and transmission lines, and then also in terms of the utility and home appliances, and if you add liquefied natural gas from liquefaction terminals, from ships, regasification, and pipelines at the other end.
00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:22.639
So the gas supply chain is very complex, way more complex than coal.
00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:26.720
And we haven't successfully yet mastered it.
00:15:26.879 --> 00:15:33.600
And it's growing in its reach and it's leaky, and it's variably leaky all over the place.
00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:38.399
The scale of the total gas leak problem, we don't really know.
00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:47.519
On average, from what satellites have found, what would you say are this the current gas leakage rates that we're seeing?
00:15:47.919 --> 00:15:56.720
The leakage rates are hugely varying, which to my mind, and I started my career in the in this industry, is the story of this industry.
00:15:56.879 --> 00:16:15.279
High variance, very high variance, both in terms of operators, in terms of resources and what they are into the ground, and now in terms of methane leakage, the leakage rates that have been cited in studies that we have in the paper, and we cite them all, are from 0.6% to 66%.
00:16:16.559 --> 00:16:19.360
So that's a thousand-fold difference.
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:26.960
Who who is leaking, who is leaking their gas, 66% of what they're like extracting?
00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:28.000
Who is doing that?
00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:29.600
It's a great question.
00:16:29.679 --> 00:16:37.679
And I think it's it's it might be a relatively limited number of producers, but they're still important.
00:16:37.919 --> 00:16:45.840
It turns out that that 66% came from offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in state waters.
00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:49.919
And what's happening there is that these are oil platforms.
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.360
Now, this is really common in the UK and the North Sea on the UK side.
00:16:53.519 --> 00:17:00.960
These are oil platforms that were designed sometimes 30 or 40 years ago to produce oil.
00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:06.559
They're not designed to contain the gas and they don't have takeaway capacity for the gas.
00:17:06.960 --> 00:17:17.359
So over time, as the fields might become more gassy, and these resources change underground as you produce them, you don't have anything to do with the gas but to throw it into the atmosphere.
00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:21.920
Getting a handle on quantifying these emissions is harder than it might seem.
00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:31.119
In fact, it's only recently with some mammoth investigation efforts that scientists have been able to start putting some accurate numbers together.
00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:36.720
This might seem like it's academic, but it has ramifications when it comes to trying to mitigate.
00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:42.000
Roland Cooper's again from IMAO, the International Methane Emissions Observatory.
00:17:42.559 --> 00:17:49.119
If it's between leaks, venting and flaring in terms of emissions, do you do we have any sense of which contributes most?
00:17:49.839 --> 00:17:54.880
We have a sense, but they're based on these emission factors that we're trying to get rid of.
00:17:55.519 --> 00:17:57.279
We're trying to get people to measure.
00:17:57.599 --> 00:18:03.759
I mean, our chief scientist says that, you know, half of the emissions can be fixed by a guy with a wrench.
00:18:03.920 --> 00:18:07.839
And and and this is a powerful image because it's actually true.
00:18:08.079 --> 00:18:10.960
A lot of this is is really silly stuff.
00:18:11.279 --> 00:18:13.519
Valves that are open that should be closed.
00:18:13.839 --> 00:18:17.839
And of course, you know, when you get to the second 50%, it becomes harder, right?
00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:23.200
You have to swap out, you have to have different equipment and design, etc., and it becomes more difficult.
00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:26.559
But the initial reductions tend to be really easy.
00:18:27.359 --> 00:18:28.640
So, the challenge?
00:18:28.799 --> 00:18:31.200
Leaks need to be found to be stopped.
00:18:31.359 --> 00:18:33.920
Emissions need to be monitored and quantified.
00:18:34.079 --> 00:18:42.559
And since methane is colourless, odorless, and otherwise undetectable without equipment, that requires a massive detection effort.
00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:55.680
Methane hunters, as they are now called, are usually environmentalists, scientists, or regulatory officials who use a range of sophisticated technology to call attention to methane leaks.
00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:03.680
Next up, we meet some methane hunters and find out about some of the equipment they use to spot methane one leak at a time.
00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:09.759
But before we get there, there's a whole other category of methane that has nothing to do with energy at all.
00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:13.759
All of the methane emissions from energy are thermogenic.
00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:15.279
There's another kind.
00:19:18.079 --> 00:19:20.000
Biogenic methane.
00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:28.480
To talk us through this and how methane gets produced and recycled naturally, I'd like to introduce you to Philippe Siez.
00:19:46.880 --> 00:19:51.200
I spoke to him about the natural and biological sources of methane.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:20:03.440
And even though all CH4 does the same thing when it reaches the atmosphere, we also talked a little about the tricks scientists can use to tell the difference between methane from the different origins.
00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:13.759
When we're talking about emissions from agriculture, like from livestock and rice, those seem like very uh different kinds of agricultural products.
00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:17.119
What is it that they have in common that creates these methane emissions?
00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:25.039
They have in common the same bacteria because uh what is producing methane is specific bacteria.
00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:30.079
They live in the guts of livestock animals when they digest grass.
00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:41.680
There is no oxygen in the guts of the animals, and this is favorable for the bacteria living in their body to produce methane that escapes to the atmosphere.
00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:47.680
In most common preconceptions, it's cow farts that generate the methane.
00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:56.960
But burps are actually the bigger problem, caused by a process called enteric fermentation.
00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:08.400
Plus, there's cow manure, around a quarter of the methane from cows, emanates from the decomposition of their waste.
00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:17.920
And here's the thing, cow numbers have risen from 410 million to almost 1.5 billion over the past 130 years.
00:21:18.160 --> 00:21:27.359
According to one study in the US, one cow can emit up to 220 pounds or 100 kilograms of methane every year.
00:21:27.519 --> 00:21:29.200
It isn't just cows, of course.
00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:37.440
Sheep and goats have these methane-producing bacteria in their stomachs too.
00:21:37.680 --> 00:21:39.039
Every ruminant does.
00:21:39.599 --> 00:21:47.200
But because the number of cows on the planet is so large and each cow is so big, cows produce more.
00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:50.720
More, in fact, than all other ruminants combined.
00:21:51.039 --> 00:21:52.640
So that's livestock.
00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:53.920
What about rice?
00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:56.000
Rice is very similar.
00:21:56.079 --> 00:21:59.759
It's the same kind of bacteria, simply they live at the bottom of the soil.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:02.559
The soil is flooded, and it's the same story.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:03.680
There is no oxygen.
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:15.599
There is organic matter at the bottom of the rice paddies, and the bacteria eat it and they produce methane that you know makes small bubbles and escapes to the atmosphere from the rice paddies.
00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:29.759
So the basic process is that you have important bacteria on Earth that live under a low on oxygen environment, and those bacteria like to produce methane.
00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:38.000
So, three preconditions bacteria living off organic matter and an absence of oxygen.
00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:50.160
These bacteria, also known as methanogens, as in methane generating, are responsible for the methane emissions in landfill sites too, and from liquid wastes like sewers.
00:22:50.480 --> 00:23:00.400
It's not the waste itself that gives off methane, it's bacteria feeding on the organic waste, old food basically, or vegetation as it's decomposing.
00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:12.720
In normal conditions, the digesting of organic waste happens aerobically, as in with oxygen, and it's performed by your standard run-of-the-mill all-around us bacteria.
00:23:12.799 --> 00:23:20.799
But they've evolved to give off CO2 because the carbon that they're chomping down on reacts with the oxygen in the air around them.
00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:25.359
They take that oxygen away and there's nothing left to make CO2.
00:23:25.599 --> 00:23:27.680
So those microbes move out.
00:23:27.839 --> 00:23:33.680
And what I think of as the more hardcore oxygen-defying methanogens take over.
00:23:34.240 --> 00:23:39.359
Most of the bacteria, most of the microbes which live in the soil, they emit CO2.
00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:52.160
And when you have no oxygen, those uh CO2 emitting bacteria cannot live, and they leave place to methane emitting ones that have the capability to live in low oxygen environments, and those are producing methane.
00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:56.559
So that's the difference, a low or a high oxygen environment.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:57.440
Exactly.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:04.559
And there is no oxygen in the guts of the ruminants and also at the bottom of the rice bodies.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:17.279
And uh generally also in wetlands, wetlands are also waterlogged, there is no oxygen, and this is the reason why natural wetlands beyond rice bodies, which are like agricultural wetlands, are also emitting wetlands.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.480
Wetlands can take many forms.
00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:29.519
Swamps, lakes, rivers, marshes, estuaries, even waterlogged soils in forests count as types of wetland.
00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:37.519
From a CO2 storage and a biodiversity perspective, these ecosystems are priceless.
00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:43.279
But at the same time, they are also one of the world's largest sources of methane.
00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:54.799
Methane is produced at the bottom of wetlands which are permanently flooded system because of those famous bacteria that uh, you know, like low oxygen environment.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:08.559
Wetland methane emissions and natural sources in general are fascinating in their own right, not least because they are incredibly sensitive to the rising temperatures that are being caused by climate change already.
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:13.599
Methane is uh in particular methane from wetlands, it's very sensitive to climate change.
00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:17.680
You have a processed bacteria which is emitting uh emissions.
00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:26.000
It depends on temperature, and if you change the temperature, if you change the precipitation, uh you know nothing prevents emissions to increase.
00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:34.480
Uh there is no, you know, strong limit to uh uh the amount of carbon that can be produced and released at methane in uh in wetlands.
00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:38.000
There is a lot of carbon as a substrate for bacteria to eat.
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:43.200
So the process is not going to be limited by the exhaustion of food for bacterias.
00:25:43.359 --> 00:25:47.920
It's only going to be limited by uh temperature and precipitation conditions.
00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:59.039
This creates a worrying threat of methane feedback on the climate, which we look at with Philippe and others in more detail in a whole episode on the topic later on.
00:25:59.359 --> 00:26:06.160
But as far as our own human-driven sources of biogenic methane, there's something we need to acknowledge.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:14.240
We can't control these methanogens and stop them feeding on buried or waterlogged bio waste where they find it.
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:24.559
We can only limit the environments in which they thrive, reduce the organic waste they use for food, or turn their deoxygenated environments into oxygenated ones.
00:26:24.799 --> 00:26:25.359
Here's Dr.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:30.799
Roland Cooper's again on some of the strategies that are being thought through to deal with these problems.
00:26:31.279 --> 00:26:40.240
On waste, there's a practical solution which is to run pipes through landfills and suck out the methane and either flare it or use it.
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:48.799
The structural solution long term is keeping organic waste out of landfills because it's the organic waste that rots and create the methane.
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:56.799
So if you don't put it in there in the first place, but you use it to compost and other things, then you you actually have no more methane emission issue.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:01.680
Um there's one country, for example, uh South Korea has done that very successfully.
00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:09.839
They separate almost all organic waste from and none of the organic waste goes into landfill, so the landfills have no methane emissions.
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:13.119
So this is but but that's obviously not a trivial task, right?
00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:17.039
It's easier said than done to roll this out across the population.
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:27.119
Agricultural and waste methane emissions barely feature in regulatory and policy plans to cut our methane emissions.
00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:28.000
Why?
00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:32.480
I put that question to some of our contributors who work in methane industry.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:35.839
I focus on oil and gas strongly.
00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:38.000
We also look at the others.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:40.720
Because it's a very different system.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:52.799
The oil and gas industry is is constituted of very large companies that have access to technology who are well capitalized.
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.839
So they have a lot of agency to fix this.
00:27:56.319 --> 00:28:05.039
If you if you want to get you know hundreds of millions of rice farmers to change their habits, and you know, it's a very different kind of problem.
00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:09.359
The solutions may be known, but the theory of change is very different.
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:18.400
So this is the reason we focus on uh most strongly and first and foremost on oil and gas, but we shouldn't forget these other sectors.
00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:24.079
And Kim O'Dowd, a methane campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency.
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:28.720
Why is tackling agriculture and waste so much harder?
00:28:29.279 --> 00:28:33.759
And what would need to happen for us to be able to start tackling that?
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:36.079
For agriculture, it's complicated.
00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:45.440
When we talk about agriculture methane, we have to think mostly of countries in the global north where we overconsume meat.
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:51.759
And it's difficult to talk about this subject because people don't want to be told that they should eat less meat, for example.
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:59.839
It touches more on personal habits than energy, for example, where it's just companies.
00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:11.920
We can look into technical solutions for agriculture, but from research, we know that the actual way to reduce math animation from the agriculture sector is just reducing our consumption of meat in developed countries.
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:15.119
And putting that into policies is very complicated.
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:27.200
And it's not impossible, and countries have taken steps towards that, uh, notably the Netherlands, who is trying to promote alternative proteins and trying to kind of balance animal protein and plant-based proteins.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:37.920
Um, so it's possible, but we just need more, I guess, more idea, but also just a bit of um courage.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:41.359
I don't know if courage is the right term, but I mean it's it's a tricky thing.
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:43.519
We don't need to all become vegetarian vegans.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:44.559
That's not what we're saying.
00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:46.160
Just we need to reduce methane.
00:29:46.240 --> 00:29:52.000
Uh we just need to reduce uh meat consumption, align with what the World Health Organization actually recommends.
00:29:52.079 --> 00:29:54.319
So it's not just a climate issue, but it's also a health issue.
00:29:54.400 --> 00:30:02.480
And we we need to communicate around those things to show that there's enormous co-benefits in reducing methane in the agriculture sector.
00:30:03.039 --> 00:30:15.200
And finally, here's what my own colleague, Raul Kazan, had to say about it when I challenged him on whether or not it was fair for the oil and gas industry to bear the brunt for the world's methane problem.
00:30:15.759 --> 00:30:17.359
My response is the following.
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:21.279
Uh this is a part-to-hole relationship.
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:28.079
I mean, uh the industry or energy production has to has its own part.
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:32.880
Uh agriculture has its own part, and waste has its own part.
00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:37.920
So everybody have uh their parts, their of responsibility.
00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:39.599
So there you have it.
00:30:39.839 --> 00:30:45.920
The main anthropogenic sources of methane, and a little on its biggest natural source too.
00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:56.079
Before we finish and head into the next episode, there's one more question on methane from its different sources that you might be wondering, and that's worth answering here.
00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:59.119
How do we know which emissions come from where?
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:11.839
Obviously we can track that certain activities like drilling for oil, transporting gas or mining coal give off methane, but how do we know how much of the rise is due to which source?
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:34.880
Here's Philippe Sears again with a quick version of the answer from the records that we have, from atmospheric records, knowing where the methane is coming from, agricultural sources, livestock, rice, or oil and gas, for example, leaks, how do we can you track in the atmosphere where the where that methane has come from?
00:31:35.119 --> 00:31:36.160
Uh it's a good question.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:47.839
We would like to, but uh 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.
00:31:48.079 --> 00:32:03.119
Uh for this uh we have to use uh inventories, so we have to use reconstructions of the activity of uh humans in the past, like uh how many livestocks were there in the last century and how much gas we have extracted.
00:32:03.359 --> 00:32:13.279
However, we still have some atmospheric toolkits which are called methane isotopes because uh there are a few uh heavier carbon atoms.
00:32:13.519 --> 00:32:19.119
Methane is CH4, there is one carbon atom and it's surrounded by four hydrogen ones.
00:32:19.279 --> 00:32:23.039
And sometimes this carbon atom is a bit uh heavier.
00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:28.079
Uh it contains uh 13 uh neutrons instead of 12 normally.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:33:02.319
And this abundance of methane isotope uh tells us unfortunately not about oil and gas versus agriculture, but it tells us about all the bacterial processes, or everything which is produced by bacteria means wetland and livestock and rice together, versus everything which is produced by oil and gas, because oil and gas has a distinct isotopic color, isotopic label compared to bacterial production, which happens both for livestock and rice and wetlands.
00:33:02.559 --> 00:33:25.519
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 uh and also coal mines, uh coal extraction is also emitting methane.
00:33:25.759 --> 00:33:30.640
So this is very useful to have those additional like isotopic data.
00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:38.160
We'll leave Philippe for now to get on with his dinner and a clearly very hungry cat.
00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:42.720
But if all of that talk of isotopes got your head spinning, don't worry.
00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:48.799
It's something we'll unpack a little more when we head out hunting for methane in the next episode.
