Obama's Crackdown on Methane Emissions Is a Really Big Deal

[babylonsister]

Obama's Crackdown on Methane Emissions Is a Really Big Deal

—By Tim McDonnell
| Wed Jan. 14, 2015 2:08 PM EST


Obama: Charles Dharapak/AP; Methane: Michelangelus/Shutterstock


This morning the White House announced a new plan to crack down on the oil and gas industry's emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The move is the last major piece of President Obama's domestic climate agenda, following in the footsteps of tougher standards for vehicle emissions and a sweeping plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Like the power plant plan, the methane standards will rely on the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate pollution under the Clean Air Act. The new rules will regulate the amount of methane that oil and gas producers are allow vent or leak from their wells, pipelines, and other equipment. Ultimately, according to the White House, the rules will slash methane emissions 40 to 45 percent by 2025. The proposal announced today is intended to be finalized before Obama leaves office, but it's certain to take a battering along the way from congressional Republicans and fossil fuel interest groups.

Methane makes up a much smaller slice of America's greenhouse gas footprint than carbon dioxide—the volume of methane released in a year is roughly 10 times smaller than the volume of CO2—so the proposal might seem like small potatoes. But it's actually a pretty huge deal, for a few reasons.

Locking in climate protection: An underlying assumption of Obama's carbon emissions plan is that many power plants will switch from burning coal to burning natural gas. That's great, if your only concern is carbon dioxide. But methane, the principal emission of natural gas consumption, is 20 times more powerful than CO2 over a 100-year timespan. The problem is less with natural gas-burning power plants themselves, but with the infrastructure (pipes, compressors, etc.) needed to get gas from where it's drilled to where it's burned—and also with venting, the burning of excess gas from wells. So far, those bits and pieces have proven to be exceptionally leaky—some studies have found up to 7.9 percent of the methane from natural gas production simply escapes into the air.

So if we replace our coal with natural gas but let methane go unchecked, we won't be much closer to meaningfully mitigating climate change, said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund. "Leak rates as low as 1 to 3 percent undo much of the benefit of going from coal to gas," he added. (Some climate scientists disagree with this assessment, arguing that CO2 from coal is significantly more damaging over the long run than methane leaks from natural gas operations.) The plan proposed today will focus on plugging leaks and will help ensure that the quest to curb carbon emissions doesn't simply shift our climate impact to another gas.

more...

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/01/obama-methane-crackdown-fracking-climate-change

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Will this cover the methane emissions

from the nether ends of certain members of Congress?

[Enrique]

2. +1 partly for the policy

but mostly for the picture.

[louis-t]

3. So this means it's time for our 'friends' across the aisle to

bring the "cow's burping cause more global warming than the entire oil industry" speeches out of mothballs?

[babylonsister]

4. Our friends are on their way. Their level of denial is about to

get disgusting and embarrassing. And very costly in so many ways.

[SidDithers]

5. DU rec...

Thanks for posting.

Sid

[zappaman]

6. Good luck stopping Mr. Methane!

http://www.mrmethane.com/

[babylonsister]

7. ...

nope, not going there.