It's true that lowering capacity factors for fossil gas generators helps, but I think even most energy wonks don't appreciate how much methane is emitted from the supply chain that feeds those generators. It's enormous and the leaks are about the same whether the plant runs 80% or 20% of the time.
a submerged swimmer with 30 feet to get back to the surface, doesn't have much choice but to ascend the first foot. There's more to do, but you have to start.
Also, the leaks are self-reported and magically often come in at exactly the level of "if it was higher than this it'd be worse than coal".
The costs from that supply chain are also largely fixed, so we’ll see overhead on those gas costs increase
Definitely.
An interesting point of confluence is, that the methane factor could be overridden by hydrogen - even with additional safety factors involved with a hydrogen economy.
The EIA expects that less than 1% of hydrogen will be produced by electrolyzers by 2050. EIA does not project how much of that hydrogen will be produced using renewable energy - but one can assume much less than 1%. Most hydrogen is and will be produced from methane. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
Most hydrogen can be produced very clean, and remain so. We've been able to do so for decades - as we've done with the best baseload energy available... that fossil fuels has suppressed successfully for decades. Follow the money.
Interesting. Either way, it takes policy changes to stop leakage. The IRA tried a little. Would the fossil fuel companies stop fighting the transition if you paid them 10x what the IRA was going to do to plug leakage? Is there any amount of bribery that would work? Currently they hold the cards. ...
Could a nonprofit be funded with private Gates foundation $$ or something to fix the leaks that the fossil fuel companies won't do? Could it even put a dent in the problem?
I mean, in theory we could measure their pollution and fine or eventually imprison them if they don't stop it. This is a thing that happens for other pollution.
In theory, but that involves huge Democratic majorities which probably isn't happening in this lifetime. Why not do it for them through a Gates (or whatever) funded nonprofit? Maybe the World community would help. Who knows? Would the FF companies actually refuse this gift?
Could some rich people donate methane mitigation to the other rich people who own wells and pipelines? I don't see why not. Plenty of room to work on this from multiple directions. I think we need a strong Dem majority for 47,828 other reasons, and would like to be ready with good climate policy.
I estimated in this paper that - even using the mild 100-year global warming potential - methane from US fossil gas infrastructure is about a gigatonne of CO2-equivalent per year. The *entire electricity sector* (not counting methane) is only 1.5 gigatonnes per year.
Important work. It not only shows the limits of lowering the capacity factors of gas plants, it also highlights the flaws with most of the discussions of CCS benefits (which largely ignore upstream methane leakage).
Thanks John. Good point.
Has anyone taken a look at how much leakage rates (relative to throughput or energy or both) go up if capacity factors fell and pipes serve more of a storage function?
I haven't seen data that on that in the context of power plants. Not saying it doesn't exist, I just haven't seen it if it does. @profbobhowarth.bsky.social any idea? In the context of urban distribution pipelines, a study found that emission rates were mostly insensitive to gas use. Let me dig...
Okay, the data I was thinking of show that methane emissions do correlate with gas use. Over 8 years in Boston, methane emissions from gas distribution/use were 28-58% lower in summer than in winter, likely due to less gas heating.
Emissions also dropped 22-42% during April 2020 (Boston covid lockdown) relative to other Aprils, likely due to less gas cooking in restaurants. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
"We find that NG emissions and consumption are highly cor- related. This is surprising, because distribution pipelines, thought to be a dominant source of NG losses, are at fairly constant pressure year-round, and thus, their emissions are not expected to vary with consumption."
From those data, very roughly, it looks like about half of methane emissions from urban gas systems scale with gas use and about half do not.
Thanks for tracking that down!
With methane converted to CO2e using the 20-year GWP, US gas infrastructure emits about 2.5 gigatonnes per year, 67% more than the entire electricity sector. Even if we waved a magic wand and cleaned up 100% of US electricity, we'd still have a gigatonne problem every year from the wells and pipes.
We might have to take a step back & admit that nobody who's anybody wants to change this course. There are still lots of profits out there for those willing to lie to the public. 🤷♂️