New NASA Study Solves Climate Mystery, Confirms Methane Spike Tied to Oil and Gas
NASA study finds oil and gas industry as source of 68% of methane emissions. Methane emissions have been on the increase as more gas is being used for power generation and as fracking has increased.
This research casts doubt on whether replacing coal with natural gas is an effective strategy for fighting climate change. Methane is a much more potent warming gas than carbon dioxide even if it is removed more quickly. So increasing methane in an effort to decrease carbon dioxide seems to be a tradeoff between faster climate change and longer lasting climate change.
Replacing coal with renewables and natural gas peakers with batteries would seem to be a more direct route to heading off climate change.
But there are other disturbing implications.
There are renewable sources of natural gas, but methane is methane. Much of the mathane emission problem is around handling and distributing gas, not the actual combustion of gas. So while RNG may be net zero carbon when combusted, it can still be a serious source of methane emissions along the way.
A carbon tax may well backfire if it unwittingly leads to an increase in methane. We should probably recalibrate our language to advocate for a greenhouse gas emissions tax or GHG tax, rather than a carbon tax. A political problem here is that much of the oil and gas industry has been warming up to a carbon tax, but to parse this out this gives oil and gas the upper hand against coal. A comprehensive GHG tax would not so easily throw coal under the bus to the benefit of natural gas. Rather, it would disadvantage all fossil fuels with respect to renewables and storage. Of course, a narrow carbon tax may still be a shrewd divide and conquer political strategy, but I suspect that it is risky.
Methane emissions also cast doubt on oil and gas as feed stock for plastics and other petrochemicals. The problem is that drilling for oil or gas is itself a major emission of methane, and so is piping it to processing and petrochem plants. So the oil industry has been promoting the idea that it will have long lasting growth markets in petrochem, but even this may be at odds with slowing climate change.
As transportation becomes electrified, this will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, methane emission could remain and become the relatively more significant problem. The complexity of trying to halt all GHG emissions could impede progress into deep decarbonization. So we need to be very careful about solutions that lower CO2 at the expense of increasing methane. So far wind, solar, and batteries as well as hydro and nuclear seem most promising for reducing all GHGs. Bioenergy may have some methane issues with gasification. RNG may have issues. Hydrogen fuel cells have lots of issues. And all fossil fuels for pretty much any use is very problematic.
One nice difference between methane and carbon dioxide is that methane may not create as much long term damage as carbon dioxide. So there may be some low threshold of methane emissions that sustainable, while for carbon dioxide well need to press toward zero or even negative emissions. A future generation may be more challenged to control methane emissions than carbon dioxide. But it seems the more built up the CO2 levels are, the less leeway there could be for managing methane.
Nevertheless, the central challenge for the present generation is simply to cut fossil dependency. Switch gas for coal is not going far enough.
