The Alberta government is making an additional $33 million available to advance technologies for cutting emissions of methane from industries that include oil and gas.
The money comes from Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), formerly Climate Change and Emissions Management Corp., which is funded by large emitters paying into the province’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund to comply with emission-reduction targets.
Methane-reduction projects will be selected competitively. Winners will be eligible for as much as $5 million each.
The program targets medium and long-term opportunities to lower methane emissions from oil and gas, agriculture, and landfills as well as improvements in methane detection and quantification.
The total earmarked by ERA for methane reduction is now $40 million.
The program is part of Alberta’s commitment under its climate-change mitigation plan to reduce methane emissions by 45% by 2025.
Since 2009, the ERA has committed more than $300 million to more than 100 projects targeting emissions of all types of greenhouse gas. The projects have a combined value of more than $2 billion.
