Comment: Voluntary methane cuts would help limit GHG emissions

Feb. 21, 2005
Just last week, the Kyoto Protocol set binding limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for many industrialized nations of the world, not including the US or developing nations like China.

Just last week, the Kyoto Protocol set binding limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for many industrialized nations of the world, not including the US or developing nations like China.

Discussions over the wisdom of US nonparticipation will continue, but in the midst of the hubbub over Kyoto's Feb. 16 starting date, let's pause and consider actions already under way that have nothing to do with the treaty.

For openers, voluntary steps have already reduced carbon emissions from industry to a point below what they were in 1990.

And consider methane—the main component of natural gas and a major GHG that is almost ignored by the countries that signed the Kyoto agreement.

Curtailing methane releases would take the nations of the world a long way toward slowing the growth of GHGs, and in the view of some scientists, stabilize their growth in the world.

With little notice, industries and governments and institutions like the World Bank have joined not only to reduce methane emissions, but to harvest clean-burning methane for heating houses, cooking food, and producing electric power in many countries, including the developing world.

American Petroleum Institute CEO, Pres. Red Cavaney
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How is this happening? Methane, a highly concentrated GHG, is often a waste byproduct of oil and natural gas production. Instead of burning it off, or flaring, companies are redirecting methane for sale in local energy markets, especially in developing nations. Leaks can also be dramatically reduced.

One of the most successful of these programs is the US Environmental Protection Agency's "Natural Gas STAR" program—a successful, unheralded effort that has encouraged companies to reduce methane emissions. So far, the amount of methane diverted from the atmosphere is the equivalent of the GHGs produced annually by 30 million cars.

Now, EPA has taken Gas STAR overseas in "Methane to Markets Partnership" among US businesses, including American Petroleum Institute member companies, and 14 natural gas-producing nations.

Meanwhile, at the World Bank, there is the Global Gas Flaring Reduction program, which US oil and natural gas companies are also vigorously supporting. The World Bank's goal is to reduce 100 million cu m of natural gas that is either burned off or released (vented) into the air each year, mainly from developing countries. That amount of gas could meet the annual consumption of Germany and France.

Two prominent climate scientists, Drs. James Hansen and Makiko Sato of National Aeronautics & Space Administration's Goddard Space Institute, have concluded that if emissions of methane and other similar GHGs—other than carbon dioxide—were controlled, climate change could be stabilized.

Hansen and Sato say if methane and other trace gases were reduced, increases in world temperatures would be limited to 1º C. even if CO2 levels continue to rise.

They argue that the debate over implementing the Kyoto Protocol and CO2 reductions will go on for decades. Kyoto, they say, "gives too little or no weight to gases such as methaneU.

"We could get moving now on non-CO2 gases with benefits such as improved human health, in addition to a slowing of global warming," the two scientists said in a new report prepared for the National Academy of Sciences.