What is colorless, odorless, is the main component of natural gas and traps enormous amounts of heat in the atmosphere?
The answer is methane or CH4.
Over a 20-year period, methane traps about 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when burning fossil fuels and is probably the most famous greenhouse gas of all.
The key difference between them is how long they stay. On average, methane fades away after about 12 years, while CO2 continues to warm the planet for centuries.
That means CO2 is the biggest contributor to climate change, but potent methane still wreaks plenty of havoc in its short life. HeIt is responsible for around 20-30% of global warming since the Industrial Revolution.
Where does methane come from?
Methane Sometimes it comes from non-human sources such as wetlands.
These habitats contain things like permafrost, which is frozen soil that is also full of carbon from animals and plants that have been dead for hundreds of thousands of years.
As temperatures rise with global warming, wetland permafrost is melting. That releases carbon, previously locked in the ice, in the form of CO2 and methane.
But 60% of the methane that reaches the atmosphere comes from human activities. This can be due to agriculture (think cow burps and farts and manure fertilizer), but also to the decomposition of waste in landfills and the energy sector.
How does the energy sector work? release methane?
Most of the energy Human consumption comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Oil and gas They are responsible for the majority of methane emissions in the energy sector. tGreenhouse gases are released when companies produce, transport and store these fossil fuels.
Methane emissions can happen unintentionally. For example, it often escapes into the atmosphere when equipment is rusted or damaged or even has something as simple as a loose screw.
So there is gas burning. That’s when operators burn natural gas tied to oil production. Resplendent It converts methane into CO2 which is then released into the atmosphere, but raw methane can still escape during the process.
Sometimes companies They release small amounts of natural gas directly into the atmosphere, called venting.
Operators turn on and ventilate because it can be expensive to process and transport the relatively small amount of gas that comes out of the ground during oil extraction. Or they do it for safety reasons, such as to reduce dangerous pressure surges.
What can we do to reduce methane emissions?
He The solutions can be surprisingly simple sometimes. According to the International Energy Agency, oil and gas companies could reduce their methane emissions by a whopping 75% if they detected and repaired leaks. He It literally comes down to faulty plumbing and equipment upgrades.
ThatThat’s why the European Union passed a regulation last year requiring fossil fuel companies to routinely measure, report and reduce the amount of methane they emit. If they detect a leak, they must repair it within 15 business days.
The regulation also prohibits burning and ventilation in most cases. Ventilation is only permitted if there is a safety emergency. Flaring can only occur if it is not technically possible to reinject the natural gas into the ground at the site or transport it to another location.
Edited by: Jennifer Collins
