Methane emissions: recovering it in the atmosphere would save the climate and solve the energy crisis

We talked about the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines and what happened in September in this article and if on the one hand the dynamics of the event are still under investigation, on the other what happened highlighted the European inadequacy in monitoring methane emissions. Contrary to what happens with CO2, in Europe today we have little knowledge of the potential of methane as a climate-altering gas, and what happened in the Baltic has made it clear.

In terms of anthropogenic emissions, methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and is responsible for about 30% of current warming; it also has an extraordinary ability to trap heat (technically GWP, global warming potential), equal to 84 times that of CO2 considering a period of 20 years and is a precursor oftropospheric ozone (not to be confused with ozone in the stratosphere – more than 10 km high – which protects us from solar UV).

Despite its danger CH4 emissions estimates are subject to a high degree of uncertaintyyet currently we would be able to recover much of the lost methane obtaining two results of great importance: significantly reduce the greenhouse effect present in the atmosphere while at the same time re-appropriating a precious resource.

According to the International Energy Agency (Iea), over 70% of the global methane emissions of the Oil & Gas industry can be recovered using the technologies available today, with minimal or marginal costs for suppliers. The Clean Air Task Force (CATF), one of the partner organizations of the Environmental Defense Fund, conducted an awareness campaign aimed at highlighting fugitive emissions of methane in Europe and those planned for the energy industry, documenting methane pollution from over 215 Oil & Gas plants in 13 EU countries for two years.

According to the IEA, if in 2021 the global losses of methane from fossil operations had been recovered and commercialized, the market would have had an availability of other 180 billion cubic meters of gas: to make a comparison, according to the estimates of Put our annual consumption of methane is between i 73 and 76 billion cubic meters.