Climate change: Curbing methane emissions will 'buy us time'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58174111

by vijayr02 • 5 years ago

35 70 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

adrianN9• 5 years ago

Natural gas displacing coal is good for CO2 emissions, but afaik methane leakage across the supply chain is not measured very well. I'm afraid that our usage of natural gas will continue to increase because it's so easy to greenwash. For example various lobbying groups try very hard to push for a Hydrogen economy that is largely based on natural gas.

makomk2• 5 years ago

Coal isn't exactly great in terms of methane emissions either. If I remember rightly, a bunch of unexplained methane in the atmosphere was tracked down to coal mining in China in particular.

8note2• 5 years ago

There was an agreement between Canada and the US to go about measuring it well, but I think when trump got elected, it was canned.

Mind you, I think nat gas usage will increase, since it lets us get rid of coal without having to have solved the hard problems around energy storage.

dillondoyle• 5 years ago

Natural Gas is also being heavily lobbied by power corps right now with the upcoming reconciliation bill. Not surprisingly they are all in on electric cars ;)

I'm very concerned the bill doesn't prioritize enough %spend on climate and that those provisions will get watered down. anything will still be 10x or more than all previous efforts combined. Just not enough...

https://www.eenews.net/articles/industry-looks-to-shape-demo...

alkonaut5• 5 years ago

Who is using all the fossil gas? Where is demand coming from? Residential? Is it a common source of heating for private residences in some countries? Which ones? If these countries are signatories of climate agreements should they not subsidize (with help from those of us that don’t need it) the phasing out of it?

Is electricity so expensive in some countries that burning fossil fuel for heat is cheaper than using an electrical heat pump? If that’s the case - wouldn’t a solution be to switch that around by taxes and subsidies so burning fossil fuels for heat is more expensive? (This of course assumes such countries can quickly switch electricity production if it’s using fossil to supply the electricity from renewable or nuclear).

adrianN9• 5 years ago

Russian gas is what keeps large parts of Europe warm in winter. Retrofitting heat pumps into buildings is quite expensive, which is why homeowners are reluctant to do it.

corty• 5 years ago

The electrical grid also cannot handle all-electric heating for all households, at least in Germany. France is different because of their big nuclear fleet.

Very often, green energy discussions forget that doing everything (heating, traffic, industrial processes) electrically needs an increase in electric capacity by a factor of 2 or 3 at least.

michieldotv5• 5 years ago

Quite expensive? That's understated. My understanding now is that it comes at the cost a modest new house.

Our family bought a house in the immediate periphery of a smaller city. Since most city housing here is old, the consequence of that decision is that our modest city home has abysmal energy efficiency.

I have wanted to renovate ever since we bought it, in order to cut down on our carbon footprint before 2030, but I have given up on the idea that we'll be able to afford a heat pump before then.

After having spoken with several architects, the building cost alone will eat up €200K without any frills. This will make our house smaller, by replacing poorly built annexes with a more compact and thus thermally efficient cube shaped annex. This comes on top of the mortgage that we took out.

So ironically, in making our home more energy efficient, we would also be making it smaller and less desirable in this regard, at a great expense. Tacking on a heat pump and PV panels would inflate the cost by another 10%.

That is the very real cost of making a home suitable for low energy heating systems.

Don't get me wrong, I'm counting my lucky stars that I'm able to consider such an undertaking, but going through this exercise myself is just a reality check of how dire the situation really is.

If we want to achieve net zero in housing, can we really do so at the cost of conventional building practices?

Talking about the local situation, less than a third of homes are from after 1981 [1]. That's millions of homes slated for a similarly-priced revamp. Who is going to foot the bill? Even with government incentives, some owners don't want to spend all that money on something as intangible as low energy housing, and others simply can't afford to.

[1] https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/housing/building-stock

rob743• 5 years ago

In this case, burning the natural gas is the lesser evil, the unburnt methane that gets into the atmosphere is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. But of course, if you have natural gas pipes going into every building, that will also lead to emissions of unburnt gas. However I don't think the problem is that huge, because methane gas leaks are an explosion hazard, so it's in everyone's interest to keep them to a minimum...

stephen_g2• 5 years ago

Yes, flaring gas is a slightly lesser evil. But I think it's the gas that misses being captured (even when they're trying) from the gas wells, the big pipelines and industrial facilities that are the real big problem sites for fugitive emissions.

I read a report that claimed that properly accounting for fugitive methane emissions (which have tended to be massively underestimated) actually brings gas back to being just as bad as coal in terms of global warming cost. But coal plants do emit huge quantities of other nasty pollutants apart from CO2, so gas is still slightly better in that way.

hannob• 5 years ago

Something that shoudln't be unterestimated is vested interests in gas grids, particularly local gas grids.

Lots of municipalities own gas grids or companies partly owned by the municipality own them. Your local major probably doesn't like the idea that this gas distribution grid which is a source of income for your town is likely worthless scrap in the not so far future.

This is also the reason why some grid operators push for hydrogen heating, with the idea that at some point in the future the gas grids will be coverted to hydrogen. Most experts in the space don't think this is very plausible, because it's unlikely that such a huge amount of green hydrogen will be produced and using fossil gas based hydrogen doesn't really make much sense. Also converting a grid from methane to hydrogen isn't trivial, there are safety concerns and compared to a heat pump this is excessively inefficient. But if you own a gas grid you may see things differently.

stephen_g2• 5 years ago

Electricity generation, residential (space heating, hot water heaters, cooktops), and as a feedstock for hydrogen, fertiliser, etc. production.

I'm in Australia, and we export most of the gas we produce - mostly for power stations in Japan and other places in the region I believe. We actually burn more gas to compress (liquefy) other gas for export than we use for electricity generation or in homes locally.

But yeah, it's really good to replace gas hot water, heating and cooking with heat pumps and induction stoves. Way more efficient and a good induction stove is just as good or better than gas (even though people who haven't used them will swear it can't be true). Heat pumps tend not to be able to fill your house with poisonous carbon monoxide (as can happen with gas heaters) or leak methane into your living space (which can be bad for a lot of reasons).

powderpig• 5 years ago

Is electricity so expensive in some countries that burning fossil fuel for heat is cheaper than using an electrical heat pump?

Yes. I can't remember the exact source but this charity covers it well. Up to 30% of Africa still burns kerosene for light.

https://solar-aid.org/news/black-carbon-and-the-kerosene-lam...

AndrewDucker2• 5 years ago

Per kWh gas heating is about ⅓ the cost of electric, unless you already have a heat pump. And fitting a ground source heat pump costs about £15k, so most people don't have the spare cash to switch over. We need government subsidies to make it happen generally.

makomk2• 5 years ago

Also, the running costs of a heat pump are reasonably comparable to gas heating, so you don't even really save money by doing this. (Plus they're more complex and expensive to replace when they break, the installation process is really disruptive and not practical for everyone, etc.) On top of that, a lot of the electricity to run them is going to come from burning gas anyway in most countries. They mostly seem to have caught on in places where gas wasn't plumbed out to so many homes, there are good reserves of dispatchable renewable sources like hydropower, or both.

alkonaut5• 5 years ago

Even I have trouble motivating the investment in a ground source pump in a really cold climate in Sweden. My regular air-water pump is around £4-7k and has a thermal efficiency (COP) of over 4 (so 1kw electricity is more than 4kw heat) and that’s with no digging or expensive installation.

I get that there is no way Central Europe will switch to ground source, but regular heat pumps should be cheap enough to subsidize.

fomine3• 5 years ago

Heat pump water heating system with simple air outside unit (similar to mini-split A/C), tank, and remote control is about 300k-500k JPY in Japan including construction cost.

spaniard892773• 5 years ago

In Italy and Spain electricity is very expensive, so many people uses natural gas for everything but lighting.

And the situation seems that it's going to increase even more.

alkonaut5• 5 years ago

How can it be so expansive?

Norging stands out in the stats.

Is this because people who use electric heating have old direct electric radiators? Don’t most homes in Spain or Italy these days have AC? Those are heat pumps so should be able to provide (some) heat in winter with reasonable efficiency.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

michieldotv5• 5 years ago

Belgium chiming in. For the longest time, the electricity bill was this kind of back door for politicians to sneak in stuff they wanted to keep out of the General Budget.

It started harmless enough, but it has spiraled out of control. Of course distribution and transmission need to factor into the energy price somehow, but unfortunately for our friend, the electricity bill, stuff got out of hand.

Government after government tasked transmission and distribution network companies with ever more duties.

In addition to the core business of running their networks, their obligations include, but aren't limited to: acting as the social energy provider of last resort, running the street lights, building and maintaining EV charging infrastructure, buying green energy certificates at predetermined prices, financing offshore wind interconnection, etc.

In light of these extended duties, the DSOs and TSOs then went to the energy market regulators and asked if they could raise prices. Of course, the regulators decided in their favor, or they'd be guilty of systematically underfunding the companies they're supposed to regulate.

The situation now is that 35-44% of the electricity bill is directly earmarked for these so called Public Service Obligations. Add some excise taxes, miscellaneous fees, sum them all up, add VAT to the subtotal, and you end up with a grand total of ⅔ of your electricity bill being spent... not on electricity.

Don't get me wrong: We should be subsidizing most of these things, but in light of the energy transition, the electricity bill is just about the worst place to hide the cost.

Meanwhile, the gas bill has only a fraction of these Public Service Obligations factored into them. How on earth is that right?

No wonder people are reluctant to install heat pumps. It makes no financial sense!

zyngaro• 5 years ago

At some point (now) we have to consider birth control as an answer to global warming.

Edit: my point is that we cannot feed the same food (rice, meat) an ever growing population and reduce greenhouse emissions at the same time.

rob743• 5 years ago

Yeah, of course, less humans = less problems for the planet. But that's an extremely unpopular idea, so you won't find any politicians to support it. Plus, the current growth-based economy (which BTW is also a major obstacle for long-term sustainability) is much harder to keep up with a shrinking population.

8note2• 5 years ago

Less humans, not so much.

Less rich humans, maybe? At this point, just getting rid of people probably still leaves the earth in a tailspin of overheating

tonyedgecombe2• 5 years ago

The countries with the highest emissions have already embraced that. Birth rates are well below replacement rates in the developed world.

yrro• 5 years ago

OTOH one American's share of US CO2 emissions is 7 times that of one Indian's share of India's CO2 emissions.

Even before you take into account billing emissions to the consumer, where they rightfully belong!

adrianN9• 5 years ago

Unless you want to reduce the population to ca. 0 by 2035, I don't see how population control can get us carbon neutral.

breakyerself• 5 years ago

We could just wipe out the populations in the developed world since thats where most of its coming from.

sunshineforever2• 5 years ago

Absolutely!

I don't have anything to add but this is the be all, end all.

NiceWayToDoIT7• 5 years ago

If we had 0 babies for next 10 years population would reduce only 700 million which is again 7 bn or level Earth had in 2011. But further down the line that 10 year gap would create devastating knowledge transfer impact and also economic impact 20 - 50 years later.

avereveard5• 5 years ago

"will buy China time"

The niche between current temperature and end of the world temperature will be exploited by growing nations until something is done about rich countries exploiting their low cost production to work around green laws

I'm done recycling, reusing and downsizing until legislation is enacted to prevent my effort toward the environment to become someone else profit.

rob743• 5 years ago

Is this China you speak of located on another planet?

avereveard5• 5 years ago

no, and that is the point, until we put pressure there, all effort done here is worthless.

adrianN9• 5 years ago

You should call your political representatives and ask for a carbon tax with tariffs on imports then.

peytn• 5 years ago

Sure thing, and whose carbon numbers should I tell them to use when they calculate the tariff? The figures reported by the PRC’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment?

avereveard5• 5 years ago

ahahahahahahahahah, you're a riot

NiceWayToDoIT7• 5 years ago

Let say we succeed to stop methane leakage from cows (algae feed, etc.) and also leakage from coal, oil and gas extraction.

How are we going to stop Siberian permafrost melting (it has huge amounts of methane ice) it has potentially 100 to 1000Gt (currently 5Gt in atmosphere CH4) which is enough to tip the temperature to 2-3C?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/02/climate-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmzTSYRJJE

This is from 8 years ago but it is very relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ

dan-robertson• 5 years ago

Cut down trees and introduce large fauna? With nothing to trample it down, the snow insulates the permafrost preventing it from cooling in the winter.

Not really a realistic suggestion though.

NiceWayToDoIT7• 5 years ago

I read the other day that in recent wildfire in Siberia, burned as much trees as it was planted in the entire world. And planted trees are young saplings they do not have ability to sequester same amount of CO2 like full grown trees.

I think it is this one: 'Russian fires burned 4.7 billion trees, seven times more than were planted' https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fire...

Just for the comparison 1 trillion trees project as of 30 May 2021, 164 restoration projects participate in the campaign and 13.96 billion trees have been planted worldwide.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign

And if we take that idea was founded in 1977 that means 44 years ~320 million trees planted per year...

And that damage is only Siberia, what with Australia, Canada, California, Alaska, Amazon ...

sunshineforever2• 5 years ago

I personally think the only way to handle climate change will be to force the more selfish US citizens to change their lifestyles. Just being realistic I don't think they will change without a civil war type scenario. Or the threat of a war.

They won't listen unless they are forced to. Period.

krona• 5 years ago

Energy consumption per unit GDP tells a different story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country

tonyedgecombe2• 5 years ago

Except we use that efficiency to consume more, hence increasing GDP. We have also been picking the low hanging fruit. It is going to get progressively more difficult.

me_me_me• 5 years ago

its NOT individual person's fault. Its large dirty businesses that create majority of the pollution. Only way to fight global warming is to target them to pay for their externalities.

You can help, you can recycle. But all of the businesses could be forced to use environmental responsible packaging. Thats the kind of externalities I am talking about.

How come when a tanker spills oil in gulf we as tax payers pay for the clean-up, how come when a power lines start forest fires we have to pick up the bill?? And so on...

NiceWayToDoIT7• 5 years ago

Is there a marine biologist here? Would it help to genetically modify plankton so that multiply more and sequester more CO2 than usual? But again having some kill switch after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues?

Razengan2• 5 years ago

after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues?

That’s the core trouble with everything isn’t it, and what got us into this mess in the first place.

Climate change: Curbing methane emissions will 'buy us time'

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