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How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral i

How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...

tombert 3y ago
You beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing; wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...
- bamboozled 3y ago
  If we're converting CO₂ that already exists in the atmosphere, how could it make things worse? Isn't problem making new CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, not converting existing Co2 into other things?
  - jtsiskin 3y ago
    Yes if you're considering the terms 'carbon neutral' at face value; but in terms of global warming, methane traps a lot more heat per carbon atom
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4% of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective) than if you had done nothing. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00273/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...
    - bamboozled 3y ago
      Ok thanks. Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons of methane every year.
    - aaronax 3y ago
      30x strong on what measurement? Per molecule? How much CO2 is Terraform Industries pulling from the atmosphere to create that 4% of methane that might be leaking?
      - ordu 3y ago
        Some of Terraform's production will leak, the most of it will be burned, so the real outcome is a little more methane in athmosphere.
      - mojomark 3y ago
        >>...on what measurement? By CO2 equivalence in the context of greenhouse gas potential [1]. And, the 30X factor is only valid if you look over scales of atmospheric persistence of 100yrs. If you look at scales of 10years (the amount of time methane persists, the GHG potential strength a over 80X. Liquid (Cryogenic) natural gas tankers and storage emit "boiloff" gas. Some of this can be burned in the 'dual fuel' propulsion engines when combined with a small amount of diesel "pilot" fuel, but not all and I'm uncertain at what quantity. Even engines that burn NG gave methane "leak by" that escapes into the atmosphere. It's not great, and no, nobody is enforcing containment via satellites at the LNG shipping level (despite a comment to the company trary above). Hydrogen production is a much better option for dense energy storage option. 1.) https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalents/ https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalent...
  - slashnode 3y ago
    I think the point is that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so if leaked, the net greenhouse impact is greater than that of the original CO2 that went into the process
  - joking 3y ago
    Because methane is worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas
- tgtweak 3y ago
  Even if it all leaks out, you're still back at 0 essentially.
  - wmf 3y ago
    No, because methane is worse than CO2. Anyway, replacing fossil methane with synthetic is strictly better so the leaks are irrelevant.
    - rstat1 3y ago
      >>No, because methane is worse than CO2. Should've just stopped here. Being synthetically produced doesn't magically make it not a potent greenhouse gas.
      - boxed 3y ago
        The big source of methane is cows anyway. This system needs to scale to ridiculous levels to come even close to all the cows.
- api 3y ago
  Methane has a much shorter atmospheric half life than CO2-- years as opposed to millennia. It does end up getting oxidized into CO2 and H2O, just not nearly as quickly as when it's burned. Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. Methane leaks of any size are fairly easy to detect. There's been an effort to put up satellites for this purpose. If using this technology helps us to phase out fossil fuels, it would be a huge net win. This could effectively let us repurpose all our existing natural gas storage, transport, and generation infrastructure into a battery to store surplus renewable or off-peak nuclear energy. This could also allow renewable energy to be shipped as LNG, allowing the gigantic amounts of solar power in places like the Sahara to be harnessed and exported. The only other way to do this is extremely long distance superconducting or incredibly high voltage transmission lines that would probably be more expensive and very vulnerable.
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    >Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. This is true of existing natural gas infrastructure, and yet...
    - cassepipe 3y ago
      This must mean there isn't a strong incentive to fix them. Let some cheap gas in the atmosphere or invest in costly detection systems and qualified workforce ?
  - martinald 3y ago
    Actually there's a project underway to build a 4000km HVDC line from Morocco to the UK: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ I thought it was a pipe dream but has got some fairly big backers now and does seem to be moving along.
Latty 3y ago
This was my thought, methane is much worse than carbon when not burned, but just released. Any claims of carbon neutrality that rely on assuming perfect storage and transport without leakage are fantasy. If anything, when you are calling it "easily transportable" at the same time, as they do, you are actively misleading. You can't have both: it's either easily transportable and you are accepting a bunch of methane released (and thus terrible for climate change), or it's carbon neutral and you are baking in the cost of making sure it doesn't leak in transport/storage (and thus not easily transportable). They are having their cake and eating it too by claiming both.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I'd be interested in a quantitative analysis here. Methane is much worse, but sunlight has broken most of it down after a decade or so. CO2 is comparatively forever. Presumably there's a point where the lines cross and leaking green methane is still a win. I guess it just comes down to where those lines cross and whether we deem that an acceptable goal.
  - CrazyStat 3y ago
    Sunlight breaks methane down into CO2, so I don’t think there’s much of a win there.
    - solid_fuel 3y ago
      But that CO2 is then theoretically recaptured to make more fuel, right? At least if the carbon in the methane is sourced from the atmosphere in the first place.
    - scq 3y ago
      Of course there is. CO2 and methane are not equally bad, methane is about 100x worse initially. After about 60-70 years the lines cross and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.
      - 3y ago
mkobit 3y ago
I've been watching a YouTube channel named Climate Town that recently did a video talking about natural gas, and leakage was a focus point in the video. It's like a documentary-style comedy channel, and I quite enjoy both the content and the format. It reminds me a bit of Jon Stewart and John Oliver. Video link: https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw
rich_sasha 3y ago
Natural gas is already stored in enormous quantities, and shipped around the world. Leakage appears to happen mostly in transit, or at poorly maintained installations. My guess is, it's a solvable problem.
- Moto7451 3y ago
  Solvable, probably. Has oversight and a commitment to fix the issue? Not yet. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 (Topical and recent take from a favorite YouTube channel of mine) The industry provided (self reported) estimates of linkage is a little over 1%. The realistic value is over 2% and is at the point that coal and natural gas are likely equally bad for the environment given our current infrastructure. Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem. I will say I am a fan of carbon neutral methane in place of the efforts to move to hydrogen combustion (this is a thing) and hydrogen for fuel cells since there isn’t a commercially viable carbon neutral version of that yet. Making existing methane infrastructure cleaner and less leaky is better, in my mind, in the path to solar/wind/nuclear electrification than trying to capture the emissions of coal or retool petroleum infrastructure into hydrogen.
  - imbusy111 3y ago
    We have a bunch of new methane monitoring satellites, so it is very observable and enforceable.
    - Moto7451 3y ago
      I agree we can do it. It just has to be done. Aka give the EPA some teeth and require actual monitoring and enforcement rather than a self reported fantasy.
      - cassepipe 3y ago
        Exactly. Sure we can do it but the better question is are there any incentives to do any of it ? The fact that there isn't and that we would have to create one through some sort of government policy should be worrying, especially now that we know that enforcement is in general the government asking a branch of industry to self-regulate... and that's exactly what's happening right now with the natural gas industry and its leaks.
BWStearns 3y ago
Doesn't methane get reacted away in a relatively short (≈years) period of time?
- realreality 3y ago
  Atmospheric methane oxidizes into CO2 and water vapor. Then the CO2 hangs around for much longer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_sinks_or_removal_of_atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si...
  - Taniwha 3y ago
    yes eventually, but until it does it is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2
- stephen_g 3y ago
  No, that’s the problem. The GWPs usually quoted are over 20 years (GWP 81.2) and 100 years (27.9), but over 500 years it’s still around a GWP of 8. Depends on your definition of a ‘long time’ but it’s not like it reaches the low single digits even after 500 years…
- daedrdev 3y ago
  It converts to more CO2, and is also worse than CO2 during the short time
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Which is irrelevant if the input carbon was atmosphere sourced anyway.
    - wolfram74 3y ago
      no, it isn't. Over the course of a few decades, a kilogram of methane has the greenhouse impact of ~50 kilograms of CO2 because of the different absorption modes methane has that CO2 doesn't. If terraform leaks more than a few percent of their product into the atmosphere from carelessness (who cares about tracking such a low value commodity?) Then this is worse than just leaving the CO2 in the atmosphere. I really wish they'd address this fact more. Some possibilities: -The hydrogen half is still a great way to make hydrogen for industrial processes -The methane can be used on site of production for organic chem feedstocks -Many new rockets are using methane as their fuel, using it at point of origin instead of transporting through leaky pipelines and trucks. Any analysis along these lines would be reassuring that this isn't going to be a net-negative, climate wise.
purple_ferret 3y ago
In a similar vein, what if producing natural gas this way makes it cheap enough that companies choose to just vent it off when pursuing other fossil fuels.
- krastanov 3y ago
  Wouldn't putting the execs of these companies in jail be an easy legal solution?
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Yes I think you're touching on the real potential problem here which is that natural gas is many times a byproduct of petroleum extraction, for which we found a use/market. I grew up in Alberta and there were already gas flares all over the place in the forest at the various oil wells that dot the landscape in the foothills. I hope the economics of this work out, but I worry it will either just lead to flaring at drill sites or would not be pursued because it can't compete on cost. At the same time, if you're e.g. Germany and have a gas shortage, and now you can just make it domestically using excess renewable power, and not rely on LNG or Russia... Amazing.
darby_eight 3y ago
I don't see them patching over refinery methane leaks guerilla-style if that's what you're asking.
skrebbel 3y ago
Put a terraformer next to every leak to suck it back out of the air!

How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...

tombert 3y ago

You beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing; wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...

bamboozled 3y ago
If we're converting CO₂ that already exists in the atmosphere, how could it make things worse? Isn't problem making new CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, not converting existing Co2 into other things?
- jtsiskin 3y ago
  Yes if you're considering the terms 'carbon neutral' at face value; but in terms of global warming, methane traps a lot more heat per carbon atom
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4% of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective) than if you had done nothing. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00273/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    Ok thanks. Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons of methane every year.
  - aaronax 3y ago
    30x strong on what measurement? Per molecule? How much CO2 is Terraform Industries pulling from the atmosphere to create that 4% of methane that might be leaking?
    - ordu 3y ago
      Some of Terraform's production will leak, the most of it will be burned, so the real outcome is a little more methane in athmosphere.
    - mojomark 3y ago
      >>...on what measurement? By CO2 equivalence in the context of greenhouse gas potential [1]. And, the 30X factor is only valid if you look over scales of atmospheric persistence of 100yrs. If you look at scales of 10years (the amount of time methane persists, the GHG potential strength a over 80X. Liquid (Cryogenic) natural gas tankers and storage emit "boiloff" gas. Some of this can be burned in the 'dual fuel' propulsion engines when combined with a small amount of diesel "pilot" fuel, but not all and I'm uncertain at what quantity. Even engines that burn NG gave methane "leak by" that escapes into the atmosphere. It's not great, and no, nobody is enforcing containment via satellites at the LNG shipping level (despite a comment to the company trary above). Hydrogen production is a much better option for dense energy storage option. 1.) https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalents/ https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalent...
- slashnode 3y ago
  I think the point is that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so if leaked, the net greenhouse impact is greater than that of the original CO2 that went into the process
- joking 3y ago
  Because methane is worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas
tgtweak 3y ago
Even if it all leaks out, you're still back at 0 essentially.
- wmf 3y ago
  No, because methane is worse than CO2. Anyway, replacing fossil methane with synthetic is strictly better so the leaks are irrelevant.
  - rstat1 3y ago
    >>No, because methane is worse than CO2. Should've just stopped here. Being synthetically produced doesn't magically make it not a potent greenhouse gas.
    - boxed 3y ago
      The big source of methane is cows anyway. This system needs to scale to ridiculous levels to come even close to all the cows.
api 3y ago
Methane has a much shorter atmospheric half life than CO2-- years as opposed to millennia. It does end up getting oxidized into CO2 and H2O, just not nearly as quickly as when it's burned. Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. Methane leaks of any size are fairly easy to detect. There's been an effort to put up satellites for this purpose. If using this technology helps us to phase out fossil fuels, it would be a huge net win. This could effectively let us repurpose all our existing natural gas storage, transport, and generation infrastructure into a battery to store surplus renewable or off-peak nuclear energy. This could also allow renewable energy to be shipped as LNG, allowing the gigantic amounts of solar power in places like the Sahara to be harnessed and exported. The only other way to do this is extremely long distance superconducting or incredibly high voltage transmission lines that would probably be more expensive and very vulnerable.
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  >Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. This is true of existing natural gas infrastructure, and yet...
  - cassepipe 3y ago
    This must mean there isn't a strong incentive to fix them. Let some cheap gas in the atmosphere or invest in costly detection systems and qualified workforce ?
- martinald 3y ago
  Actually there's a project underway to build a 4000km HVDC line from Morocco to the UK: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ I thought it was a pipe dream but has got some fairly big backers now and does seem to be moving along.

Latty 3y ago

This was my thought, methane is much worse than carbon when not burned, but just released. Any claims of carbon neutrality that rely on assuming perfect storage and transport without leakage are fantasy. If anything, when you are calling it "easily transportable" at the same time, as they do, you are actively misleading. You can't have both: it's either easily transportable and you are accepting a bunch of methane released (and thus terrible for climate change), or it's carbon neutral and you are baking in the cost of making sure it doesn't leak in transport/storage (and thus not easily transportable). They are having their cake and eating it too by claiming both.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I'd be interested in a quantitative analysis here. Methane is much worse, but sunlight has broken most of it down after a decade or so. CO2 is comparatively forever. Presumably there's a point where the lines cross and leaking green methane is still a win. I guess it just comes down to where those lines cross and whether we deem that an acceptable goal.
- CrazyStat 3y ago
  Sunlight breaks methane down into CO2, so I don’t think there’s much of a win there.
  - solid_fuel 3y ago
    But that CO2 is then theoretically recaptured to make more fuel, right? At least if the carbon in the methane is sourced from the atmosphere in the first place.
  - scq 3y ago
    Of course there is. CO2 and methane are not equally bad, methane is about 100x worse initially. After about 60-70 years the lines cross and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.
    - 3y ago

mkobit 3y ago

I've been watching a YouTube channel named Climate Town that recently did a video talking about natural gas, and leakage was a focus point in the video. It's like a documentary-style comedy channel, and I quite enjoy both the content and the format. It reminds me a bit of Jon Stewart and John Oliver. Video link: https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw

rich_sasha 3y ago

Natural gas is already stored in enormous quantities, and shipped around the world. Leakage appears to happen mostly in transit, or at poorly maintained installations. My guess is, it's a solvable problem.

Moto7451 3y ago
Solvable, probably. Has oversight and a commitment to fix the issue? Not yet. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 (Topical and recent take from a favorite YouTube channel of mine) The industry provided (self reported) estimates of linkage is a little over 1%. The realistic value is over 2% and is at the point that coal and natural gas are likely equally bad for the environment given our current infrastructure. Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem. I will say I am a fan of carbon neutral methane in place of the efforts to move to hydrogen combustion (this is a thing) and hydrogen for fuel cells since there isn’t a commercially viable carbon neutral version of that yet. Making existing methane infrastructure cleaner and less leaky is better, in my mind, in the path to solar/wind/nuclear electrification than trying to capture the emissions of coal or retool petroleum infrastructure into hydrogen.
- imbusy111 3y ago
  We have a bunch of new methane monitoring satellites, so it is very observable and enforceable.
  - Moto7451 3y ago
    I agree we can do it. It just has to be done. Aka give the EPA some teeth and require actual monitoring and enforcement rather than a self reported fantasy.
    - cassepipe 3y ago
      Exactly. Sure we can do it but the better question is are there any incentives to do any of it ? The fact that there isn't and that we would have to create one through some sort of government policy should be worrying, especially now that we know that enforcement is in general the government asking a branch of industry to self-regulate... and that's exactly what's happening right now with the natural gas industry and its leaks.

BWStearns 3y ago

Doesn't methane get reacted away in a relatively short (≈years) period of time?

realreality 3y ago
Atmospheric methane oxidizes into CO2 and water vapor. Then the CO2 hangs around for much longer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_sinks_or_removal_of_atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si...
- Taniwha 3y ago
  yes eventually, but until it does it is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2
stephen_g 3y ago
No, that’s the problem. The GWPs usually quoted are over 20 years (GWP 81.2) and 100 years (27.9), but over 500 years it’s still around a GWP of 8. Depends on your definition of a ‘long time’ but it’s not like it reaches the low single digits even after 500 years…
daedrdev 3y ago
It converts to more CO2, and is also worse than CO2 during the short time
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Which is irrelevant if the input carbon was atmosphere sourced anyway.
  - wolfram74 3y ago
    no, it isn't. Over the course of a few decades, a kilogram of methane has the greenhouse impact of ~50 kilograms of CO2 because of the different absorption modes methane has that CO2 doesn't. If terraform leaks more than a few percent of their product into the atmosphere from carelessness (who cares about tracking such a low value commodity?) Then this is worse than just leaving the CO2 in the atmosphere. I really wish they'd address this fact more. Some possibilities: -The hydrogen half is still a great way to make hydrogen for industrial processes -The methane can be used on site of production for organic chem feedstocks -Many new rockets are using methane as their fuel, using it at point of origin instead of transporting through leaky pipelines and trucks. Any analysis along these lines would be reassuring that this isn't going to be a net-negative, climate wise.

purple_ferret 3y ago

In a similar vein, what if producing natural gas this way makes it cheap enough that companies choose to just vent it off when pursuing other fossil fuels.

krastanov 3y ago
Wouldn't putting the execs of these companies in jail be an easy legal solution?
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Yes I think you're touching on the real potential problem here which is that natural gas is many times a byproduct of petroleum extraction, for which we found a use/market. I grew up in Alberta and there were already gas flares all over the place in the forest at the various oil wells that dot the landscape in the foothills. I hope the economics of this work out, but I worry it will either just lead to flaring at drill sites or would not be pursued because it can't compete on cost. At the same time, if you're e.g. Germany and have a gas shortage, and now you can just make it domestically using excess renewable power, and not rely on LNG or Russia... Amazing.

darby_eight 3y ago

I don't see them patching over refinery methane leaks guerilla-style if that's what you're asking.

skrebbel 3y ago

Put a terraformer next to every leak to suck it back out of the air!