Fugitive Methane Emissions From US East Coast Are 2X Higher Than EPA Estimates.

[NNadir]

The Paper I'll to which I'll refer in this post is this one: Large Fugitive Methane Emissions From Urban Centers Along the U.S. East Coast (Kort, Plant et al Geophysical Research Letters, July 15, 2019 2019GL082635

The paper is open sourced; anyone can read it in full form. It reports that the leakage of methane (dangerous natural gas) from major cities in the US Northeast is roughly twice as high as previously estimated. It also reports carbon dioxide concentrations much higher than those reported at Mauna Loa.

Methane has a global warming potential (100 year) about 20-40 times greater than carbon dioxide.

Papers in this journal feature plain language summaries, which pretty much tell the whole story:

Plain Language Summary Recent efforts to quantify fugitive methane associated with the oil and gas sector, with a particular focus on production, have resulted in significant revisions upward of emission estimates. In comparison, however, there has been limited focus on urban methane emissions. Given the volume of gas distributed and used in cities, urban losses can impact national‐level emissions. In this study we use aircraft observations of methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ethane to determine characteristic correlation slopes, enabling quantification of urban methane emissions and attribution to natural gas. We sample nearly 12% of the U.S. population and 4 of the 10 most populous cities, focusing on older, leak‐prone urban centers. Emission estimates are more than twice the total in the U.S. EPA inventory for these regions and are predominantly attributed to fugitive natural gas losses. Current estimates for methane emissions from the natural gas supply chain appear to require revision upward, in
part possibly by including end‐use emissions, to account for these urban losses.

For convenience, the graphics, including the startling CO2 figures in figure 1 are repeated here:

Figure 1

(a) Flight coverage by the ECO campaign around the major urban regions of Washington, DC (DC); Baltimore, MD (BLT); Philadelphia, PA (PHL); New York, NY (NYC); Providence, RI (PVD); and Boston, MA (BOS). Each flight is represented by a different color. The inset shows the flight path (black) and the region representing the downwind plume (red) for NYC on 9 May 2018. Map source: Google Maps, Accessed: 18 September 2018 (b) The tracer concentration time series of the NYC plume corresponding to the inset of (a).

Anthropogenic emissions of CH4 from (a) EDGAR v4.2FT2010, (b) gridded EPA, emissions of CO from (c) EDGAR v4.3.2, and emissions of CO2 from (d) EDGAR v4.3.2. EDGAR = Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

Figure 3

Observed correlation slopes (a) CH4:CO2 and (b) CH4:CO, shown in red, compared to the corresponding inventory‐derived ratios for each city. The inventory tracer:tracer values are labeled with the corresponding CH4 inventory used in the analysis (EDGAR v4.2FT2010 [2010, blue], EDGAR v4.3.2 [April 2010, green], and Gridded EPA [2012, orange]), while the average of the five CO2 inventories is used to generate a single CH4:CO2 inventory estimate. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals determined using the bootstrap methodology detailed in SI Text S5. EDGAR = Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

Figure 4

(a) Methane emissions (kg/s) for the six urban regions calculated by using CH4:CO2 and CH4:CO analyses and (b) summed total emissions (Tg/year) for the five largest cities (Providence excluded) compared to Gridded EPA inventory. Uncertainty on the emission estimates is determined using a bootstrap analysis of the observed slopes and inventories to calculate 95% confidence intervals. For the NG emission estimates in (b), the uncertainty in C2H6:CH4 slope and pipeline C2H6:CH4 is also considered in the boo

You may hear from time to time all kinds of horseshit about how great the so called "renewable energy" industry is doing at producing excess electricity at a time and place when no one needs it. This of course, drives up the cost of electricity overall, by collapsing prices below sustainable levels during peaks when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and driving costs through the roof when neither is taking place.

The fact is that the rate of increase of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere - dangerous fossil fuel waste - has now reached about 2.3 - 2.4 ppm/year, the highest rate ever observed.

Because wind turbines become landfill in a little under 20 years on average, according to Danish data maintained on line, and because they require massive amounts of mining to provide steel, aluminum and other materials, because they require service by dangerous fossil fuel powered devices and trash pristine wildernesses, they are not green.

But the dirtiest feature of the wind industry is that it entrenches the gas industry, since it does happen that the wind does not blow while the sun is not shining. The back up is dangerous natural gas, which in terms of energy is the second fastest growing source of energy in the 21st century after coal:

It is obvious that so called "renewable energy" is great at generating hype, and very poor at addressing climate change or producing, in fact, energy.

In this century, world energy demand grew by 164.83 exajoules to 584.95 exajoules.

In this century, world gas demand grew by 43.38 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules.

In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 32.03 exajoules to 185.68 exajoules.

In this century, the use of coal grew by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.

In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules.

10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.

2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

In terms of energy, using "percent talk," the gas industry grew 600% faster than the so called "renewable energy" represented by solar, wind, geothermal and tidal combined.

I trust you will have a pleasant weekend.