WASHINGTON — The White House is again looking to circumvent Congress by introducing piecemeal and unilateral strategies to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This time, it is unveiling new approaches to regulate methane.
Although methane makes up just 9 percent of the United States’ overall emissions, it has long been a key focus for climate scientists and environmental groups due to its particular impact on climate change. In terms of its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere, methane is considered more than 30 times more effective than carbon dioxide, a potency that increases over time.
Further, U.S. methane emissions have likely skyrocketed in recent years, particularly as domestic production of oil and natural gas has increased substantially. Methane is a common byproduct from leaky gas wells and pipelines, and recent studies have suggested that these leaks could be far more widespread than previously anticipated.
“Curbing methane pollution is essential to ensure that natural gas production can bring climate benefits,” Sarah Forbes, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute, a think tank here, said on March 28, after the methane strategy’s unveiling.
“Even with today’s relatively low natural gas prices, many available technologies can reduce methane emissions, and they can pay for themselves in three years or less. The new [White House] strategy provides the federal oversight that is needed to support many of the measures the oil and gas industry has already put in place.”
Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, and hence, it has been widely touted as an important alternative energy source. Recent decreases in U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions have generally been attributed to the substantial increase in the use of natural gas, made available domestically through new hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, technologies.
Yet climate scientists warn that even small methane leaks could quickly eliminate the climate benefits of natural gas, making it as dirty as or dirtier than coal. But the industry has pushed back strongly against suggestions regarding the need for tightened regulation.
Oil and gas infrastructure is just one area that the new White House strategy will cover. The new orders constitute a key part of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, unveiled last summer.
“The president’s interagency strategy puts us on a path to reduce methane emissions while continuing to harness America’s domestic energy resources that power our economic future,” Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said at the strategy’s unveiling.
“Working collaboratively with our federal partners, state governments and the private sector, the Interior Department is taking steps to capture and sell natural gas and reduce methane emissions from oil, gas and coal development on public lands to improve air quality and achieve public health and economic benefits.”
Fracking fugitives
According to the executive actions outlined in the strategy, President Obama will now direct the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to study the methane emissions from four sources across the country: oil and gas production; coal mining; landfills; and livestock and agriculture. These studies and initial rulemaking processes are to start within weeks, with concrete initial proposals to come within months.
The most contentious issues — those around oil and gas — also come with the most solidified timetable. The EPA is expected to finish its studies in this sector by this fall, then new regulations are to be proposed and implemented by 2016 — before Obama leaves office. Later this year, the Interior Department is also supposed to update its standards regarding the flaring of gas during production on public lands.
“A lot of the stuff in here is voluntary, including expanding programs they already have. We need to go beyond that as well, particularly with regard to the oil and gas industry,” Steve Clemmer, the director of energy research at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an advocacy group, told MintPress News.
“At the same time, there are some strategies in here that could result in stronger regulations, about which we would be very supportive. There’s a lot of loopholes in federal policy for industry that need to be closed, including those that would help to level the playing field with regard to less risky alternatives and renewables.”
While Clemmer supports the announced research timetable now governing federal regulators, he said that the need for strengthened regulation is already clear.
“More research is definitely needed on certain issues, but really enough research has already been done to show just how big of a problem this is,” he said.
“Especially with regard to the increase of natural gas usage in this country — the rapid increase in shale gas development has outpaced the research, policies and regulations that are needed to address some of the problems we’re seeing,” he said. “Additional research is always good, but there’s already enough out there to give us reason to adopt stronger regulations.”
The oil and gas industry counters that current programs, including voluntary federal guidelines and companies’ own initiatives, are already significantly decreasing so-called “fugitive” methane emissions in the U.S. Trends do suggest that recent and ongoing initiatives have had an impact, with U.S. methane emissions having come down by around 11 percent over the past quarter century, despite an increase in activities leading to such leaks.
“Additional regulations are not necessary and could have a chilling effect on the American energy renaissance, our economy, and our national security,” Howard Feldman, a director with the American Petroleum Institute, a leading trade body, said in a statement.
“The industry has led efforts to reduce emissions of methane by developing new technologies and equipment, and recent studies show emissions are far lower than EPA projected just a few years ago … Methane is natural gas that operators can bring to the market. There is a built-in incentive to capture these emissions.”
The potential to capture and sell, or make use of methane is indeed a powerful incentive for both the government and companies, particularly those working with landfills, agricultural operations and oil and gas drilling. Some such use is already taking place, with notable “digester” operations on farms across the upper Midwest. The White House’s new strategy will now direct federal agencies to further explore these and related opportunities.
Yet Feldman entered into more contentious issues in interpreting the EPA’s own past estimates of methane emissions, particularly with regard to the oil and gas industry.
In February, a study in Science, a peer-reviewed journal, found that the EPA has actually been underestimating total U.S. methane emissions by anywhere from 25 to 75 percent. That appeared to corroborate findings released in November by the American Academy of Sciences suggesting the federal government had been underestimating U.S. methane emissions by around 50 percent.
Further, the EPA’s own calculation of the global warming potential of methane has recently been outmoded. Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clemmer noted that that U.S. federal government currently uses an estimate that methane is 21 times more efficient at trapping atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide (over a 100-year period). The latest scientific consensus from the U.N.-overseen Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, suggests this number should be closer to 34, a 60 percent increase.
The White House is now suggesting a series of technical white papers to revise official estimates on methane leaks, particularly in the oil and gas industry, which would then be offered for external review.
50 percent from livestock
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment, which offers updated analysis on impact and adaptation, came out on Monday. The report, part of the IPCC’s fifth such assessment, states unequivocally that the impacts of climate change are already “widespread and consequential.”
While the IPCC doesn’t offer specific recommendations, it did surprise some observers by broaching the subject of what has recently come to be referred to as “transformational adaptation.” This refers to the need to effect broad cultural, socioeconomic and even governance change in order to adequately meet the obstacles put forth by human-induced climate change.
According to some lead IPCC scientists, part of this cultural change needs to take place around rising trends in meat and dairy consumption worldwide. Livestock of all kinds produce substantial and constant methane, after all, a direct result of their breathing and digestive processes.
Cattle are particularly notorious sources of methane emissions, and the EPA says 20 percent of U.S methane emissions come from cattle alone. By 2050, it is estimated that half of all greenhouse gas production globally will come just from cattle and lambs.
“We have shown that reducing meat and dairy consumption is key to bringing agricultural climate pollution down to safe levels,” Fredrik Hedenus, an IPCC scientist with the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, warned this week.
While meat-consumption trends in the U.S. have fallen somewhat over recent years, the country continues to eat more meat per capita than almost anywhere else on the planet.
“Recently, we have seen more discussion of including a policy focus on livestock and agricultural emissions in the United States, but there hasn’t been a lot of oversight. Further, while policy should play a role, the issue can’t be settled by mitigation alone,” Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a watchdog group, told MintPress.
“The bottom line is that we need to reduce the trend of increasing meat consumption – of all animal products – around the world, but particularly in the United States. How we can reduce our meat consumption worldwide can be a very effective goal, both for reducing climate impact and for adapting to climate change.”