{"id":22888,"date":"2022-12-01T09:22:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T14:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/?p=22888"},"modified":"2022-12-01T14:47:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T19:47:31","slug":"assessing-methane-emissions-from-the-natural-gas-industry-reviewing-the-case-of-china-in-a-comparative-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2022\/12\/01\/assessing-methane-emissions-from-the-natural-gas-industry-reviewing-the-case-of-china-in-a-comparative-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Assessing Methane Emissions From the Natural Gas Industry: Reviewing the Case of China in a Comparative Framework"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment22915\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment22915\" style=\"width: 679px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"669\" height=\"446\" class=\"wp-image-22915\" data-wp-editing=\"1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-636x424.jpeg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/luobing-uYoRgDHknvE-unsplash-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 669px) 100vw, 669px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment22915\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chongqing, China. Photo by Luobing via Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to achieve a 1.5\u00b0C warming scenario, many countries have announced their ambition to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the next few decades. However, in addition to carbon dioxide, other key GHGs such as methane will require attention in order to achieve this goal. In the past 20 years, global methane emissions <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-02116-8\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have increased<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by 10 percent. Although methane has a lower concentration and a shorter atmospheric lifetime compared to carbon dioxide, the 20-year global warming potential of methane is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.1088\/1748-9326\/ab9ed2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">85 times<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that of carbon dioxide. As a coal-dominated country, China\u2019s coal mines represent the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S136403211300600X?via%3Dihub\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">largest source<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of domestic methane emissions. Given China&#8217;s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/spia.princeton.edu\/news\/china-converts-clean-energy-households-should-consider-using-heat-pumps-maximize-climate-air\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201ccoal-to-gas\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> policy promotion, natural gas is expected to play an important role in China\u2019s coal replacement process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s40641-022-00187-5\"><b><i>new journal article<\/i><\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> published in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Current Climate Change Reports<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Xi Yang, Yiying Gao, Mingzhe Zhu and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/profile\/cecilia-han-springer\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cecilia Springer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> compare methane emissions from China\u2019s fossil fuel industry with the US and Canada, with a focus on the methane emission mechanisms, calculation methods, mitigation potential and abatement technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Main findings:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Methane emissions from the natural gas production phase are the largest in the whole natural gas supply chain.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it comes to measurement and estimation methods, methane emissions in the gas industry in the US and Canada typically achieve a Tier 3 level, while China tends to be at the Tier 1 and Tier 2 levels.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the three-tier system, both Tier 1 and Tier 2 quantify methane emissions based on emission factors and use a \u201cbottom-up\u201d method, but Tier 1 adopts Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) factors and Tier 2 adopts region-specific emission factors.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tier 3 is the most accurate method for measuring methane emissions in the field, including both \u201ctop-down\u201d methods such as \u201caircraft mass balance method\u201d and \u201cbottom-up\u201d methods such as \u201cpoint-to-point detection.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is large mitigation potential for methane emissions from the natural gas industry.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More effective waste reduction technologies like green well completion should be implemented in the production phase, especially in China.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More attention should be drawn to the need for leakage detection technologies of pipelines in all countries compared here.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a large methane-emitting country, China lags behind the US and Canada in methane emission reduction. The authors urge Chinese scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to pay attention to methane emissions. They suggest stakeholders should enhance mitigation measures and leakage detection technologies in order to achieve climate targets.<\/span><\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/link-springer-com.ezproxy.bu.edu\/article\/10.1007\/s40641-022-00187-5\" class=\"button\">Read the Journal Article<\/a>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2022\/12\/01\/amid-global-decarbonization-commitments-how-do-methane-emissions-in-china-compare-with-the-us-and-canada\/\" class=\"button\">Read the Blog<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In order to achieve a 1.5\u00b0C warming scenario, many countries have announced their ambition to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the next few decades. However, in addition to carbon dioxide, other key GHGs such as methane will require attention in order to achieve this goal. In the past 20 years, global methane emissions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19928,"featured_media":22915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1149,1070,156,72,105],"tags":[1618,2343,3200,805,1761,394,510,2985,3202,409,1165,2942,2982,3201,3199,3203,622,3197,3198],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22888"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22932,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22888\/revisions\/22932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}