COP27 | Methane, enemy of the climate tracked by a Quebec firm

North America generated 10% of all methane emissions in the world this year, calculates the Montreal firm GHGSat, whose satellites track this gas, which is particularly harmful to the climate.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

The North American continent thus ranks third among the regions with the highest methane emissions in 2022, behind Central Asia, at 38%, and East Asia, at 26%.

The Middle East follows (8%), then Europe and Africa, tied at 6%, reveal the company’s data, unveiled on the sidelines of the 27^e United Nations Climate Conference (COP27), held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Methane (CH₄), which has a global warming effect 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO₂) over a 20-year period, accounts for 17% of global man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but has been responsible for about 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times.

It is the subject of targeted efforts to reduce its emissions, particularly since the adoption last year, at COP26 in Glasgow, of the Global Commitment on Methane, by which the signatory countries – 130 to date – agree to reduce global methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from their 2020 level.

Such a reduction could reduce global warming by 0.2°C by 2050.

Fossil fuels

No less than 85% of the methane emissions measured in 2022 by GHGSat come from the fossil fuel sector, particularly in Asia.

Turkmenistan is “by far, far the country where we see the most emissions” in the oil and gas sub-sector, indicated Jean-François Gauthier, vice-president responsible for measures and strategic initiatives of GHGSat, in an interview with The Press.

These emissions are frequently attributable to dysfunctional flares that do not or completely burn the methane emitted during oil extraction.

“It’s often vintage Russian equipment that hasn’t been maintained,” says Gauthier, noting that GHGSat has identified 80 to 90 sites in Turkmenistan that continuously emit large amounts of methane.

In the coal sub-sector, the extraction of which also releases large quantities of methane, China, Russia and Kazakhstan are the countries that have generated the most emissions in the last year.

But the United States is not left out; GHGSat, for example, spotted a methane leak Sunday night at a rate of 0.44 tons per hour in San Juan, New Mexico.

Household waste

Household waste landfills generated 14% of 2022 methane emissions.

This is much less than the fossil fuel sector, because there are fewer dumps than sites linked to the fossil industry, explains Mr. Gauthier, but this data hides another: the average rate of methane emissions landfill measured in 2022 was 3.6 tonnes per hour, which is twice as much as any other industry.

GHGSat also spotted methane emissions in the past week at 2.7 tonnes per hour from one site in Pakistan and 1.3 tonnes per hour from another in India.

These examples show that biogas emissions from landfills are not captured everywhere, as is done in certain places in Quebec, indicates Mr. Gauthier.

“And often some of these dumps are huge,” he says.

New satellites

With three new satellites launched in 2022, GHGSat now has six at its disposal to measure methane emissions around the world; it plans to launch four more in 2023.

The company identifies methane by measuring the absorption of sunlight by gases in the atmosphere.

“It’s like a fingerprint, illustrates Jean-François Gauthier. It’s so precise. »

Its satellites have detected more methane emissions, several of which have made headlines, such as the world’s largest leak of the year, seen at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia, with a measured rate of 87 tonnes of methane per hour.

They also made it possible to measure the intensity of the leaks caused by the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, in the Baltic Sea, built to transport Russian gas to Europe.

GHGSat is launching this Wednesday at COP27 its new methane emissions data platform for companies in the energy, mining, agriculture or household waste management sectors in the presence of Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy.