Web Analytics

Methane Monitoring

Exceed Your ESG Goals

CleanAir Engineering offers a full range of rental, for-purchase, and service solutions to meet your organization’s environmental, social, and governance goals; and with our expertise in methane measurement, we can help you attain your Net-Zero initiatives. LEARN MORE

Hero-cropped

Renewed Climate Focus

Whitehouse Logo 2022

In early November, 2021, United States President Joe Biden unveiled a new Action Plan (AP) for reducing methane emissions nationwide. Since then, organizations have been working to tune their own mitigation efforts, aligning themselves to anticipated changes to EPA rules on fugitive methane. The proposed changes would be the first-ever rules regulating existing sources in the gas and oil sectors.

Two, specific rules to be proposed by the Department of Transportation in cooperation with the EPA would regulate Gas Distribution Pipelines Safety and Methane Leak Detection Repair (AP page 8). The EPA anticipates that their proposed rules, all combined, will result in a methane emissions reduction of 75% for affected sites (compared to 2005 emissions data). Of that 75%, studies show that over half of the related emissions sources are the result of defective, failed, or leaky components. LEARN MORE

Anthropogenic Methane Sources

Identifying sources of methane and their causes is not simple, but it seems simple enough. However, quantifying methane mass emission rates and making sense of the interconnected systems that affect methane sources and sinks are much more difficult to assess.

We know that the global climate is a complex system; and when it comes to conversations about Greenhouse Gases like methane, we inherently find ourselves discussing socio-economic policy, meeting basic human needs, geography, and the role of government in society.

high pollution from coal power plant

While U.S. agriculture continues to be the country’s greatest source of methane emissions, tackling fugitive emissions in the energy and transportation sectors might just be the easiest place to start when it comes to quantifying a national reduction in GHG emissions. The line of thought goes: identify and measure methane leaks, stop the leaks, and calculate your reduction in air pollution. These emission sources are easily-quantifiable.

Some of the latest research suggests that 60% of methane emissions is generated from anthropogenic, or human activity-related, sources. These activities include, namely: agriculture, energy production (gas, oil, and coal), landfills, transportation, and waste treatment.

Biogenic methane emissions sources include trees and wetlands, natural decomposition, melting, and microbial methanogenesis. Much overlap between bio/anthro causality also exists, making attribution difficult: agriculture/ecology/food chain/transportation, changes in ecology due to climate trends and anomalies, landfill off-gassing caused by food refuse, and forest fires, caused by both people and/or nature. LEARN MORE