EU Agrees Law To Curb Methane Emissions From Fossil Fuel Industry (theguardian.com) 34
The EU has struck a deal that will force the fossil fuel industry to rein in dangerous methane pollution. From a report: Under the proposed law, which is the first of its kind, coal, oil and gas companies would be required to report their methane emissions and take steps to avoid them. The measures include finding and fixing leaks, and limiting wasteful practices such as venting and flaring gas by 2027. Jutta Paulus, a German MEP with the Green grouping who worked on the proposal, said: "Finally, the EU tackles the second most important greenhouse gas with ambitious measures. Less methane emissions mean more climate protection and more energy sovereignty."
Methane has more than 80 times the global heating power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year timespan but does not last as long in the atmosphere. Cutting methane emissions is seen as a cheap and easy way to stop extreme weather growing more violent in the short-term. The new EU rules, which were agreed on Wednesday by the European parliament and European Council, mean fossil fuel companies must try to repair leaks no more than five days after finding them, and fully fix them within a month. By the end of next year, operators will have to survey their existing sites and submit action plans to find and fix methane leaks.
Methane has more than 80 times the global heating power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year timespan but does not last as long in the atmosphere. Cutting methane emissions is seen as a cheap and easy way to stop extreme weather growing more violent in the short-term. The new EU rules, which were agreed on Wednesday by the European parliament and European Council, mean fossil fuel companies must try to repair leaks no more than five days after finding them, and fully fix them within a month. By the end of next year, operators will have to survey their existing sites and submit action plans to find and fix methane leaks.
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are you new? we blame everything on china or russia around here!
on the other hand ... asking the extraction companies to report and police themselves ... no, it won't make a difference.
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Interestingly enough, America isn't the biggest problem. Makes a good punching bag though.
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The largest emitters are (Score:2)
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We can stop them by refusing to business, they all need our business desperately, existentially. But we can't do that until we stop doing it ourselves, then we're on the moral step-up where we can demand they follow.
Re:The largest emitters are (Score:5, Interesting)
The EU would probably support a global carbon price. But that has been thwarted by governments such as my own, Australia, who rely on coal exports.
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We can stop them by refusing to business, they all need our business desperately, existentially. But we can't do that until we stop doing it ourselves, then we're on the moral step-up where we can demand they follow.
Refusing to do business with the EU? Such as selling them natural gas?
I read just today how there's going to be a big announcement among several nations to triple global electrical generating capacity from nuclear fission by 2050, and that is based on 2020 levels which is a wee bit higher than nuclear power capacity now. This is news that is apparently only a few hours old as I write this. https://www.ibtimes.com/us-cal... [ibtimes.com]
The U.S. delegation will join representatives from the U.K., France, Sweden, Finland and South Korea in calling on the World Bank and other international lenders to expand their renewable energy lending criteria to include nuclear energy, as "people familiar with the matter" told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The pledge will be accompanied by a similar commitment from the nuclear energy industry to triple their resources for power generation over that timeframe.
I agree that to have the moral high ground we'd have to step-up our game first. We
Re: The largest emitters are (Score:2)
Never forget the EU, like its predecessor had in its name, is foremost an economic union. The EU isn't as much into bombing countries as it is into taxing their products when they cross the EU border. See, it's simple economics that makes exporting countries reconsider.
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The largest emitters in order are China, the US (half as much as China), India (half as much as the US), the EU27, Russia, and Brazil.
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Qatar 76.57 t
Bahrain 48.47 t
Brunei 38.62 t
Trinidad and Tobago 36.24 t
Kuwait 34.32 t
United Arab Emirates 28.14 t
Mongolia 27.86 t
Oman 26.81 t
Australia 23.24 t
Saudi Arabia 22.85 t
Turkmenistan 22.45 t
Canada 20.37 t
Kazakhstan 19.80 t
United States 17.58 t
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Here's something that many do now know about the EU. If a vote is called, and the outcome does not go the way the unelected bureaucrats want, they keep on calling a vote until they get the desired results. The EU is controlled by unelected authoritarians that don't care about science, they only care about controlling and limiting the serfs, the peasants... That's you...
That sounds a lot like how the United Nations runs.
There's not much we can do about EU internal politics but we can kick the UN out of the USA, and we can deal with the members of the EU individually. Germany says they don't want methane leaks in the EU? Okay, how about the USA stop exporting liquefied natural gas to them? It looks like they want that natural gas bad enough that they are spending billions of euros on floating storage and regasification units, or FSRU. These are a floating barge of sorts
Methane has to go (Score:1)
It'll be an endless whackamole game where it's cheaper to cheat than to obey, so they'll all cheat. None of them have morals, just a slow-AI program to make money, and they can make more by cheating.
We've got to just eliminate the fuel.
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We've got to just eliminate the fuel.
I agree, but with what?
Germany tried to make up for losses to natural gas imports from Russia but that resulted in pushing over windmills to get to the coal under them. Not exactly a winning solution to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
In looking at the news this morning it looks like there will be big announcements for more nuclear fission energy around the world during COP28. There's plans to triple electrical generation capacity from nuclear fission by 2050, and there's at least a half dozen nations w
Re: Methane has to go (Score:2)
It's impossible to cheat unless you're going to block detection from space :P
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
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why do all the pro nuclear people start to act like complete nutters, you're making the reasonable pro nuclear people's work so much harder
you're first 2 sentences were great, agree 100%, LWR and PWR reactors get a bad rap.
but then, fusion, bro, that's got like 100 major material science problems to solve, it aint the oil companies. same with thorium, neat but needs works.
geothermal works but is dependent on geography. it can very effective or very expensive.
then we get to china, and, well, just say what
Make something better, don't make it worse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Horse manure and dead horses were a huge problem in large cities. City governments hated the mess horses made and tried taxing horses, but that didn't work to discourage horses in cities, but the automobile did. In something like 20 years a horse went from a valued commodity to something people couldn't even give away. Then is the example of whale oil for lamps being replaced by kerosene, with kerosene being replaced by illuminating gas, and illuminating gas being replaced by electric lights.
A law that is trying to discourage something rarely works, but a better alternative always works. If a tax can be voted in then it can be voted out. What can't be voted out is a better alternative. If people find it too expensive to go looking for these methane leaks then there's going to be an incentive to just make the rules imposing the expense disappear with another vote later.
I find it a bit "cute" that it is Germany that is taking the lead on this since it is because of them that so much of the EU is dependent on natural gas. Germany was huge in getting a natural gas pipeline from Russia, then getting pipelines to send that on to other nations at a low price. Germany forced their nuclear power plants to close, increasing demand for natural gas, and setting policies that would discourage nuclear power plants in other EU nations. Someone might find such policies self serving, they create a demand for natural gas then put themselves in a position to profit from natural gas imports and exports.
I'm old enough to remember when Germany claimed that the natural gas shortages in Germany wasn't about electricity but about heat, so closing their nuclear power plants would not impact natural gas demand. Okay then, how did they plan to dispense with the greenhouse gas emissions from heating? Oh, right, windmills and solar PV. How does a windmill or solar PV panel provide heat to homes? A heat pump. You mean an electric heat pump? Of course this is electric. So, electricity from a nuclear power plant would reduce demand for natural gas, because with more electricity produced that makes heat pumps a viable alternative to natural gas.
This is ignoring that Germany relies on natural gas power plants to provide electricity during a dunkelflaute. The concept of a dunkelflaute is so associated with Germany that it has become an English loan word,
They have the means to discourage natural gas use by ways other than imposing what is effectively a tax on it. They can lift the taxes they imposed on nuclear fission for energy. They voted in the rules discouraging nuclear power, they can vote them out. Given the potential to restart a number of recently closed nuclear power plants all over the EU this could have an impact very quickly. Don't pull the rug out from nuclear power and after a few years of letting the industry thrive they could be on a path to where greenhouse gas emissions fall and costs of energy goes down too.
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This is about leaks. The leaks happen during oil and gas production. If you hadn't noticed, Europe is making a big effort to get away from oil and gas. Not enough, but they are offering better alternatives like electric cars.
Not fixing leaks is just prioritising profit. There's no better alternative for the leaker, they simply have to be forced to take responsibility.
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That's nice... too late... but it's nice. (Score:2)
We blow through 2C in 2026 by the original estimates and we are emitting more co2 than was promised at this point.
It's going to be rough for anyone under 50.
Btw, I used to think it was going to be rough for anyone under 40 a few years ago.
On the plus side, the russian invasion has pushed forward alternative fuel a bit and we are ahead of schedule on EV adoption.
So EU can still burn wood then (Score:1)