US announces rule to slash powerful planet-warming gas by nearly 80% from fossil fuels

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The Biden administration has finalized a rule to significantly cut the US oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a powerful planet-warming gas that scientists and climate advocacy groups have pressed nations to rapidly reduce as global temperature soars.

The announcement came amid a wave of commitments at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai on Saturday, including a pledge from at least 117 countries to triple renewable energy by 2030. Vice President Kamala Harris also announced the US was committing another $3 billion to global climate action.

Methane, the main component of natural gas and a byproduct of fossil fuel drilling, is a potent source of climate pollution with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere. The oil and gas industry is one of the main sources of global methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

The new US rule, which will be implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to slash methane emissions by nearly 80% through 2038, compared to what they would have been without the rule. The EPA estimates it will stop about 58 million tons of methane from escaping into the atmosphere during that period – the equivalent of taking more than 300 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year.

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Gotta love those distant goals that allow the current administration to say they've done something… and allowing the next to undo it.

Yup. Just like the goals we've repeatedly blown through over the past 25 years.

But if the current administration starts programs that decrease methane output, that's progress.

This is a big problem with our version of democracy.

You can't really do anything long term as it'll just be reversed. So you have to do short term things aimed at getting re-elected.

No point doing some big unpopular 50 year project as you'll just get voted out and it cancelled.

This is a big problem with our version of democracy.

Or lack thereof when policy is driven by corporate interests.

We're glad to announce the most ambitious commitment by any government ever; to stop accelerating the holocene extinction before 90% of species are extinct!

US announces rule to slash powerful planet-warming gas by nearly 80% from fossil fuels

That part is doing a lot of work here. The U.S. is still going to subsidize the cattle farming industry, which is a gigantic source of methane emissions.

You're not wrong, but a reduction is progress. It looks like farming emits more methane than the fossil fuels industry, but it's close.

It is a form of progress, but too little and way too late. It's putting a tiny finger band-aid on a slashed cartioid artery.

May as well do nothing, I guess.

When this will basically make no difference, may as well do nothing in this regard. If you're going to do something about methane, like I said, this is a band-aid on a gushing wound.

Last I checked, the US still subsidizes fossil fuels and that production has gone up (US), not down.

But hey! 80% less methane and Teslas are now only $35,000! Climate change solved.

Anyone else severely bothered by the fact that the climate summit was held in Dubai of all places?

So they're not addressing the root cause, just reducing a biproduct of drilling in 8 years, if that even happens (see: Paris Agreement). As evident by the oil spills, monitoring is useless to these oil companies who are never held accountable. Yet another bare-minimum action marketed with the claim: “without an iota of hype, this compact is the biggest thing that will reduce temperatures on the planet in decades".

The rule will crack down on methane leaks from industry in several ways. In a major new development, it will end routine flaring of the natural gas that is a byproduct of drilling oil wells and will phase in a requirement for that gas to be captured instead of burned. The rule will also require stringent leak monitoring of oil and gas wells and compressors, and cut down on leaks from equipment like pumps, storage tanks and controllers.

It will also rely on independent, third-party monitoring – using satellites and other remote-sensing technology – to find very large methane leaks.

Recent studies from the EDF suggest oil and gas operations worldwide have a methane intensity of around 2 to 3% – this is roughly how much methane gas is released during drilling, venting or flaring, or in pipeline and compressor leaks. The companies are committing to cutting that methane intensity percentage to 0.2% by 2030.

Others were critical of the announcement as not being ambitious enough. Murray Worthy, a senior oil and gas researcher at Zero Carbon Analytics, noted that it doesn’t go further than commitments from previous years, and that “industry has yet to deliver” on those promises.

“Most importantly it doesn’t require companies to deal with the main cause of emissions from fossil fuels, which is burning them,” Worthy said in a statement.