Super-emitters in the Natural Gas Sector: Prevalence and Implications for Solving the Methane Leakage Problem

Recent experimental studies have shown that uncommon but disproportionately large pollution sources, also known as "super-emitters", are responsible for a significant fraction of methane emissions from the natural gas sector.  In this talk I will outline the results of two recent studies. The first study explores the prevalence of super-emitters across the natural gas supply chain by analyzing data from numerous previous studies. The second study develops a simulation tool that allows developers of leak detection technologies or policies to understand the costs and benefits of finding and fixing these leaks. These results show together that super-emitters are a very important driver of emissions from the gas sector, and that policies to solve the problem should take advantage of this fact to design low-cost, highly effective detection strategies.

Speaker: Adam Brands, Stanford

Editor's Note: The lecture entitled "The European Union's Climate and Energy Policy – Lessons Learnt and Challenges for the Future" originally scheduled for this date has been replaced with this topic.