Addressing methane emissions: technology limits to mitigation policy

Methane, a short-lived and potent greenhouse gas, presents a unique challenge: unlike carbon dioxide, it is emitted from a large number of highly distributed sources. In this regard, timely and cost-effective leak detection across large-scale facilities becomes a priority.  As part of a federal push to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently recommended the use of optical gas imaging (OGI) technologies in mandatory industry-wide leak detection and repair (LDAR) programs. Whether such ‘find-all-fix-all’ policies are effective depends on significant uncertainties, both in technology performance and emissions characteristics. In this seminar, we will explore these uncertainties and develop broad guidelines for effective methane mitigation policies.

We develop a physics-based model that simulates methane leak detection using passive infrared cameras, and verify it through controlled release field experiments. We analyze the effect of environmental conditions, operator parameters, and gas composition on the efficacy of leak detection. In addition to technology limitations, we will see how facility characteristics like baseline emissions and leak-size distributions also affect detection effectiveness. Using multiple publicly available data-sets, we show that there can be significant variability in the performance of leak detection imaging cameras. In the context of EPA policies on mitigation, this variability translates to disparities in mitigation benefits, while implementation costs remain constant. Combining empirical evidence with model results, we suggest broad guidelines to effectively mitigate methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

Speaker: Arvind Ravikumar, Stanford