Monitoring Methane Better — Finally

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The Biden–Harris administration has dished out a $162.4 million loan guarantee to help address an issue that really doesn’t get enough attention, or solutions. The issue is methane emissions, and specifically not tracking them well enough in this case. The loan guarantee, which is part of the administration’s Investing in American agenda, is going to the company LongPath Technologies. In particular, it will “help finance the construction and installation of more than 1,000 remote monitoring towers as part of a real-time methane emissions monitoring network.”

Oil and gas are produced in many different areas of the country, and this monitoring effort will help track methane emissions in all of the major ones, including in California, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. The monitoring project is going to be spreading across tens of thousands of individual sites.

Of course, the point of tracking methane emissions better is to stop as much of those emissions as possible, and a lot of that them come from unknown leaks.

“LongPath’s Active Emissions Overwatch System project aims to deploy large-area remote methane monitors to provide emissions detection, location, and quantification services for tens of thousands of oil and gas sites,” the US Department of Energy (DOE) writes. “Today’s announcement underscores the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to dramatically reduce methane emissions, including from leaks in the oil and gas sector, in order to tackle the climate crisis, protect public health, and create good-paying jobs.”

“Preventing harmful greenhouse emissions from entering our atmosphere is a key pillar of President Biden and Vice President Harris’ Investing in America agenda to improve public health while combatting climate change,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Today’s announcement underscores the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued efforts to create environmentally resilient communities and ensure the United States leads the world in deploying next-generation clean energy solutions.”

“As governor, we made sure Colorado led the country with the first methane regulations of their kind,” said US Senator John Hickenlooper (CO). “We’re building on that leadership to create real-time methane emissions monitoring for the rest of the country thanks to these Inflation Reduction Act investments and our homegrown innovators like LongPath.”

Again, policy matters. Who is in elected office matters.

Tracking and capping methane emissions from the federal level isn’t happening with a Republican president. The oil and gas industry spends almost all of its lobbying money and political donations on Republicans, and that’s for a reason. By many accounts, Democrats are not strong enough in their efforts to reign in these fossil fuel industries, but there’s a world of difference between their oil & gas policies — or broader energy policies — and Republicans’ oil & gas policies — or broader energy policies.

The Energy Department notes that the Biden–Harris administration worked hard in 2023 to help address the methane emissions problem. In total, more than 100 actions were taken to cut back on methane emissions in the US in 2023. These all came under the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan. Furthermore, that includes $350 million in grants under the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Here are some more details: “LPO financing will support LongPath in the installation and deployment of up to 24,000 square miles of monitoring coverage. This expansive network is expected to prevent methane emissions equivalent to at least six million metric tons of CO2e annually—the equivalent of taking 1.3 million gasoline-powered vehicles off the road—by enabling subscribers to identify and respond to methane leaks quickly. The project is anticipated to create 35 construction jobs and 266 operations jobs with competitive benefits for regional workers, including trained experts to install and maintain the equipment. LongPath provides internship opportunities with the University of Colorado to engage students interested in technology-based climate solutions. LongPath sources many of its components from suppliers based in the United States, including in Florida and California, strengthening domestic supply chains for innovative technologies.”

The impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act continue to grow.