Natural gas: Is it a lot of hot air?
Methane and my attempts to avoid obvious fart jokes
Prefer to hear my dulcet tones? Want to hear me describe a gif off the cuff? Listen to the audio version here:
We all know coal is cancelled, and oil’s looking nervous. But “natural” gas sometimes gets a pass: it’s been hailed as a transition fuel because it releases fewer CO2 emissions than oil or coal when burned. But, and it’s a big but, natural gas is mostly methane, a climate supervillain that has between 28 and 84 times the heat-trapping power of CO2. (Why the varied range? Because its potency lessens over time, in 20 years it has 84x the impact; in 100 years it’s down to 28x.)
Methane is also sometimes seen as a lesser evil because it doesn’t persist in the atmosphere as long as CO2, but we’re talking about decades versus centuries. The next ten years are when everything’s on the line (that’s the 84x as powerful zone), so methane’s shorter half-life isn’t as important as its super-potency. And the concentration of methane in the atmosphere just keeps going up.
Extraction isn’t the only source of methane — it also comes from landfills, wastewater, thawing permafrost, and agriculture, especially cow and sheep burps and rice growing — but today we’re focusing on energy generation specifically, which accounts for 38% of worldwide methane emissions.
How come so much methane is ending up in the atmosphere? Natural gas extraction systems are leaky at every stage: production, processing, transmission, and storage. About 2.3% of extracted gas in the U.S. goes straight into the atmosphere — 13 million tons of methane each year. These leaks have a massive impact: in 2021 leaks in the Permian basin in Texas released emissions equivalent to 40 million passenger cars — that’s over four times as many cars as in all of Canada. Many orphaned or abandoned gas wells also continue to leak, and there are many thousands in Canada alone.
This is not only bad for the atmosphere and all life on this planet, it’s extra harmful for the people who live around extraction infrastructure (including fracking sites), who are more vulnerable to respiratory concerns, cancer, and reproductive problems. Paging Erin Brockovich! That case was over water pollution from a natural gas compressing station. And this iconic tell-off basically sums up how we should feel about natural gas:
So methane is a huge problem, but it’s also a huge opportunity: a Bloomberg analysis finds that it’s both economically and technologically feasible to cut methane levels across industries by 58% by 2030. A 2020 paper published in Environmental Research Letters also found we have the technology to reduce methane emissions from energy extraction specifically by up to 85%.
More good news? World leaders are starting to take methane seriously: President Biden has got more than 30 countries, including nine of the biggest methane emitters, to agree to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
Above all what we need is to reduce demand and accelerate transition. So what does that look like?
Electrify your home.
Natural gas shows up in homes in three main ways: heating water, powering furnaces, and supplying gas stoves. The first two have mainly environmental consequences, but that last one also has consequences to your health.
I’m not an alarmist, but burning gas releases a host of things that aren’t particularly lung-friendly, including particulate matter, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides — the last of which has been linked to increased risk of heart attack. A 2021 report from Australia’s Climate Council found that a gas stove in the home is responsible for up to 12% of childhood asthma cases because that sleek, ’grammable cooktop is like having a chain-smoking roommate or a tailpipe blowing exhaust through your window. It’s especially a problem in low-income housing, where spaces are smaller with crappier ventilation.
If it’s so bad for us, why is gas so hot right now? Mainly because of pro-gas marketing campaigns, which aren’t just hiring influencers (though they do, without informing them of health risks or ventilation requirements), but planting pro-gas messaging in Nextdoor posts and hiring actors for community hearings. Even the phrase “cooking with gas” is a 1930s gas-industry slogan; they’ve spent almost a century trying to convince the public that gas has class. We’ve been played — and we’re paying the price with our health and the planet’s.
If you have a gas stove, make sure you have clean, functioning fans that vent outdoors (instead of just pushing air around inside) and open windows when you cook. But if possible, consider switching to an induction stovetop, which doesn’t have the slick marketing campaign, but is faster, more energy efficient, and means all your food comes without a side of poison!
As for gas water heaters and furnaces, those vent outside, so there’s no real human health concern, but they use way more gas than a stove, so they’re still a health concern for the planet. All of this comes at a cost, and we need good incentives to help people afford the transition. Right now there’s money on the table in Canada for the unsexy but totally rad heat pump, which needs its own slogan. “Now we’re pumping the heat” could use some workshopping.
Get government involved.
Obviously this is the kind of problem that can’t be solved one stove at a time, but there are some big policy moves that could make a big difference quickly.
Plug those leaks! A U.N. report found that 80% of leaks could be stopped at no cost — and might even lead to savings. (You can’t sell gas that’s leaked into the atmosphere.) In the last decade we’ve seen huge progress in tools to identify and address leaks — now we just have to get out there and use them.
Clean-up orphaned wells — and make polluters pay. Prime Minister Trudeau made waves in 2020 by announcing the federal government would kick in $1.7 billion to clean-up orphaned wells, but Environmental Defence found “companies put their own remediation programs on hold while they waited for the government to pay for their clean-up costs.”
Change building codes. Try to change building codes and the oil and gas lobby comes running, but in California alone over two dozen cities have restricted the use of natural gas in new builds, and the state has just passed significant electrification and efficiency standards (though they didn’t ban gas completely).
Stop fossil fuel subsidies. You know where we could get a bunch of money to fund a transition? An Environmental Defence report found that the Canadian government handed over nearly $18 billion to the oil and gas sector in 2020. By the way, those figures don’t count externalities like the $53.5 billion annually in health care costs from burning fossil fuels (as estimated by the Canadian Medical Association) or the damage from wildfires, flooding, and drought.
Support land defenders.
You may remember when the Wet’suwet’en were in the news in early 2020 for their opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which was approved by the band councils but not the hereditary chiefs. They’re still fighting, and Canada has spent over $13 million harassing land defenders. (Does this come out of the Truth and Reconciliation budget?) Meanwhile, on October 11, Washington, D.C., saw the beginning of an Indigenous-led protest against continued fossil fuel extraction, including Line 3.
A 2021 report from the Indigenous Environmental Network argues that Indigenous pipeline protests have already stopped 779 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions; that’s 12% of annual U.S. and Canadian pollution. If protests underway succeed, that number could hit 24% — the equivalent emissions of 345 million cars. That’s a service to all of humanity.
All over North America, land defenders are putting their bodies on the line in the name of environmental and community health. Offer financial support and/or write or call your elected official to let them know you stand with the land defenders.
TL;DR
Natural gas is mostly methane, and methane is a greenhouse gas we can’t afford: for the next 20 years it’ll be 84x more damaging than CO2.
Methane leaks throughout the gas production process, but 80% of these leaks are stoppable if government gets busy.
Natural gas stoves are bad for you and the planet: induction stoves are healthier and more energy efficient.
Support building codes that prevent gas hookups in new builds.
Speak out against fossil fuel subsidies.
Support land defenders and communities who are fighting gas infrastructure.
Wins of the Week
“The flexibility provided by a specific kind of abundance — extra pumpkin, banana blossoms blooming, an excess of food, period, growing in the garden to give away — rather than the idea of abundance we’ve been sold, quite literally, being access to anything at any time to buy, is what fuels creativity, excitement, a feeling of safety in the midst of an uncertain future. Abundance doesn’t have to be gifted to us; it can be cultivated. It can be a choice we make, in order to take care of each other and the earth. The world is abundant, I remind myself again in a dark time. I pray it. We just have to be sure to see it that way, to share it that way.” — Alicia Kennedy, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
5, 6, 7, 8, who do we appreciate?
Sam, who changed her job so that she could walk to work instead of drive. This is a major environmental act, and also one that has made her happier! (More on the outsized eco impact of cars here.)
Natalie, who handed out flyers with Fair Vote Canada before the last election — a great application of last month’s challenge! She says, “I think our first-past-the-post system is a barrier to progressive policies and government accountability.”
Emily and Dan, who hosted their long-postponed wedding and made some great eco choices, including renting dishware, having lots of vegan options, and labelling trash bins well. (Did they do it because they feared my judgment as a guest? I hope not, because I reserve my disdain for oil companies, billionaires, and most politicians, and do, occasionally, know how to have a good time.)
It’s my birthday next week, and the greatest gift you can give me is doing something good for the planet and telling me about it! (Though I also love cake.) Click reply or head to the FMFP FB group to make my day.
Also, you can see I’ve recorded another audio version of the newsy. So far I’ve got limited feedback. Would it help if it was available in a podcast app? Do you want old issues recorded? Is this thing on?
xo
JK
P.S. Because I love accuracy, I update old newsletters when I discover new data. A couple recent updates:
Streaming: not as bad as previously thought! I’ve updated the post on streaming to reflect new research I’d missed from the International Energy Agency that states the impact of streaming video for an hour is down to just 36 g of CO2, dramatically less than earlier figures, and about 1/25 of the imprint of driving just 5 km. I still stand by using a lower streaming quality, because why not? See an updated chart and info here.
Pod save us all: As much as it seems to defy logic, research suggests the coffee-making method with the lowest eco impact is, in fact, aluminum Nespresso pods. (Instant coffee is better, actually, but imho that is merely a coffee-like substance.) Why are pods positive? Mainly because the brewing process uses less coffee, and growing it is the biggest part of your java’s footprint. You want the most coffee for the least bean, so if you’re a filter-coffee drinker, worry less about the paper filter and more about using the appropriate amount of beans and not wasting what you make. You can also return used Nespresso pods for recycling. I do love this as a correction to zero-waste rhetoric, which sometimes misses the forest for the trees. Packaging is often unnecessary and frustrating, but we need to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
P.P.S. Today is the launch day for a book close to my heart, Arno Kopecky’s The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis. If you’re into what we talk about here, you’ll appreciate Arno’s book, which is wide-ranging, inquisitive, and often funny. Available wherever you buy books, but if you want to buy local, use the handy button we have here to find copies near you.
Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by Crissy Calhoun. Opening photo by Charles Betito Filho via Unsplash. Audio editing by Jordan Venn at Albany Garden Studio.