Dec. 12, 2014

Public enemy number one in climate-warming greenhouse gases is usually thought to be carbon dioxide. Another significant climate-changing gas is methane, the kind that comes from shale drilling. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised, possibly within weeks, to lay out how it will tackle methane emissions from oil and gas, an environmental group says we can cut methane emissions in half in just a few years.

"What we found is that there are a number of pretty straightforward existing controls for these top sources of pollution, that if you went after you could get half of the sector's emissions," says Meleah Geertsma, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Midwest Senior Attorney.

She was an author of the NRDC's report "Waste Not: Common Sense Ways to Reduce Methane Pollution from the Oil and Natural Gas Industry."

The NRDC recommends finding and plugging leaks, replacing worn out or dated equipment and capturing gas that would otherwise be vented from wells and other similar sources.

"So this is not rocket science in a lot of ways," Geertsma says. "It's taking things that have either worn out or have sprung leaks which are considered not the best technology and replacing them throughout the sector."

Methane is a more potent, but short-lived, greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

"A ton of methane goes a lot further toward warming the climate than a ton of CO2 and that's especially true in the near term," Geertsma says. "So over the next 20 years, for example, methane has a much more climate-warming impact on our atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. In terms of its impacts more immediately on public health, climate change itself has some problematic impacts: high temperatures, worsened ozone problems, and ozone is what contributes to asthma."

How does she think the shale industry will react, given the coal industry's resistance to environmental controls?

"We expect them to oppose regulations, if and when they're announced, saying that voluntary measures are adequate," Geertsma says. "But what we've seen over time is that while some companies have done a good job, not all companies have, by a long shot."