CLIMATEWIRE | President Joe Biden pledged to make use of “all available tools” to rein in methane when he was elected three years in the past.
Now his promise is coming due.
Federal companies are poised to launch a battery of guidelines within the coming months that crack down on the oil and gasoline sector for releasing the potent greenhouse gasoline. That features laws for leaky pipelines; power manufacturing on private and non-private lands; and infrastructure associated to processing, transporting and storing pure gasoline. Even liquefied pure gasoline terminals and offshore petroleum manufacturing amenities, which are not lined by EPA’s coming methane guidelines, might discover themselves paying for extreme leaks starting in 2025.
That’s on prime of different methane efforts. The Vitality and State departments are creating tips to tell apart comparatively climate-friendly gas producers and exporters from their extra high-emitting opponents. And the Securities and Alternate Fee and federal procurement companies are readying guidelines that will require publicly traded companies and government contractorsto report on direct and oblique greenhouse gasoline emissions, together with methane, from their provide chains.
Curbing the gasoline accountable for nearly a 3rd of right this moment’s world warming might contribute to Biden’s local weather legacy. And it may also purchase the world useful time to unravel the extra intractable downside of phasing out carbon emissions.
“There’s a recognition that cutting methane is one of the fastest, best ways to reduce pollution that’s contributing to climate change,” stated Paul Billings, nationwide senior vice chairman for public coverage on the American Lung Affiliation. “The technology is available, and it’s highly cost-effective.”
The White Home didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Methane traps greater than 80 occasions as a lot warmth as carbon dioxide on a 20-year time scale. However it exits the ambiance and stops contributing to warming after about 12 years, in contrast with centuries for CO2. And it comes from a lot fewer sources.
A report by the Worldwide Vitality Company final month confirmed that it will be impossible to prevent temperatures from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius with out quickly lowering methane leaks from fossil gas manufacturing and use.
“Reducing methane emissions today can generate near-immediate climate benefits, providing room for the longer-term transition to a clean energy economy,” the White House noted in a November 2021 methane road map.
Hana Vizcarra, a senior local weather legal professional with Earthjustice, stated it is sensible that the Biden administration goes all-in on methane. It comes after the Obama administration laid the groundwork for methane regulation, and as companies maintained momentum by means of the presidency of Donald Trump with a gradual stream of voluntary commitments.
“In some ways, it’s an easy place to start because there’s a lot of information and a lot of support for action,” Vizcarra stated.
Arvind Ravikumar, co-director of the Vitality Emissions Modeling and Knowledge Lab on the College of Texas at Austin, stated the rise of superior methane monitoring attracted policymakers’ consideration.
“The thing that is catalyzing all of this is that the technology and innovation have advanced so rapidly in the past decade or so that it is now very cheap to monitor and measure methane emissions from oil and gas applications,” he stated, noting that the Environmental Protection Fund and different teams plan to launch a satellite subsequent yr to trace methane and launch the information publicly.
“Emissions data is now going to be democratized as never before,” said Ravikumar. That is driving discussions about how the market can differentiate between fuels with relatively lower or higher supply-chain emissions, he said.
The policies
The White House is currently reviewing EPA’s final rule to limit emissions from new and existing oil and gas production, processing, transport, and storage facilities. The measure builds on an Obama-era new source standard that the Trump EPA scrapped in favor of laxer rules covering fewer sources.
The Senate voted in June 2021 to reinstate the Obama normal. However the Biden rules would greatly expand coverage with tips for infrastructure constructed earlier than 2015.
The methane rule would be the first important Biden climate regulation to become final. That’s expected to happen next week on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates — likely at the Dec. 2 methane summit the U.S. will host with China and the UAE.
EPA will follow it with final climate rules for power plants and vehicles in the coming months. The administration is under pressure to print its final rules in the Federal Register in early 2024 to prevent a potential Republican president and Congress from using a Congressional Review Act resolution to undo them in 2025.
Also, the Bureau of Land Management is working on a rule to curb gas leakage from production on federal lands; the move would replace an Obama-era standard that was scrapped by the Trump administration. The BLM rule was projected to be final in September but has yet to enter White House review.
Other facets of Biden’s methane strategy are the product of recent legislation.
The Division of Transportation is crafting a rule for pipeline leak detection and repair beneath 2020 laws. That’s additionally in additional innings — the administration’s regulatory agenda indicated it will be last in July.
And EPA is writing regulations prescribed by the Inflation Reduction Act and its myriad methane-control incentives and the excess emissions fee. The draft rule for the methane fee entered White House review in September.
The Inflation Reduction Act ordered EPA to overhaul its time-worn guidelines for how oil and gas companies estimate and report methane from their operations after a decade of research showed emissions were being undercounted. One recent report by energy nonprofit RMI found that gas has higher life-cycle climate emissions than coal when leak rates are fully considered.
EPA launched its proposal in July, and it’s as a result of be last early subsequent yr. The methane fees will be based on these new reporting methodologies.
The Treasury Department’s upcoming guidelines for how “green” hydrogen will qualify for a generous Inflation Reduction Act tax credit will also grapple with upstream leak rates from gas used in its production. Treasury missed the climate law’s August deadline but is expected to issue the guidance by the end of the year.
And the Energy and State departments are working with the European Union — the world’s largest gas importer — and with other countries on international standards that will give low-methane gas preferential access to the EU market. The U.S., the European Commission and others launched a working group last week to build a shared framework to measure and report greenhouse gasoline emissions from gasoline.
The EU additionally final week finalized the bloc’s first standards for fossil fuels methane that embrace import necessities.
In the meantime, the U.S. and China agreed last week to include methane reduction in all future local weather commitments made beneath the Paris Settlement. It got here after China unveiled a long-awaited methane plan earlier this month that will strengthen procedures for monitoring, reporting and verifying leakage from oil, gasoline and coal manufacturing.
Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the wave of U.S. regulations would pave the way for more global progress on methane abatement.
“Strong standards from the United States are a very important signal,” he said. “They help set the realm of the possible for the rest of the world.”
The U.S. oil and gas industry has come around to supporting EPA methane regulation in recent years. But petroleum trade groups are eyeing the influx of domestic and international methane policies with trepidation.
A coalition spearheaded by the American Petroleum Institute told EPA last month in public feedback that it ought to work with different federal companies to “harmonize” methane insurance policies.
Dustin Meyer, API’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, in an email to E&E News called it “critical that policymakers coordinate these complex rulemakings to ensure regulatory incoherence doesn’t stand in the way” of energy supply.
Reporter Heather Richards contributed.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E Information supplies important information for power and setting professionals.
