Methane Emissions Yield Yet More Green Grifting Grab Bags
Jim Willis on NGL Pipelines
Editor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN)
[Editor’s Note: Methane emissions are now the excuse for yet another example green grifting as the corrupt global warming enterprise spreads like a cancer through civil society.]
As we point out in a companion story today, some in the oil and gas industry have sold out and are supporting the Manchin-Schumer methane tax. It’s sad (and angering). As we point out in that post, those companies believe they are insulated from the effects of the methane tax because they have already deployed technology to reduce methane emissions from their operations. But what happens when the federal government changes the rules by telling them their technology is junk and they have to replace it with new government-blessed technology? Right on cue, the Dept. of Energy announced it will spend $32 million on “research” to figure out what kind of technology can lower methane emissions.
While the following announcement from the dumbest Secretary of Energy ever to occupy that position, Jennifer Granholm (a mind-numbed Bidenista), flies under the banner of “we’ll help y’all out with your little methane emissions problem, spending 32 million of taxpayer dollars to do it,” don’t miss the importance of the announcement. The importance is this: The feds will research what technology they think lowers methane emissions–and once they figure it out, that tech will become required by the EPA, not optional. You have your own tech that you say lowers methane emissions? That’s nice little Johnny (pat on the head); now go throw it all out and buy this new tech (backed by rich Democrat insiders like Paul Pelosi, who will get even richer). That’s how it works in Amerika today.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $32 million in funding toward the research and development of new monitoring, measurement, and mitigation technologies to help detect, quantify, and reduce methane emissions across oil and natural gas producing regions of the United States. After carbon dioxide, methane is the most abundant greenhouse gas (GHG) warming our planet, and methane emissions contribute significantly to the GHG intensity of natural gas. The projects awarded through this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) will help ensure an efficient, resilient, and leak-tight U.S. natural gas infrastructure, while supporting President Biden’s national goal to cut global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.
“Methane is more destructive than carbon dioxide to our health and environment, so it’s crucial we develop solutions to identify and mitigate leaks at their source,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Today’s funding bolsters DOE’s efforts to advance next-generation technologies and systems to help make the natural gas infrastructure leak-tight, which will dramatically reduce methane emissions across the country and deliver cleaner air for all.”
The Biden-Harris Administration has launched an ambitious, whole-of-government initiative to significantly redouble our national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel switching from coal over to natural gas can roughly cut carbon dioxide emissions in half, but to a much lesser extent, if the natural gas supply chain is not leak-tight.
The United States has more than two million active, abandoned, or repurposed wells, as well as its oil and natural gas pipeline network, compressor stations, and other oil and gas infrastructure that emit approximately 8 million tonnes of methane annually (equivalent to 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide—the amount of annual carbon dioxide emissions from 400,000 vehicles). Significant progress has been made over the past decade for detecting and quantifying methane emissions at the source using surface-based technologies like hand-held measurement devices and vehicle-based detection sensors, but these technologies cannot quickly assess large areas. Other technologies, such as atmospheric sensing equipment, attached to satellites or manned and unmanned aircraft, can better estimate the volume of methane emissions across wide areas, but these measurements are typically less accurate than surface-based methods.
Selected projects under today’s FOA will help to advance networks of surface-based methane sensor technologies for more timely monitoring of methane emissions across large areas of oil- and natural gas-producing basins. Other projects under this FOA will design an integrated methane monitoring platform that will enable early detection and improved quantification of methane emissions along the entire natural gas supply chain to advance the accuracy of methane emissions estimates.
For full details and areas of interest, read the FOA here.
All interested applicants must register and submit application materials through FedConnect; register here for an account. All questions about the FOA must also be submitted through FedConnect. The application deadline is October 4, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) funds research, development, demonstration, and deployment projects to decarbonize power generation and industrial production, to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and to mitigate the environmental impacts of fossil fuel production and use. Priority areas of technology work include carbon capture, carbon conversion, carbon dioxide removal, carbon dioxide transport and storage, hydrogen production with carbon management, methane emissions reduction, and critical minerals production.
Editor’s Note: Jim is angry. So, I’m I. We are witnessing the absolute corrupting of every segment of civil society as powerful elites pursue ever more opportunities to enrich themselves by sucking on the public teat. Meanwhile, Congress is going to throw a third of a trillion dollars on stupid green energy tricks through an Orwellian bill we’re told is about fighting inflation when, in fact, it will do precisely the opposite. It’s a green grifting grab bag, in fact, and the same legislation proposes to turn the IRS into East German Stasi and double its size to boot. Worse, all of this is happening as an absolutely evil FBI, led by a curled-lipped trust-funder who cannot force himself to avoid sneering, conducts a Third World invasion of President Trump’s with the flimsiest of excuses, while ignoring the Biden crime family’s nefarious adventures in China and Ukraine. We have every damned right to be angry; we’re losing our country to fascist corporatist thugs. Methane emissions grifting is just the latest example.
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