WASHINGTON, DC, December 21, 2024 (ENS) – In one of the last actions of the outgoing Biden-Harris Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy will invest $850 million for 43 projects that will help small oil and gas operators, Tribes, and others across the country to reduce, monitor, measure, and quantify methane emissions from the oil and gas sector as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.
This investment is intended to incentivize companies’ near-term actions to conserve energy resources for American consumers, improve operational efficiencies in a global market, and reduce methane emissions.
“Today, we’re continuing to build on strong standards and historic progress to cut methane pollution and protect communities across the country,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan. “Together, these investments will support small businesses and drive the deployment of available and advanced technologies to reduce harmful pollution and tackle the climate crisis, while creating good-paying jobs.”
The funding builds on unprecedented action across the Biden-Harris Administration to slash methane emissions, with agencies taking more than 100 actions since 2023.
These actions include the finalization of an EPA rule that is expected to reduce methane emissions from covered oil and gas sources by 80 percent from 2024 to 2038 compared to projected emissions without the rule.
“The public health of our nation depends greatly on our ability to drastically reduce harmful pollution from America’s largest source of industrial methane – the oil and gas sector,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “This historic investment made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act is helping energy communities and deliver long-lasting health and environmental benefits across the country.”
“At the same time, it will support small operators’ ability to replace and upgrade old equipment, reducing emissions from marginal conventional wells, improving their supply chains to meet the growing market expectations for cleaner fuel sources,” Secretary Granholm said.
The projects selected for negotiation will be funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history. They address climate change and are expected to improve air quality. By mitigating legacy air pollution and supporting small oil and natural gas operators, the projects will help reduce methane emissions through available and innovative technologies.
The White House intends that the funded projects will create partnerships to enhance emissions measurement and provide transparent data to affected communities.
One Tribal consortium, 11 universities, and 20 private companies were selected for projects across the nation to deploy and test new and existing methane mitigation technologies:
- – Three projects will help small operators across the country lower methane emissions from low-producing oil and natural gas operations, using commercially available technology solutions.
- – Thirty-one projects will accelerate the deployment of early-commercial technology solutions to reduce methane emissions from new and existing equipment.
- – Four projects will improve communities’ access to empirical emissions data and participation in monitoring methane emissions.
- – Five projects will enhance the detection and measurement of methane emissions from oil and gas operations at a regional scale.
For instance, nearly six million federal dollars will go to fund the Low-Cost Solution for Upcycling Flare Gas to Fertilizer by Windfall Bio, Inc., of San Mateo, California. Windfall Bio intends to deploy a methane bioconversion technology as a flare replacement system on an operating oil production site to reduce methane emissions caused by flaring of unwanted gas into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.
Additionally, nearly $3 million in non-federal funding will be invested in the Windfall Bio flare replacement project for a total investment of $8.94 million.
This approach is intended to reduce flaring and carbon emissions and provide meaningful participation of workforce organizations, including labor unions, underserved groups, and disadvantaged communities, including federally recognized Tribal Nations.
In total, EPA and the Department of Energy, DOE, are partnering to provide $1.36 billion in financial and technical assistance as part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program.
DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, under the purview of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, will manage the selected projects. To learn more about the selected projects, click here.
These selections build on the $350 million in grant funding to states that EPA and DOE announced in December 2023 to support industry efforts to voluntarily reduce emissions at low-producing wells, monitor emissions, and conduct environmental restoration at well pads. Together, these investments are a key step in implementing Biden’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program.
The selected projects support the administration’s comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to reduce harmful methane emissions across economic sectors. These efforts are accelerating reductions in methane emissions, supporting clean air and public health, creating good jobs, and advancing President Biden’s ambitious climate goals.
Harmful Methane
Oil and gas producers rely on methane flaring to limit the venting of natural gas from their facilities, but a study published in 2022 and led by the University of Michigan shows that this practice releases five times more methane in the United States than previously thought.
Over the course of three years, University of Michigan researchers made 13 flights in planes equipped with air monitoring equipment to assess how much methane is released from flares across oil and gas production basins.
Flights were conducted in the Permian and Eagle Ford oil and gas fields in Texas, as well as the Bakken oil and gas field in North Dakota.
Planes flew downwind of flaring sites, crisscrossing the direct pathways of the air plumes released by flaring. Tubes and pumps drew air into the onboard instrumentation, where laser scanning measured the amount of carbon dioxide and methane it carried.
Measuring both gases simultaneously allowed researchers to estimate the destruction removal efficiency of flaring at an individual site.
“If the flare is operating as it should be, there should be a large carbon dioxide spike and a relatively small methane spike. And depending on the relative enhancement of those two gases, we can tell how well the flares are performing,” said Genevieve Plant, lead author on the U-Mich study and an assistant research scientist in climate and space sciences and engineering at the university.
For nearby communities, unnecessary flaring from federal lands is also a serious health concern. According to data from 2019 compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund, at least 12,000 people live within half a mile from oil well flaring occurring on federal and Tribal lands. Shockingly, 25 percent of this population is Native American, and more than 20 percent of this population is made up of children under the age of five and adults over the age of 65.
For people living near oil and gas operations with consistent flaring, there are increased health risks, including asthma and other pulmonary diseases, heart disease, strokes, and even potential negative effects on fetal development.
U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Program
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to one-third of the global warming we are experiencing today. Over 100 years, one ton of emitted methane traps 28 times as much heat in the Earth’s atmosphere as one ton of emitted carbon dioxide.
China, the United States, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico are estimated to be responsible for nearly half of all human-caused methane emissions. A key source of methane emissions in China is coal production, while Russia emits most of its methane from natural gas and oil systems. The largest sources of methane emissions from human activities in the United States are oil and gas systems, livestock intestinal fermentation, and landfills.
The oil and natural gas sector is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States. A rapid reduction in methane emissions is one of the most important and cost-effective actions the United States can take in the short term to slow the rate of rapidly rising global temperatures, the EPA advises.
The Methane Emissions Reduction Program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, directed EPA to take action to tackle wasteful methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. The financial and technical assistance, implemented through a partnership between EPA and DOE, work in concert both with the recently finalized Waste Emissions Charge and with Clean Air Act standards issued in March 2024 to limit methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas operations.
The Methane Emissions Reduction Program also advances the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which sets a goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, and other investments benefit disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.
Combined, these actions will help position the United States as the most efficient producer of oil and natural gas in the world and ensure that the industry remains competitive in overseas markets that require a minimum level of emissions performance.
Together, DOE and EPA’s methane actions will advance the adoption of cost-effective technologies, reduce wasteful practices, and yield significant economic, health, and environmental benefits, while driving continued innovation in methane detection, monitoring, and mitigation techniques.
Despite multiple benefits, methane recovery is not widespread for three reasons, the EPA explains.
1 – Methane is generally a secondary byproduct in the industrial processes from which it is emitted. Coal mines, for example, seek to vent methane from the mine workings because it can cause explosions. Historically, mining companies have not viewed the associated methane as an energy resource in its own right.
2 – Those responsible for the emissions may not be familiar with the technologies available for methane recovery or the potential for profitable recovery projects. This is especially true in developing countries where improved access to information and technical training would be beneficial to generating support for methane recovery projects.
3 – Poorly functioning energy markets and financially insolvent utilities and municipalities within many countries fail to provide the private sector with a climate that will attract their investment in projects to capture and utilize methane.
“In order to meet our climate goals, we have to tackle methane pollution in a serious way,” said John Podesta, senior advisor to the President for International Climate Policy. “Today’s awards will slash local pollution from Colorado to Kentucky while delivering for our workers, our communities, and our planet.”
Featured image: Flaring excess methane from a small oil well, Colorado (Photo courtesy WildEarth Guardians)
