[tombert]

You beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing; wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...

[bamboozled]

If we're converting CO₂ that already exists in the atmosphere, how could it make things worse?

Isn't problem making new CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, not converting existing Co2 into other things?

[arcanemachiner]

Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4% of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective) than if you had done nothing.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...

[bamboozled]

Ok thanks.

Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons of methane every year.

[aaronax]

30x strong on what measurement? Per molecule?

How much CO2 is Terraform Industries pulling from the atmosphere to create that 4% of methane that might be leaking?

[mojomark]

>>...on what measurement?

By CO2 equivalence in the context of greenhouse gas potential [1]. And, the 30X factor is only valid if you look over scales of atmospheric persistence of 100yrs. If you look at scales of 10years (the amount of time methane persists, the GHG potential strength a over 80X.

Liquid (Cryogenic) natural gas tankers and storage emit "boiloff" gas. Some of this can be burned in the 'dual fuel' propulsion engines when combined with a small amount of diesel "pilot" fuel, but not all and I'm uncertain at what quantity. Even engines that burn NG gave methane "leak by" that escapes into the atmosphere. It's not great, and no, nobody is enforcing containment via satellites at the LNG shipping level (despite a comment to the company trary above).

Hydrogen production is a much better option for dense energy storage option.

1.) https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalent...

[ordu]

Some of Terraform's production will leak, the most of it will be burned, so the real outcome is a little more methane in athmosphere.

[jtsiskin]

Yes if you're considering the terms 'carbon neutral' at face value; but in terms of global warming, methane traps a lot more heat per carbon atom

[slashnode]

I think the point is that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so if leaked, the net greenhouse impact is greater than that of the original CO2 that went into the process

[joking]

Because methane is worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas

[api]

Methane has a much shorter atmospheric half life than CO2-- years as opposed to millennia. It does end up getting oxidized into CO2 and H2O, just not nearly as quickly as when it's burned.

Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. Methane leaks of any size are fairly easy to detect. There's been an effort to put up satellites for this purpose.

If using this technology helps us to phase out fossil fuels, it would be a huge net win. This could effectively let us repurpose all our existing natural gas storage, transport, and generation infrastructure into a battery to store surplus renewable or off-peak nuclear energy.

This could also allow renewable energy to be shipped as LNG, allowing the gigantic amounts of solar power in places like the Sahara to be harnessed and exported. The only other way to do this is extremely long distance superconducting or incredibly high voltage transmission lines that would probably be more expensive and very vulnerable.

[cool_dude85]

>Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them.

This is true of existing natural gas infrastructure, and yet...

[cassepipe]

This must mean there isn't a strong incentive to fix them.

Let some cheap gas in the atmosphere or invest in costly detection systems and qualified workforce ?

[martinald]

Actually there's a project underway to build a 4000km HVDC line from Morocco to the UK: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/

I thought it was a pipe dream but has got some fairly big backers now and does seem to be moving along.

[tgtweak]

Even if it all leaks out, you're still back at 0 essentially.

[wmf]

No, because methane is worse than CO2. Anyway, replacing fossil methane with synthetic is strictly better so the leaks are irrelevant.

[rstat1]

>>No, because methane is worse than CO2.

Should've just stopped here. Being synthetically produced doesn't magically make it not a potent greenhouse gas.

[boxed]

The big source of methane is cows anyway. This system needs to scale to ridiculous levels to come even close to all the cows.