[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.