[mritterhoff]

I agree methane leaks (and monitoring programs cuts) are a problem. But even with them, methane burns much more cleanly than coal. The former primarily emits CO2 and H2O, while the latter emits SO2, NOx, heavy metals and more.

[mikeyouse]

These definitions always get muddled when flipping between CO2 emissions or pollution... coal is definitely worse from a pollution standpoint, is likely worse from a carbon standpoint, but much of the methane produced from natural gas production is just released into the atmosphere and has a dramatically higher warming effect compared to CO2 -- on the order of 80x more warming potential over 20 years and at least 20x over 100 years.

So only looking at the byproducts of methane combustion is also misleading since nat. gas plants largely aren't burning methane - and blanket statements for all natural gas are also misleading since e.g. the gas from Canada is extremely 'Sour' and releases a ton of sulfur compounds when burned, often with fewer scrubbers than coal plants.

[GOD_Over_Djinn]

This is a really interesting comment. Do you have a reference for the 80x figure, or the “sour” Canadian gas? Would love to read more about this

[mikeyouse]

Methane mostly disassembles into CO2 but it takes 12+ years. When thinking about global warming potential, everything is compared to CO2 which we’ve normalized as “1”. So something with a GWP of 2 is twice as bad as CO2 in equal volumes.

Methane will eventually break down into CO2, so if you look at the GWP for years 13-100, it’s 1. The weighted average for years 1-100 is over 20x, so it follows that if you look only at a shorter time frame, it would be dramatically higher and is indeed - somewhere north or 80 for a 20-year time frame.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...

As far as sour gas is concerned - not all natural gas formations are created equal. If you look at any serious pollution evaluation, they take into account which formation the gas was harvested from. Texas gas is pretty ‘sweet’ with low sulfur and acid content but much of the oil/gas in Western Canada or the Gulf is ‘sour’ and must be treated and refined prior to being sold as fuel. So it also follows here that flaring methane from sour fields is going to release a bunch of the souring compounds and have a much stronger environmental impact as compared to sweet formations.

https://nsrp.vn/latest-article/sour-crude-oil-and-sweet-crud...

[chaos_emergent]

I think the problem is that methane is 20x more powerful a GHG than CO2

[dpkirchner]

Laugh in the face of anyone suggesting CO2 capture technology. We won't even capture the more-valuable methane.