‘Known unknowns’ – fugitive emissions from the EU and UK gas grids
- 2 September 2024
- Posted by: David Bamford
- Category: energy transition
Our new report leaves little doubt that there are significant volumes of methane emissions from the U.K. and EU gas grids that as yet go largely unmonitored, unmeasured and unreported, both by asset and by operator. Key takeaways are:
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At least in part, this is due to the limited metrology that is deployed – “walkers” carrying ‘sniffers’ and optical gas imagers – in contrast to the continually improving satellite sensors targeting ‘super emitters’ emergent in the USA and Canada, independent inspection to the fore.
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Cross-Atlantic transfer of these satellite technologies is needed but into an integrated system which includes sensors carried by UAVs, in fixed stations, plus those carried by “walkers”.
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However, a further, major, issue is that the regulatory approaches of the EU Commission and the U.K. Government have allowed operators to police their own emissions, to write their own reports, “mark their own homework”.
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This situation has many parallels with that in the U.K’s water industry, highlighted by The Times’ Clean It Up campaign(0), from which this quote:
Indeed so!
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