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https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-wakes-up-to-the-methane-fire-alarm-but-its-response-is-too-slow/>
"Today marks a historic day for how we measure the methane emissions spewing
out of our biggest coal and gas mines.
After 466 days of consultations, submissions and endless hours of expert
review, the federal Department of Climate Change has well and truly ‘read the
room’ and agreed with the Climate Change Authority’s assessment that Australia
needs to take a serious look at how fossil fuel companies report their methane.
They found that as a country, we have “failed to keep pace with global
developments and investment in methane measurement capability”.
As a result, the Government has just agreed to a host of reforms that have the
potential to transform the way we measure and report one of the main drivers of
global warming. In effect, we are planning a shift from abacuses to AI, from
emission factors to satellite modelling inversions in a matter of years.
The transformation could be profound, especially as our power sector
decarbonizes and coal mines risk becoming the leading sources of emissions in
QLD and NSW
Today’s announcement has a number of highlights, none greater than the
appointment of Chief Scientist Cathy Foley AO, to lead an expert panel to
assess opportunities to improve our overall approach to emissions measurement.
The panel will look at how to integrate satellites, planes, drones and
stationary lasers into our existing bottom-up measurement approach. It’s a
critical shift that is long overdue.
The Canadian government is already years ahead of us. They integrated
atmospheric measurements of methane emissions across oil and gas facilities in
their latest emissions update, and significantly revised their estimated
methane emissions in the process. In one year alone, they identified an
additional 17 million tonnes of CO₂-e just from their oil and gas industry.
The US has also introduced requirements for empirical methane measurement in
its federal methane regulations, and has developed fines for emissions from oil
and gas sites that satellites can see are leaking methane.
This is exactly what the Climate Change Authority was referring to last year
when it highlighted that the federal government’s approach has simply “failed
to keep pace” with our global partners."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
