Scientists have known for years that methane, emitted by cows and landfills alike, is a potent ingredient in global warming â€" unless the gas is collected and used for fuel.
Yet methane hasn’t gotten anywhere near the same attention as carbon dioxide from governments and businesses aiming to stop climate change without hindering economies.
That is changing now as methane makes headlines because of new numbers showing more leakage than previously thought from natural gas wells and pipelines. Some critics say natural gas is a worse climate-change polluter than coal. That’s hotly disputed by energy companies.
"Methane, especially from the natural gas industry, has come much more to the fore very recently, since early 2011," said Vignesh Gowrishankar, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
One reason for the sudden attention: Last year, the EPA revised years of data to show that the leading source of methane emissions nationally wasn’t livestock flatulence â€" it was natural gas production.
"Before that, the big emitters of methane were agricultural facilities," explained Gowrishankar. "It was still a concern, but it was not something we could easily fix."
That’s because cows, sheep and other farm animals, which produce 20 percent of emissions under the revised numbers, were too spread out for their methane to be recaptured. That’s not the case for landfills, which produce 17 percent of methane, or natural gas, which the EPA now blames for 32 percent of emissions.
Now businesses are focusing on cutting methane emissions from both of those sources, from multinational companies as big as Royal Dutch Shell to a small startup in Metuchen called Biolithe.
Natural-gas leaks are de facto methane leaks because methane is the primary ingredient in gas. The natural gas leak issue has the full attention of regulators, up to and including EPA head Lisa Jackson, who described methane’s impact in a speech at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
"Interesting thing about natural gas in particular is that there is product loss throughout the system, and that product happens to be ... a very potent greenhouse gas, it’s more potent than CO2," Jackson said.
She said she wants to work with natural gas companies to minimize leakage.
Some energy industry leaders blasted the EPA’s revised numbers as inaccurate, but others admit they are concerned about methane emissions â€" and the opposition they can engender to natural gas.
"Some environmental groups that once supported switching from coal to gas for electricity generation are no longer doing so over concerns about methane leakage," said Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser in a speech this spring.
Voser said he didn’t agree with environmental critics about how bad the problem is, but said the solution is more study, which his company will do in concert with the Environmental Defense Fund.
As the natural-gas industry begins to pivot on the subject of methane, the other major source in the United States, landfills, are already installing wells and vents to capture methane and either burn it off in flares, or sell it for fuel.
One such project is under way in Linden, where the municipality spent about $1 million to install 54 wells on its 55-acre dump.
"Now we want to market for it and sell it," said Mayor Richard Gerbounka. "We don’t expect to get rich off of it, but the whole concept is to recycle the gas that would normally just be burnt off."
Linden’s landfill produces around 200 cubic feet of methane a minute â€" the city is seeking bids on how to use the fuel, and will choose one next month.
Another approach to landfill methane is trying to reduce how much there is in the first place.
Biolithe, the Metuchen startup, hopes its patented formula will cut methane from paper products, which it said amounts to half of methane leaking out of landfills.
"Our goal is to build it up as the environmental standard for paper and paper products," said JR Hann, one of seven partners in Biolithe, which rents space from Metuchen company Globe Die Cutting.
The company’s goal is to produce a compound that can be mixed with paper when it’s manufactured, or coated over it during the printing process, so that years down the road that paper doesn’t produce methane when it rots in a landfill.
Their compound was developed in a Metuchen lab and tested by Rutgers University â€" now it’s on the most prominent stage in the world, sprayed onto marketing materials client AT&T is handing out at the London Olympics.
"When you talk about global warming, methane is the higher, more dangerous gas," Hann said. "If we could reduce methane now, within 10 years we’ll start to see the positive effects."
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