Methane leaks are the low-hanging fruit of the climate crisis

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period. However, it also degrades much more quickly than CO2, meaning cuts in emissions now can have a quick and significant effect on reducing global warming. On this bonus episode of Zero, producer Oscar Boyd talks with host Akshat Rathi about the methane problem and the ways to solve it.

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Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to John Fraher, Meg Szabo and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero, I'm Oscar Boyd.
0:05.0	Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere.
0:08.0	We extract it in huge quantities and burn it to power everything from household boilers and kitchen stoves to giant power plants.
0:14.0	And during that process, tens of millions of tonnes of methane gets leaked into the atmosphere driving climate change.
0:20.0	It's a huge problem, but a problem that is relatively easy, cheap and quick to fix.
0:24.6	Stopping methane leaks has been described as one of the lowest hanging fruits in the fight against climate change.
0:29.6	So for this bonus episode of Zero, I'm catching up with Akshatrathy to talk about the methane problem and how it can be solved.
0:36.6	So very quickly, let's just start at the beginning. Could you outline the methane problem and how it can be solved. So very quickly, let's just start at the beginning.
0:39.2	Could you outline the methane problem for me?
0:41.9	So most of the time we talk about the climate problem as a carbon dioxide problem, and that's
0:46.2	right.
0:47.1	About three quarters or more of the warming is because of carbon dioxide.
0:52.0	However, a good chunk is because of other greenhouse gases, and the largest bit of that
0:57.4	is from methane.
0:58.9	The trouble with methane is that it's many times worse than carbon dioxide ton for ton.
1:05.7	How many times worse?
1:07.0	The calculation is a little complicated because methane once put into the atmosphere
1:12.5	degrades much, much more quickly than carbon dioxide does.
1:16.6	And so scientists calculated over a period, and they measure it in something called the global
1:21.5	warming potential.
1:23.2	So over a 20-year period, methane is more than 80 times worse than carbon dioxide ton for
1:28.7	ton. Over a 100-year period, it's about 25 times. And that tells you something, because most
	...

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