“Decomposition occurs of organic materials within the landfill as it’s compressed, and creates Methane and CO2,” said Zachery Clayton, Manager of Environmental Medicine Planning with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.
Denver owns the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site or the so-called DADS Landfill in Arapahoe County. It’s operated by Waste Management that currently has a procedure to reduce methane gas.
“We’re actually capturing landfill methane gas, sending it to an electric engine plant, and we convert that gas into electricity and export it to the grid. Many of the residents throughout Denver enjoy that electricity, not even knowing that it came from the landfill,” said Brian Snyder, Director of Operations for Waste Management (WM) Renewable Energy.
In that process, there is excess methane that is then burned off, or ‘flared.’
“What it does is, it burns all the methane off, and then there’s subsequent pollutants that go into there, such as sulfur oxides and things like that, nitrous oxides,” said Clayton.
WM and the City and County of Denver recently agreed on a partnership to change and update that whole process.
Denver7
WM is hoping to pay for and build a new renewable natural gas plant at the DADS landfill.
“It’s going to capture about 98% of the methane that comes out of the landfill. It goes to the plant, it scrubs it, it cleans it to 98% and then it puts it into a pipeline and transmission line and goes out for distribution,” said Clayton.
The renewable natural gas can then be used as power.
“We’re going to collect over a million MMBtu of gas from the landfill, and that’s going to power nearly 15,000 homes with natural gas,” said Snyder.
Snyder adds WM has already started investing into compressed natural gas vehicles, and plans to use some of the gas from the new plant to power around 900 trash collection vehicles a year.
Denver7
There’s another large impact for anyone outside the landfill.
“Improve the air quality: that’s number one, which is extremely beneficial. It takes something that’s currently, could be dangerous, and puts it as a beneficial reuse,” said Clayton.
The project still needs to go through the planning and permitting phase. Clayton said that will also include a public input process.
If approved to move forward, the plant could be up and running by 2027.
Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Danielle Kreutter
Denver7’s Danielle Kreutter covers stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on affordable housing and issues surrounding the unhoused community. If you’d like to get in touch with Danielle, fill out the form below to send her an email.
Koreatown resident Scott Lyness was well aware that the city of Los Angeles was looking to tackle its food waste problem.
While bicycling to work, he saw the growing number of green trash bins popping up on curbs. He read the notice sent to his home instructing residents to expect green bins to be delivered at some point.
Still, Lyness was not prepared for what came next: 13 green bins deposited earlier this month outside the apartment building he manages on New Hampshire Avenue.
That’s on top of the three bins that the city delivered the previous week at a smaller building he also manages next door, and the two green bins that those properties were already using.
Lyness, 69, who works as a project manager at USC, said the two buildings don’t have anywhere near the room to store so many full-size cans — and don’t generate enough organic waste to fill them. He’s tried to have his tenants contact city offices to say they don’t need them. He said he’s even thought about throwing them into the street.
“Our neighborhoods are being inundated with green waste bins,” he said.
City officials are working furiously to get Angelenos to separate more of their food waste — eggshells, coffee grounds, meat bones, unfinished vegetables, orange peels, greasy napkins — to comply with SB 1383, a state composting law passed in 2016. They’ve even implemented Professor Green, an online chatbot that can help residents decide what can and can’t go in the green bin.
SB 1383 requires that 75% of organic waste be diverted away from landfills by the end of the year and instead turned into compost. Food and other organic waste sent to landfills is a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane has a global warming potential about 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
To reach that goal, crews from L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation have deposited huge numbers of 90-gallon green bins in front of some apartment buildings, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and larger buildings that have been grandfathered into the city’s curbside trash collection program.
Scott Lyness, 69, stands near green waste bins outside the apartment building he manages in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Residents are already familiar with the green bins, which were long reserved for lawn clippings and other yard waste but now are the destination for food scraps as well.
Most large apartment buildings in L.A. have been spared from the recent round of green bin deliveries, since they participate in recycLA, the city trash franchise program that relies on private waste haulers.
Sanitation officials say that Angelenos who prefer smaller, more manageable containers should fill out a form to get a 30- or 60-gallon replacement. They point out that the bins are part of a much larger effort by the city to reach its zero-waste goals and “lead on sustainability.”
Most of the green bins’ contents are taken to a facility in Bakersfield, where the resulting compost can be used by farmers, said Heather Johnson, a sanitation spokesperson.
“While some may find [the bins] inconvenient at the moment, in the short term they will result in more diverted waste and cleaner air,” Johnson said in an email.
Despite those serious intentions, Angelenos have been poking fun at the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025,” as journalist and podcaster Alissa Walker framed the situation on Bluesky. Walker recently shared a photo showing what appeared to be 20 green bins in front of one property, right next to a discarded sofa.
“This one is probably my favorite,” she wrote. “I like how they lined them all up neatly in a row and then left the couch.”
Green organic waste bins outside an apartment building in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
After Walker urged others to send in pictures, Silver Lake resident Tommy Newman posted a photo on Bluesky showing eight bins outside an eight-unit building, just south of Sunset Boulevard.
“Unless they are running a juice bar in there, how could they possibly create this much organic waste on a weekly basis?” wrote Newman, who works at a county housing agency.
Over on X, another observer summed up the absurdity in a different way. “LA gave every multi family unit a green bin due to a bureaucratic fever dream about composting,” the person wrote. “I have 5 personally.”
In recent months, L.A.’s sanitation agency has sent teams of “ambassadors” into neighborhoods to educate residents about the need to throw food in the green bins.
That means keeping food out of the 60-gallon black bins where residents have been accustomed to dumping most of their garbage, which ultimately winds up in landfills. Recyclable items, including glass and aluminum, will continue to go into blue bins.
The changes were also spelled out on fliers sent out by the city last summer, with a clear warning in all capital letters: “Unless we hear from you immediately, we will deliver a 90-gallon green container to your residence.”
Lyness saw those alerts and knew about the change. But he contends that most people would have missed the news or thrown the fliers away. Depositing an inordinate amount of bins around town is just not the way to encourage people to properly dispose of their organic waste, he said.
The city’s new food-waste program, which is projected to cost $66 million a year, is one reason the City Council approved a huge increase in trash fees earlier this year, in some cases doubling them. Each 90-gallon green bin costs the city $58.61, tax included, though residents are not being directly charged for the recent deliveries.
Sanitation officials say they have delivered more than 65,000 green bins across the city, with 4,000 to go. For residents waiting for them to be removed or replaced with a smaller bin, only 1,000 orders can be carried out in a regular workday, those officials said.
Around the corner on North Berendo Street, Lyness’ neighbor Lucy Alvidrez agreed that the green bins were troublesome while dragging in her black bin Thursday afternoon.
“They sure got carried away with it,” she said, pointing across the street to an apartment building with about two dozen green bins on its front curb.
Alvidrez, 69, who has lived in the neighborhood for two decades, never had an issue with trash collection until the city dropped off four green bins, one for each unit in her building. She was more fortunate than Lyness: sanitation workers took two of the bins back, upon request.
Alvidrez said she would prefer that the city “spend our money feeding the homeless” instead of purchasing bins that no one needs, she said.
A dozen green organic waste bins occupy a street in Koreatown..
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Nearby, Lyness opened a neighbor’s green bin, which was filled to the brim with trash that wasn’t compostable and should have gone in a black bin. If no one knows what to put in the green bins, nothing is going to improve, he said.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., November 5, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– SierraCol Energy has achieved the prestigious OGMP 2.0 Gold Standard from the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (UNEP-IMEO), underscoring its position as a regional leader in transparent, cost-effective methane management.
In only two years since joining OGMP 2.0, SierraCol reached Level 5 reporting across its material assets and met all criteria for the Gold Standard – a distinction recognizing companies with the highest quality measurement-based methane data and verified mitigation performance. According to UNEP’s An Eye on Methane 2025 report, “SierraCol and Kiwetinohk reported assets at Level 5 in their second year of membership”, achieving the Gold Standard within two years of joining the initiative.
SierraCol’s achievement represents not just an environmental milestone but also a demonstration of leadership in operational excellence and responsible growth. The company’s discipline in setting NPV-positive decarbonization initiatives – each with a payback in the short term – reinforces that emissions reduction can create measurable economic value and align with business performance.
“Reliable methane measurements drive high-impact decarbonization – guiding investment toward projects that deliver quick, measurable, and lasting value” said Juan Carlos Lopez Ballen, Head of Decarbonization and water footprint, at SierraCol Energy.
SierraCol’s rapid progress builds on its early recognition in the An Eye on Methane 2024 report, where UNEP highlighted its “best-in-class implementation plan” among first-year participants – including robust reduction targets, comprehensive mitigation plans, and a clear roadmap for Level 4 and Level 5 reporting across material assets.
To achieve this year’s milestone, SierraCol partnered with Insight M as its technical solutions provider for Level 5 measurement campaigns. Insight M employed integrated, measurement-based methodologies – combining site-level screening and source-level quantification – to reconcile methane emissions across diverse field conditions. This approach enhanced the accuracy and reliability of SierraCol’s OGMP 2.0 data and provided the measurement integrity necessary for UNEP’s Gold Standard verification.
“SierraCol’s success demonstrates how rigorous measurement and innovative technical design can transform methane management from a compliance task into a leadership advantage,” said David Bercovich, Chief Executive Officer at Insight M. “Our collaboration shows that strong data and practical implementation can deliver both climate impact and economic performance.”
SierraCol’s advancement exemplifies how credible data, reliable measurement, and strong governance can accelerate progress toward measurable methane reduction. Together, SierraCol, Insight M, and OGMP 2.0 are helping define what meaningful, verifiable methane leadership looks like across the energy sector in Latin America.
About Insight M
Founded in 2014, Insight M is a methane emissions management company helping oil and gas operators reduce emissions and improve efficiency. The world’s safest Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) solution, Insight M delivers pragmatic methane solutions that maximize profits and emissions reductions while minimizing the time operations teams need to spend in the field.. To date, it has saved customers over $500 million in gas value and prevented 140 billion cubic feet of methane from entering the atmosphere.
Don’t let your Halloween pumpkin haunt the landfill this November.More than 1 billion pounds (454 million kilograms) of pumpkins rot in U.S. landfills each year after Halloween, according to the Department of Energy.Video above: Halloween festivities in full swing in Salem, MassachusettsYours doesn’t have to go to waste. Experts told us your pumpkins can be eaten, composted or even fed to animals. Here’s how. If you’re carving a jack-o’-lantern, don’t throw away the skin or innards — every part is edible.After carving, you can cube the excess flesh — the thick part between the outer skin and the inner pulp that holds the seeds — for soups and stews, says Carleigh Bodrug, a chef known for cooking with common food scraps. You can also puree it and add a tablespoon to your dog’s dinner for extra nutrients. And pumpkin chunks can be frozen for future use.”The seeds are a nutritional gold mine,” Bodrug said. They’re packed with protein, magnesium, zinc and healthy fats, according to a 2022 study in the journal Plants.One of Bodrug’s recipes involves removing the seeds, rinsing and roasting them with cinnamon for a crunchy snack or salad topper. Then you can use the stringy guts to make a pumpkin puree for muffins. This version differs from canned purees in grocery stores — which typically use a different type of pumpkin or squash — because carving pumpkins have stringier innards and a milder flavor. A carving pumpkin’s guts can still be used for baking — you’ll just have to amp up the seasoning to boost the flavor.If you don’t want to eat your pumpkins, you can donate them to a local farm, which might use them to feed pigs, chickens and other animals. Edible parts should be collected while you’re carving and before they’re painted, decorated or left on your porch for weeks. Paint and wax aren’t food-safe, and bacteria and mold can grow on the skin in outdoor climates.Once you’ve cooked what you can and donated what’s safe to feed, composting the rest is the easiest way to keep it out of the landfill.”That way, even though they’re not safe to eat, they can still give back to the earth,” Bodrug said. Composting pumpkins keeps them out of methane-emitting landfills and turns them into nutrient-rich soil instead. You can do this at home or drop them off at a local farm, compost collection bin or drop-off site.”A large percentage of what ends up going to the landfill is stuff that could have been composted,” said Dante Sclafani, compost coordinator at Queens County Farm in New York. “So even just cutting down something like pumpkins could really help curb how many garbage bags you’re putting out every week.”Before composting, remove any candles, plastic, glitter, or other decorations — they can contaminate the compost. A little glitter or paint won’t ruin the pile, but it’s best to get it as clean as possible before tossing it in. Then, chop up the pumpkin into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces so it can break down more easily.”Pumpkins are full of water, so it’s important to maintain a good balance of dried leaves, wood chips, sawdust, shredded newspaper, cardboard, straw — anything that’s a dry organic material — in your compost bin,” Sclafani said. If you don’t maintain this balance, your compost might start to stink.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a healthy compost pile should include a mix of “greens” — like pumpkin scraps and food waste — and “browns” like dry leaves, straw or cardboard, in roughly a 3-to-1 ratio. That balance helps the pile break down faster and prevents odors.And if your pumpkin’s been sitting on the porch all month? That’s actually ideal. “It’s never too far gone for compost,” Sclafani said. “Even if it’s mushy or moldy, that actually helps, because the fungus speeds up decomposition.””Composting anything organic is better than throwing it out because you’re not creating more refuse in landfills, you’re not creating methane gas,” said Laura Graney, the farm’s education director.Graney said autumn on the farm is the perfect opportunity to teach kids about composting since it gives them a sense of power in the face of big environmental challenges. “Even though they’re little, composting helps them feel like they can make a difference,” Graney said. “They take that message home to their families, and that’s how we spread the word.”
Don’t let your Halloween pumpkin haunt the landfill this November.
More than 1 billion pounds (454 million kilograms) of pumpkins rot in U.S. landfills each year after Halloween, according to the Department of Energy.
Video above: Halloween festivities in full swing in Salem, Massachusetts
Yours doesn’t have to go to waste. Experts told us your pumpkins can be eaten, composted or even fed to animals. Here’s how.
If you’re carving a jack-o’-lantern, don’t throw away the skin or innards — every part is edible.
After carving, you can cube the excess flesh — the thick part between the outer skin and the inner pulp that holds the seeds — for soups and stews, says Carleigh Bodrug, a chef known for cooking with common food scraps. You can also puree it and add a tablespoon to your dog’s dinner for extra nutrients. And pumpkin chunks can be frozen for future use.
“The seeds are a nutritional gold mine,” Bodrug said. They’re packed with protein, magnesium, zinc and healthy fats, according to a 2022 study in the journal Plants.
One of Bodrug’s recipes involves removing the seeds, rinsing and roasting them with cinnamon for a crunchy snack or salad topper. Then you can use the stringy guts to make a pumpkin puree for muffins. This version differs from canned purees in grocery stores — which typically use a different type of pumpkin or squash — because carving pumpkins have stringier innards and a milder flavor. A carving pumpkin’s guts can still be used for baking — you’ll just have to amp up the seasoning to boost the flavor.
If you don’t want to eat your pumpkins, you can donate them to a local farm, which might use them to feed pigs, chickens and other animals.
Edible parts should be collected while you’re carving and before they’re painted, decorated or left on your porch for weeks. Paint and wax aren’t food-safe, and bacteria and mold can grow on the skin in outdoor climates.
Once you’ve cooked what you can and donated what’s safe to feed, composting the rest is the easiest way to keep it out of the landfill.
“That way, even though they’re not safe to eat, they can still give back to the earth,” Bodrug said.
Composting pumpkins keeps them out of methane-emitting landfills and turns them into nutrient-rich soil instead. You can do this at home or drop them off at a local farm, compost collection bin or drop-off site.
“A large percentage of what ends up going to the landfill is stuff that could have been composted,” said Dante Sclafani, compost coordinator at Queens County Farm in New York. “So even just cutting down something like pumpkins could really help curb how many garbage bags you’re putting out every week.”
Before composting, remove any candles, plastic, glitter, or other decorations — they can contaminate the compost. A little glitter or paint won’t ruin the pile, but it’s best to get it as clean as possible before tossing it in. Then, chop up the pumpkin into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces so it can break down more easily.
“Pumpkins are full of water, so it’s important to maintain a good balance of dried leaves, wood chips, sawdust, shredded newspaper, cardboard, straw — anything that’s a dry organic material — in your compost bin,” Sclafani said. If you don’t maintain this balance, your compost might start to stink.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a healthy compost pile should include a mix of “greens” — like pumpkin scraps and food waste — and “browns” like dry leaves, straw or cardboard, in roughly a 3-to-1 ratio. That balance helps the pile break down faster and prevents odors.
And if your pumpkin’s been sitting on the porch all month? That’s actually ideal. “It’s never too far gone for compost,” Sclafani said. “Even if it’s mushy or moldy, that actually helps, because the fungus speeds up decomposition.”
“Composting anything organic is better than throwing it out because you’re not creating more refuse in landfills, you’re not creating methane gas,” said Laura Graney, the farm’s education director.
Graney said autumn on the farm is the perfect opportunity to teach kids about composting since it gives them a sense of power in the face of big environmental challenges.
“Even though they’re little, composting helps them feel like they can make a difference,” Graney said. “They take that message home to their families, and that’s how we spread the word.”
This sharp growth will allow GHGSat’s pioneering constellation—already the world’s largest collection of satellitesdedicated to monitoring greenhouse gases—to revisit industrial sites to detect methane emissions on a daily cadence around the world.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 11, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– GHGSat, the global leader in satellite emissions monitoring, will rapidly expand its satellite constellation through the launch of nine new satellites, near-doubling its fleet of methane monitoring satellites by the end of 2026.
This sharp growth will allow GHGSat’s pioneering constellation—already the world’s largest collection of satellitesdedicated to monitoring greenhouse gases—to revisit industrial sites to detect methane emissions on a daily cadence around the world.
As the world gathers for COP29 in Baku, it is increasingly clear that tackling methane emissions is one of the fastest levers the world has to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius targeted in the Paris Agreement. Because methane has a warming effect roughly 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, reducing its levels in the atmosphere can have a swift impact on the climate. In the near-term, every ton of methane reduced will be equivalent to over 100 tons of carbon dioxide reduced over the subsequent five years. Methane alone is responsible for approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius of current warming.
Today, GHGSat’s constellation of satellites traces greenhouse gas emissions directly to industrial facilities at an unmatched cadence, arming industry and government decision-makers with data and insights required to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. In 2023 alone, GHGSat’s satellite constellation made more than 3 million observations across 85 countries, identifying nearly 16,000 emissions over the super-emitter threshold of 100 kilograms of methane per hour. Since COP28, GHGSat has identified more than 20,000 plumes at this threshold, highlighting the scale of the emissions challenge and need for greater monitoring coverage.
“Industry, governments and financial services are hungry for this data, which fills a critical emissions knowledge gap,” said Stephane Germain, CEO and Founder of GHGSat. “Since the launch of GHGSat’s first satellite in 2016, we have pinpointed and measured tens of thousands of emissions worldwide. But without the significant number of satellites required to orbit the planet more frequently, we risk merely scratching the surface of the true extent of global emissions. With this rapid scale-up, GHGSat will unlock a level of detail about greenhouse gas emissions that was previously unimaginable.”
As part of the expansion, GHGSat is working with a group of long-standing partners, all renowned and world-class space and manufacturing companies, to develop and deliver the satellites.
This scale-up is critical to enable carbon-intensive industries to fulfill ambitious methane pledges from previous COPs, such as the Global Methane Pledge announced at COP26 and the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter announced at COP28. The Global Methane Pledge counted 158 countries as of March 2024 with the stated ambition of reducing global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. The Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter saw the commitment of the world’s largest oil and natural gas companies to end routine flaring, reduce upstream methane emissions to near-zero by 2030, and achieve Net Zero emissions from operations by 2050. GHGSat provides robust emissions data and frequent monitoring of assets in support of these initiatives, and many others. As discussions at COP29 seek to turn climate pledges into tangible progress, data will be foundational to understanding the current baseline of emissions and rapidly trace leaks for mitigation action.
RICHFIELD, Minn. — Who needs a pumpkin after Halloween, anyways?
Before Richfield residents can throw their jack-o-lantern in the garbage, the city is providing a destructive, yet constructive alternative.
For the first time ever, Richfield hosted a ‘Pumpkin smash’ event Saturday at Veterans Park. The mission? Smash, then compost the Halloween waste.
The city’s solid waste specialist says it’s all for a good cause.
WCCO
We’re producing anywhere between 1-2 billion pumpkins anywhere in the United States,” said Zach McCarty. “[In a landfill] instead of breaking down in a way that’s beneficial, they’ll end up breaking down and producing methane gas, which is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas.”
When parents and kids alike smashed their gourds, they went instead into a bin for compost.
“Within about 30-60 days, we’ll have a really rich soil amendment that has benefits for any kind of project it can be used for around the state,” McCarty said. “It’s such a unique process that not only benefits our environment by diverting things from landfills, but it’s going to support engineering projects around the county, it’s going to start supporting gardens, farms, it has a lot of potential.”
It was almost 10 years ago when Andrew Thorpe received a text from the crew flying overhead in a small aircraft: They had spotted a new methane hot spot.
Thorpe drove along winding dirt and mountain roads in an unwieldy rental SUV near the Four Corners region of the southwestern U.S. When he arrived at the spot relayed from the plane, he pulled out a thermal camera to scan for the plume. Sure enough, methane was seeping out of the ground, likely from a pipeline leak.
He found a marker sticking out of the desert with the phone number for a gas company, so he gave them a call. “I had the most confused individual on the other side of the phone,” Thorpe said. “I was trying to explain to them why I was calling, but this was back many years ago when there really weren’t any technologies that could do this.”
Over the years, the work has gotten Thorpe some unwanted attention. “I did some driving surveys in California .… A rent-a-cop was very suspicious of me and tried to scare me off,” said Thorpe. “If you set up a thermal camera on a public road and you’re pointing it at a tank beyond the fence, people are going to get nervous. I’ve been heckled by some oil and gas workers, but that’s par for the course.”
Today, Thorpe is part of a group that is at the forefront of greenhouse gas monitoring at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. For over 40 years, the Microdevices Laboratory at JPL has developed specialized instruments to measure methane and carbon dioxide with extreme precision.
The instruments, called spectrometers, detect gases based on which colors of sunlight they absorb. Earlier this year, a team of researchers from JPL, Caltech and research nonprofit Carnegie Science was selected as a finalist for a NASA award to put the technology into orbit.
JPL technicians work on an Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, or AVIRIS, that will be installed in an airplane to search for methane and other greenhouse gases.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
If chosen for the satellite mission, the team’s carbon investigation, called Carbon-I, would launch in the early 2030s. Over the course of three years, Carbon-I would continuously map greenhouse gas emissions around the globe and take daily snapshots of areas of interest, allowing scientists to identify sources of climate pollution, such as power plants, pipeline leaks, farms and landfills.
While there are already multiple satellites monitoring these gases, Carbon-I’s resolution is unprecedented and would eliminate any guesswork in determining where the gas was emitted. “There’s no denying it anymore — once we see a plume, there’s no other potential source,” said Christian Frankenberg, co-principal investigator for Carbon-I and a professor of environmental science and engineering at Caltech.
Caltech professor Christian Frankenberg, co-principal investigator for the proposed space-based Carbon-I emission-monitoring system, peers into an AVIRIS monitor under construction in a JPL lab.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Carbon-I’s finest, 100-foot resolution “is a very high resolution from space. That’s an incredible resolution to be able to get,” said Debra Wunch, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies Earth’s carbon cycle and is not involved in the Carbon-I proposal. “It would be able to give us much more insight into exactly the source of emissions .… This would be groundbreaking. You would be able to see individual stacks, individual parts of landfills, even.”
Historically, monitoring the release of greenhouse gases from individual emitters has been challenging — both carbon dioxide and methane are colorless and odorless. So scientists have often had to rely on adding up self-reported values from companies and estimates from research. For example, to estimate the amount of methane cows produce, scientists would have to determine how much methane one cow releases and multiply it by the total number of cows on Earth.
“If you look at international policies … currently they’re all based on these bottom-up inventories,” said Anna Michalak, co-principal investigator for Carbon-I and the founding director of the Carnegie Climate and Resilience Hub at Carnegie Science. “We need to get to a point where … we actually have an independent way of tracking what the emissions are.”
Carbon-I’s resolution will also give scientists new access to the atmosphere of the tropics, where clouds currently obscure most forms of satellite surveillance. “It’s their Achilles’ heel,” said Frankenberg.
Since tropical and subtropical forests absorb roughly a quarter of the CO2 humanity produces by burning fossil fuels, accurate data from this region of the globe is badly needed.
Satellites currently orbiting Earth with lower resolution can’t see through small gaps in the cloud coverage. They only see a blurred average of the cloudy and clear spots in the sky for each pixel. Carbon-I, with each pixel’s area almost 50 times smaller than that of most other satellites, can see the clearings and take measurements through them. In an April 2024 paper, Frankenberg, Michalak and their collaborators estimated that Carbon-I would be able to see past the clouds in the tropics anywhere from 10 to 100 times more frequently than its predecessors.
Carbon-I “is going to see things where people don’t know what’s going on,” said Thorpe, who has moved on from his graduate school days pointing thermal cameras at gas leaks and now works as a research technologist with the Microdevices Laboratory. “It’s going to open a whole new realm of science.”
JPL’s airborne greenhouse gas-monitoring program goes back decades, but the field of space monitoring is still fairly new. Near the start of 2016, NASA headquarters contacted the JPL team. There was an ongoing massive blowout at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility near Porter Ranch, and NASA wanted the team to check it out.
The team flew over the site in a variant of a 1960s-era spy plane on three days over the course of a month while the Southern California Gas Co. fought to contain the blowout. At the same time, NASA’s Goddard Flight Center in Maryland pointed the NASA Earth Observing spacecraft’s Hyperion spectrometer at the leak.
Hyperion was designed to make observations of the Earth’s surface and filter out noise from the atmosphere. Now, they were trying to observe the atmosphere and filter out the surface, and for the first time, scientists observed a human-made point source of methane from orbit.
“The Hyperion result was pretty noisy, but you could still see the plume,” said Thorpe. “This was really a proof of concept that we could do it from space.”
Even if Carbon-I launches, it doesn’t mean the team will stop putting instruments on planes. From aircraft, the team is able to monitor areas of interest in even sharper resolution and for consecutive days at a time. Right now, a leaner, meaner version of the spectrometers that observed the Four Corners leak and Aliso Canyon blowout is flying a series of missions to monitor the emissions of offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
The twin-engine King Air plane used by JPL to conduct greenhouse gas-monitoring flights in its hangar at Hollywood Burbank Airport.
(Noah Haggerty/Los Angeles Times)
Plane missions also give the team an opportunity to try out new and improve spectrometers. “You can fix them, and you can upgrade them,” said JPL engineer Michael Eastwood, who’s worked with the spectrometers for over three decades and regularly flies with them. “You can take more risks, as opposed to spacecraft that need really mature, really well-known, high reliability — we’re not constrained like that.”
The air team is nimble, too. Typically, two crew members sit in the second row of a King Air twin-propeller aircraft looking at a stack of laptops and instruments with enough buttons to rival the plane’s cockpit. On the screens, they can look at real-time GPS data and spectrometer results and coordinate a flight plan with the pilots. The spectrometer — called AVIRIS, short for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer — sits in the third row, looking down through a window cut out in the floor.
The NASA program for which Carbon-I was selected as a finalist aims to fund space-based Earth science that will benefit society. The team was awarded $5 million to sharpen its project proposal before a final NASA review in 2025. There are three other finalists, and two will be selected for the launch.
This two-step process for selecting missions is new for NASA’s Earth science programs and requires JPL to compete with the rest of the scientific community, independent of their association with the space agency.
“If we’re talking about grocery money, [$5 million] seems like a lot of money, but it’s really a bargain,” said Michalak. “If you think about the fact that you’re committing $300 million toward a mission, spending 1.5% of that to really make sure it’s going to be fabulous and successful is extremely smart.”
In the meantime, the Carbon-I team is focused on showing NASA that it has the technical know-how to execute the project on time and under budget.
“I think all four of the missions in the current phase are absolutely worthwhile scientific missions,” said Michalak, “and 50% odds are not bad odds for a satellite mission.”
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Copenhagen, Denmark — Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country in the world to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming.
The aim is to reduce Danish greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, said Taxation Minister Jeppe Bruus.
As of 2030, Danish livestock farmers will be taxed 300 kroner ($43) per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030. The tax will increase to 750 kroner ($108) by 2035. However, because of an income tax deduction of 60%, the actual cost per ton will start at 120 kroner ($17.3) and increase to 300 kroner by 2035.
Although carbon dioxide typically gets more attention for its role in climate change, methane traps about 87 times more heat on a 20-year timescale, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Levels of methane, which is emitted from sources including landfills, oil and natural gas systems and livestock, have increased particularly quickly since 2020. Livestock account for about 32% of human-caused methane emissions, says the U.N. Environment Program.
“We will take a big step closer in becoming climate neutral in 2045,” Bruus said, adding Denmark “will be the first country in the world to introduce a real CO2 tax on agriculture” and hopes other countries follow suit.
New Zealand had passed a similar law due to take effect in 2025. However, the legislation was removed from the statute book on Wednesday after hefty criticism from farmers and a change of government at the 2023 election from a center-left ruling bloc to a center-right one. New Zealand said it would exclude agriculture from its emissions trading scheme in favor of exploring other ways to reduce methane.
In Denmark, the deal was reached late Monday between the center-right government and representatives of farmers, the industry and unions, among others, and presented Tuesday.
The Danish Society for Nature Conservation, the largest nature conservation and environmental organization in Denmark, described the tax agreement as “a historic compromise.”
“We have succeeded in landing a compromise on a CO2 tax, which lays the groundwork for a restructured food industry — also on the other side of 2030,” its head, Maria Reumert Gjerding, said after the talks in which they took part.
A typical Danish cow produces 6 metric tons (6.6 tons) of CO2 equivalent per year. Denmark, which is a large dairy and pork exporter, also will tax pigs, although cows produce far higher emissions than pigs.
The tax has to be approved in the 179-seat Folketing, or parliament, but the bill is expected to pass after the broad-based consensus.
According to Statistic Denmark, there were as of June 30, 2022, 1,484,377 cows in the Scandinavian country, a slight drop compared to the previous year.
Greenhouse gas emissions could skyrocket if the permafrost on an Arctic island melts, scientists have found.
Millions of cubic meters of methane are trapped under the permafrost on Svalbard island in Norway. Permafrost is a permanently frozen layer underneath the surface of the Earth. And in this case, it serves as a frozen prison for this catastrophic amount of methane.
But the permafrost is rapidly melting due to the warming climate. This means that vast amounts of methane could escape into the atmosphere, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Earth Science.
“At present the leakage from below permafrost is very low, but factors such as glacial retreat and permafrost thawing may ‘lift the lid’ on this in the future,” Thomas Birchall of the University Center in Svalbard, and lead author of the study said in a press release on the findings.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere from both human activities and natural processes. It is the second most significant contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide.
Svalbard is very similar to the rest of the Arctic in terms of its geological and glacial history, according to the study. This means vast amounts of methane may be present elsewhere in the region.
To study the permafrost, researchers used historical data to map the frost and the accumulation of methane beneath it. However, it remains a complicated topic of study due to its being extremely inaccessible to humans.
But it is possible to measure using wellbore—holes drilled in the ground to retrieve resources such as oil and gas.
Svalbard has widespread permafrost; however, it is patchier in certain areas. Ocean currents towards the island’s west mean it is warmer there, making the permafrost elsewhere thinner with more patches. Therefore, an escape of methane would be more likely here, as the permafrost is more likely to melt, releasing the potent gas.
But even in areas where the permafrost is thick—such as in the island’s lowlands—there is potential for the gas to escape.
Longyearbyen, Svalbard and (inset) a 3D illustration of methane. A study found that greenhouse gas emissions could skyrocket it methane escapes from the permafrost on the Arctic island. Suzi Media Production / vchal/Getty
Scientists looked out for ice forming inside the wellbore, as well as changes in background gas measurements. They discovered abnormal amounts of pressure beneath the permafrost, which suggested it acted as a seal for the gas below.
“All the wells that encountered gas accumulations did so by coincidence—by contrast, hydrocarbon exploration wells that specifically target accumulations in more typical settings had a success rate far below 50%,” said Birchall. “These things seem to be common. One anecdotal example is from a wellbore that was drilled recently near the airport in Longyearbyen.
“The drillers heard a bubbling sound coming from the well, so we decided to have a look, armed with rudimentary alarms designed for detecting explosive levels of methane—which were immediately triggered when we held them over the wellbore.”
Previous research has shown that the upper layer of permafrost around the world is thawing at a quicker rate with the warming climate. The question as to whether or how the deeper layer of permafrost is affected remains a mystery and very difficult to study.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about permafrost? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — The Biden administration is ramping up efforts to reduce methane emissions, targeting the oil and gas industry for its role in global warming even as President Joe Biden has pressed energy producers for more oil drilling to lower prices at the gasoline pump.
Biden was set to announce on Friday a supplemental rule cracking down on emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming and packs a stronger short-term punch than even carbon dioxide — as he attends a global climate conference in Egypt.
The new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency follows up on a methane rule Biden announced last year at a United Nations climate summit in Scotland. The 2021 rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells as previous EPA regulations have done.
The new rule goes a step further and takes aim at all drilling sites, including smaller wells that emit less than 3 tons (2.7 metric tonnes) of methane per year. Small wells currently are subject to an initial inspection but are rarely checked again for leaks.
The proposal also requires operators to respond to credible third-party reports of high-volume methane leaks.
A flare to burn methane from oil production is seen on a well pad near Watford City, North Dakota, Aug. 26, 2021. The Biden administration is ramping up efforts to reduce methane emissions, targeting the oil and gas industry for its role in global warming even as President Joe Biden has pressed energy producers for more oil drilling to lower prices at the gasoline pump.
AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File
The Biden administration will embark on “a relentless focus to root out emissions wherever we can find them,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Friday at climate negotiations in Egypt, hours before the president was set to speak at the international climate summit.
Oil and gas production is the nation’s largest industrial source of methane, the primary component of natural gas, and is a key target for the Biden administration as it seeks to combat climate change. The United States is among more than 100 countries that have pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels.
“We must lead by example when it comes to tackling methane pollution — one of the biggest drivers of climate change,″ said EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who also is in Egypt for the climate talks. The new, stronger standards “will enable innovative new technology to flourish while protecting people and the planet,” he said.
“Our regulatory approach is very aggressive from a timing standpoint and a stringency standpoint,” Regan said at a briefing in Egypt. The old and new rules should be able to prevent more than 80% of the energy waste, about 36 million tons (32.6 million metric tonnes) of carbon emissions, he said.
Leakage from wells and pipelines is why former Vice President Al Gore and others call natural gas “a bridge to nowhere.” In an interview with The Associated Press, Gore said: “When you work the math, a leakage of 2 to 3% of the methane completely negates the climate advantage of methane gas. And, tragically, the wildcatters that do most of the hydrological fracturing do not pay attention to the methane leakage. You have leakage in the LNG (liquefied natural gas) process, you have leakage in pipelines, you have leakage in the use.”
The supplemental rule comes as Biden has accused oil companies of “war profiteering” and raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax on energy companies if they don’t boost domestic production.
Biden has repeatedly criticized major oil companies for making record-setting profits in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for the American people. The Democratic president suggested last week that he will look to Congress to impose tax penalties on oil companies if they don’t invest some of their record-breaking profits to lower costs for American consumers.
Besides the EPA rule, the new climate and health law approved by Congress in August includes a methane emissions reduction program that would impose a fee on energy producers that exceed a certain level of methane emissions. The fee, set to rise to $1,500 per metric ton of methane, marks the first time the federal government has directly imposed a fee, or tax, on greenhouse gas emissions.
The law allows exemptions for companies that comply with the EPA’s standards or fall below a certain emissions threshold. It also includes $1.5 billon in grants and other spending to help operators and local communities improve monitoring and data collection for methane emissions, with the goal of finding and repairing natural gas leaks.
Multiple studies have found that smaller wells produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half the methane emissions from well sites.
“We can’t leave half of the problem on the table and expect to get the reductions that we need to get and protect local communities from pollution,” said Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory affairs for oil and gas at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The oil industry has generally welcomed direct federal regulation of methane emissions, preferring a single national standard to a hodgepodge of state rules.
Even so, oil and gas companies have asked the EPA to exempt hundreds of thousands of the nation’s smallest wells from the upcoming methane rules.
The apparent sabotage of both Nord Stream gas pipelines may be one of the worst industrial methane accidents in history, scientists said Wednesday, but it’s not a major climate disaster.
Methane — a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — is escaping into the atmosphere from three boiling patches on the surface of the Baltic Sea, the largest of which the Danish military said was a kilometer across.
On Tuesday evening, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the “sabotage” and “deliberate disruption of active European energy infrastructure.”
Here are eight key questions on the impact of the leaks.
1. How much methane was in the pipelines?
No government agency in Europe could say for sure how much gas was in the pipes.
“I cannot tell you clearly as the pipelines are owned by Nord Stream AG and the gas comes from Gazprom,” said a spokesperson for the German climate and economy ministry.
The two Nord Stream 1 pipelines were in operation, although Moscow stopped delivering gas a month ago, and both were hit. “It can be assumed that it’s a large amount” of gas in those lines, the German official said. Only one of the Nord Stream 2 lines was struck. It was not in operation but was filled with 177 million cubic meters of gas last year.
Estimates of the total gas in the pipelines that are leaking range from 150 million cubic meters to 500 million cubic meters.
2. How much is being released?
Kristoffer Böttzauw, the director of the Danish Energy Agency, told reporters on Wednesday that the leaks would equate to about 14 million tons of CO2, about 32 percent of Denmark’s annual emissions.
Germany’s Federal Environment Agency estimated the leaks will lead to emissions of around 7.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent — about 1 percent of Germany’s annual emissions. The agency also noted there are no “sealing mechanisms” along the pipelines, “so in all likelihood the entire contents of the pipes will escape.”
Because at least one of the leaks is in Danish waters, Denmark will have to add these emissions to its climate balance sheet, the agency said.
But it is not clear whether all of the gas in the lines would actually be released into the atmosphere. Methane is also consumed by ocean bacteria as it heads through the water column.
3. How does that compare to previous leaks?
The largest leak ever recorded in the U.S. was the 2015 Aliso Canyon leak of roughly 90,000 tons of methane over months. With the upper estimates of what might be released in the Baltic more than twice that, this week’s disaster may be “unprecedented,” said David McCabe, a senior scientist with the Clean Air Task Force.
Jeffrey Kargel, a senior scientist at the Planetary Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said the leak was “really disturbing. It is a real travesty, an environmental crime if it was deliberate.”
4. Will this have a meaningful effect on global temperatures?
“The amount of gas lost from the pipeline obviously is large,” Kargel said. But “it is not the climate disaster one might think.”
Annual global carbon emissions are around 32 billion tons, so this represents a tiny fraction of the pollution driving climate change. It even pales in comparison to the accumulation of thousands of industrial and agricultural sources of methane that are warming the planet.
“This is a wee bubble in the ocean compared to the huge amounts of so-called fugitive methane that are emitted every day around the world due to things like fracking, coal mining and oil extraction,” said Dave Reay, executive director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said it was roughly comparable to the amount of methane leaked from across Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure on any given working week.
A leak was reported near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of Denmark’s Bornholm island | Danish Defence Command
5. Is the local environment affected?
While the gas is still leaking, the immediate vicinity is an extremely dangerous place. Air that contains more than 5 percent methane can be flammable, said Rehder, so the risk of an explosion is real. Methane is not a toxic gas, but high concentrations can reduce the amount of available oxygen.
Shipping has been restricted from a 5 nautical mile radius around the leaks. This is because the methane in the water can affect buoyancy and rupture a vessel’s hull.
Marine animals near the escaping gas may be caught up and killed — especially poor swimmers such as jellyfish, said Rehder. But long-term effects on the local environment are not anticipated.
“It’s an unprecedented case,” he said. “But from our current understanding, I would think that the local effects on marine life in the area is rather small.”
6. What can be done?
Some have suggested that the remaining gas should be pumped out, but a German economy and climate ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said this wasn’t possible.
Once the pipeline has emptied, “it will fill up with water,” the spokesperson added. “At the moment, no one can go underwater — the danger is too great due to the escaping methane.”
Any repair would be the responsibility of pipeline owner Nord Stream AG, the Germans said.
7. Should they set it on fire?
Not only would it look impressive, setting the gas on fire would hugely slash the global warming impact of the leak. Methane is made of carbon and hydrogen, when burned it creates carbon dioxide, which is between 30 and 80 times less planet-warming per ton than methane. Flaring, as it is known, is a common method for reducing the impact of escaping methane.
From a pure climate perspective, setting the escaping methane on fire makes sense. “Yes, definitely — it will help,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds.
But there would be safety issues and potential environmental concerns, including air pollution from the combustion. “With land — in particular the inhabited and touristic island of Bornholm — nearby, you would not venture into this,” said Rehder.
No government has yet indicated that this is under consideration.
8. How long will it last and what next?
“We expect that gas will flow out of the pipes until the end of the week. After that, first of all, from the Danish side, we will try to get out and investigate what the cause is, and approach the pipes, so that we can have it investigated properly. We can do that when the gas leak has stopped,” Danish Energy Agency director Böttzauw told local media.
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