Climate change is fast becoming a grave concern as its effects are being seen all across the world. As we reported, climate change made the summer of 2024 the hottest on record globally and for Europe. This calls for efforts to stabilize the climate by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, benefitting both the climate and our health.
Greenhouse gasses are those gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the prominent of these gases and is released by as a result of burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil as well as trees and solid waste and as a result of certain chemical reactions such as cement production.
Another example of greenhouse gas is nitrous oxide (N2O). It is emitted during agricultural and industrial activities during the treatment of wastewater and the combustion of fossil fuels. Fluorinated gasses, meanwhile, are emitted from a variety of household and commercial applications.
Methane (CH4), on the other hand, is emitted during the production and transport of oil, natural gas, and coal. However, a vast majority of CH4 emissions actually come from human activities or “anthropogenic” sources like landfills, land use, livestock, and other agricultural practices. Natural sources like termites and wetlands, too, are also responsible for CH4 emissions.
Methane is a colorless, odorless, and flammable gas that contributes to global warming and climate change. A main component of natural gas, methane, is used as a fuel to generate heat and light and to manufacture organic chemicals.
According to Rob Jackson, a scientist at Stanford University who chairs the Global Carbon Project, which is a group that monitors greenhouse gas emissions yearly:
“Methane is a climate menace that the world is ignoring. Methane has risen far more and much faster than carbon dioxide.”
While the collective focus has been on carbon dioxide reduction due to methane’s shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2, CH4 warms Earth’s atmosphere 90 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over the first two decades after it’s released.
In fact, a new study has found that the rate of methane emission is happening at a rapid pace, presenting a major obstacle to solving the climate change problem.
Methane Emissions Rising Faster than Ever
A perspective article published earlier this week in Environmental Research Letters, alongside data in Earth System Science Data, revealed that concentrations of methane in Earth’s atmosphere have been rising at a record speed over the past five years.
The papers are the work of the Global Carbon Project, an initiative tracking greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
While over 150 countries have vowed to reduce methane emissions by 30% this decade under the Global Methane Pledge, that hasn’t really been happening. This global commitment was launched in 2021 by the EU and the US.
On the contrary, global methane emissions—two-thirds of which now come from human activities, including agriculture, fossil fuel use, landfills, and other waste—are actually rising faster than ever.
The trend “cannot continue if we are to maintain a habitable climate,” wrote the researchers in the paper.
Atmospheric concentrations of CH4 are currently more than 2.6x higher than it was in pre-industrial times. In fact, it is right now the highest they’ve been in at least 800,000 years.
The trajectory of rising methane emission rates is the most extreme one used by the world’s leading climate scientists in emission scenarios. At this rate, it would lead to global warming above 5 degrees Fahrenheit or 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
While methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas, as we noted above, it is highly potent, making it a prime target for limiting global warming in the near term.
As a result, there has been a growing policy focus on methane emission reduction, but that hasn’t really had any effect, as the total annual methane emissions have actually increased by 20% over the past two decades. Human contribution to the same has been the most at about 18% while natural sources, mostly from wetlands, only increased by 2% in two decades.
The 61 million-ton increase in CH₄ emissions has been primarily driven by oil and gas production and use, along with coal mining, whose emissions rose by 33%. Decomposing food and organic waste in landfills saw a 30% rise, while emissions from agriculture increased by 14%. The biggest human-connected source of methane emissions, Jackson noted, is cows..
Who’s Leading the Rising CH4 Emission
When it comes to countries that are contributing the most to methane emitters, China (16%) ranks first.
As the lead author of the Earth System Science Data paper, Marielle Saunois of the Université Paris-Saclay in France noted the largest regional increases in CH4 emission comes from China and Southeast Asia.
A separate study by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) recently warned that China’s expansion of coal mines could further increase its methane emissions and threaten climate targets.
In 2023, China’s coal production reached a record 4.7 billion tonnes, about 50% of global output. Now, the country is planning a project to increase production capacity by 1.2 billion tonnes annually. This expansion can increase methane emissions by 10 million tonnes.
While China continues to invest in coal for energy and maintains a set of “inactive but operational” mines for urgent needs, the permits for coal-fired power plants dropped by 83% this year. This signals a possible shift in the country’s energy policy.
China is now followed by India (9%), the United States (7%), Brazil (6%), and Russia (5%) as the world’s largest methane emitters.
According to Saunois:
“Only the European Union and possibly Australia appear to have decreased methane emissions from human activities over the past two decades.”
Australia’s national science agency recently stated that global methane levels are putting the world on a dangerous path.
The agency’s Global Methane Budget, produced in collaboration with international research partners, including CSIRO, reported that human-induced sources of methane had increased by 61 million metric tonnes per year, a 20% rise over the past twenty years.
Agriculture was reported to contribute the most to the budget, at 40%, with livestock and rice paddies stated to be the main causes. This was followed by the fossil fuel sector at 34%, solid waste and wastewater at 19%, and finally, biomass and biofuel burning at 7%.
Better Quantifying Humans’ Influence on CH4 Emission
To better quantify human influence on methane emissions, the scientists looked even deeper and found that in 2020, the most recent year with complete data, 65%—or almost 400 million tons—of methane emitted globally was the result of human activities. Waste and agriculture together accounted for about two tons of CH4 for every ton from the fossil fuel industry.
While pandemic lockdowns about four years ago should have brought down the emission of gasses, it wasn’t really the case.
During the pandemic, approximately 42 million tons of CH4 accumulated in the atmosphere—twice the average annual increase of 20.9 million tons seen between 2010 and 2019. This is also more than six times the increase seen during the first decade of the 2000s, when it was 6.1 million tonnes per year.
The lockdown did reduce transport-related emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which helped prevent some methane from accumulating in the atmosphere, as per the researchers.
However, the temporary drop in nitrogen oxide pollution was only half of the surge in atmospheric methane concentrations in 2020.
“We’re still trying to understand the full effects of COVID lockdowns on the global methane budget. COVID changed nearly everything – from fossil fuel use to emissions of other gasses that alter the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere.”
– Jackson
The latest study also made an important change in the accounting of global methane sources and “sinks,” which are forests and soils that remove and store methane from the atmosphere.
Previously, the Global Carbon Project scientists classified all methane from rivers, lakes, ponds, and wetlands as natural. However, in their latest assessment, the scientists made a first attempt to estimate the increasing amount of emissions from these types of sources that result from human activities.
Jackson noted how reservoirs behind dams, which are built by people, are just as much of a direct humane source of methane emissions as those from an oil and gas field. These reservoirs emit an estimated 30 million tons of methane per year due to newly submerged organic matter releasing CH4 as it decomposes.
According to scientists, humans have influenced a third of freshwater and wetland methane emissions in recent years. Rising temperatures, land use, wastewater, and fertilizer runoff have further increased these emissions.
Companies Addressing the Methane Emission Issue
With methane emissions rising globally, many companies have taken on the task of addressing this issue. BP (British Petroleum) is one such company, using methane detection technologies to reduce CH₄ emissions from its oil and gas operations as part of its broader net-zero goals.
Similarly, Carbon Clean develops modular technologies to capture methane from industrial processes and convert it into valuable products, while Clarke Energy offers biogas generation solutions to capture methane from sources like landfills and wastewater treatment plants, converting it into renewable energy.
On the technology front, companies like Project Canary and GHGSat are contributing substantially. Project Canary helps industries track their methane emissions, and GHGSat provides high-resolution satellite monitoring to detect and measure methane emissions from industrial sites. This data helps industries identify leaks and take corrective actions.
Now, let’s take a look at a company that has taken an innovative approach to this issue, particularly with Bitcoin mining.
Crusoe Energy Systems
A Bitcoin miner startup, Crusoe Energy Systems, was founded during the crypto bear market of 2018 to address the natural gas flaring problem. A byproduct of oil extraction, natural gas is often burned if there are no economical use cases for it or if the oil field operators are unable to transfer it. Methane is a primary component of natural gas, and the process of burning gas fails to combust CH4 fully.
Crusoe, here, captures waste methane emissions from oil and gas operations and uses it to power modular data centers for Bitcoin mining. For this, the company burns natural gas for electricity production which fully combusts methane and produces CO2 as a byproduct. By utilizing a “waste product” and then converting it into useful energy at “the lowest cost,” Crusoe reduces emissions while enabling sustainable Bitcoin mining operations.
According to Crusoe co-founder and President Cully Cavness:
“There is a huge amount of flared gas around the world. If you captured it all, it would power like two thirds of all of Europe’s electricity and it would power the entire data center industry many times over.”
The ‘carbon-negative’ company raised $750 million in funding and received a post-money valuation of $1.75 bln in April 2022. Crusoe has about 30 sites located throughout all the major oil fields in the US, including one in Argentina. As per its 2023 impact report, the company stated over 200 MW of deployed capacity across cloud and Bitcoin mining businesses.
Back in 2021, natural gas giant ExxonMobil teamed up with Crusoe to use excess gas from its North Dakota oil fields to mine $1.14 trillion market cap BTC.
Last year, the Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol (SBP) started a pilot with Crusoe to create a methodology for verifying that the latter’s waste gas procurement and technology are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to the clean energy transition.
A couple of months ago, the Denver-based company signed a multibillion-dollar deal with the tech company Lancium to build a 200-megawatt data center in the first phase of a larger 1.2-gigawatt build-out to “meet the unique needs of AI companies.”
After the Bitcoin halving in April 2024, which reduced block rewards to 3.125 BTC, miners have been looking to diversify to fund their operations and be profitable. Many Bitcoin miners, including Crusoe, have since shifted their eyes and focus to the burgeoning AI industry.
At full capacity, the Crusoe-Lancium data center will be one of the largest AI data center campuses in the world. The facility is expected to go live next year.
“Data centers are rapidly evolving to support modern AI workloads, requiring new levels of high-density rack space, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and unprecedented overall energy demands.”
– Crusoe’s CEO and co-founder, Chase Lochmiller
For the first time in April, Crusoe’s revenue came primarily from its AI data centers, outpacing Bitcoin revenue.
Conclusion
So, as we have seen, global methane emissions continue to rise significantly, with humans’ contribution also recording a constant increase. Given that this greenhouse gas is the second-biggest contributor to climate change and causes extreme heat and weather events, it is crucial to take strong steps towards reducing methane emissions.
We are already witnessing just how changing climate can result in severe weather and heat waves. The world, according to the latest study, “has reached the threshold of 1.5C increases in global average surface temperature and is only beginning to experience the full consequences.”
While attempts have been made to reduce methane emissions with regulations, decarbonization, and the Global Methane Pledge, they have largely been ineffective. There is a greater need to take a coordinated approach that combines regulation and improved industrial practices that can pave the way for new technological innovations in the energy sector.
Click here for the list of top biotech stocks working on solutions to tackle global warming.
