EPA's Methane Regulation Is Just Hot Air
EPA’s plan to go forward with a regulation governing “accidental and purposeful” methane emissions from the production and transportation of oil and gas reflects priorities driven by ideology rather than environmental risk. While the warming potential of methane is many times more than CO2, it is a very small fraction of total greenhouse gas emissions. And, the notion that CO2 is a problem is a fiction.
Claims that the proposed regulation of methane is necessary to counter climate change do not stand up to close scrutiny. Ironically, the proposed methane regulation would raise the costs of compliance with EPA’s Clean Power Plant rule. The Clean Power Plant rule would force utilities to switch from coal to natural gas, the combustion of which produces methane. In effect, EPA is taking steps that will increase methane emissions and then trying to counter them by another regulation.
Fortunately for producers of natural gas, they have already been taking steps to reduce methane emissions because it is a valuable commodity. EPA’s own data show that in the last decade, emissions from natural gas have been reduced by more than 35 percent through the development and implementation of more cost-effective technologies. An arbitrary regulatory schedule mandating further reductions will simply raise producers’ costs and achieve marginal benefits.
The Institute for Energy Research has analyzed the proposed methane regulation and concluded that the it will produce a reduction in warming that is well within the margin of measurement error—0.002 degrees centigrade. The reason is simply that methane emissions represent only 9 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Of those, only 3 percent are subject to EPA’s regulation. After natural gas operations, animal flatulence and manure represent the largest natural sources of emissions, followed by landfills and coal mining.
Given the large natural source of emissions, it would be reasonable to conclude that estimates of emissions beyond those used by industry, may not be that accurate. A CERA study in 2011 basically said that EPA needs to go back to the drawing board-- “[I]ts estimates of methane emissions are dramatically overstated and it would be unwise to use them as a basis for policymaking. … [T]he estimates are not credible….”
If methane is a climate change problem, which is doubtful, EPA cannot control the largest source, animal flatulence and manure. Going after a source which is already being reduced makes no sense unless the real objective is to create an image of leadership by President Obama.
This is just another wasteful initiative by EPA that reinforces the view that the Agency is a collection of solutions in search of problems. Given the continuous improvement in environmental quality, more authority should be given back to the states and EPA should reinvent itself to become a resource to assist states with their environmental agendas.
The Administration’s increased emphasis on climate change is a large waste of time, manpower, and money. The last climate expenditure report from the White House dated 2013 lists expenditures—budget authority of $22 billion. To put that in perspective, it is more than the Administration’s 2016 budgets for the departments of interior, justice transportation, treasury, and NASA. Such profligate spending and regulations related to it are sheer folly.
William O'Keefe is the President of Solutions Consulting. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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