Oil and gas sector

What’s the cheapest, quickest way to reduce climate change without roiling the economy? In the United States, it may be by reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. Methane is the main component of natural gas, and it can leak anywhere along the supply chain, from the wellhead and processing plant, through pipelines and distribution lines, all the way to the burner of your home’s stove or furnace. Once it reaches the atmosphere, methane’s super heat-trapping properties render it a major agent of warming. Over 20 years, methane causes 85 times more warming than the same amount of carbon dioxide. But methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere for long, so stopping methane leaks today can have a fast impact on lowering global temperatures. That’s one reason governments at the 2022 United Nations climate change conference in Egypt focused on methane as an easy win in the climate battle. So far, 150 countries, including the United States...

With the U.S. government promising over US$360 billion in clean energy incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, energy companies are already lining up investments. It’s a huge opportunity, and analysts project that it could help slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 40% within the decade. But in conversations with energy industry leaders in recent months, we have heard that financial incentives alone aren’t enough to meet the nation’s goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. In the view of some energy sector leaders, reaching net zero emissions will require more pressure from regulators and investors and accepting technologies that aren’t usually thought of as the best solutions to the climate crisis. ‘Net-zero,’ with natural gas In spring 2022, we facilitated a series of conversations at Penn State University around energy and climate with leaders at several major energy companies – including Shell USA, and electric u...