By Jennifer Oldham for Sierra.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Pumps hissed, a camera oscillated, and wind whistled through oil and gas wells at the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center at Colorado State University. The mechanical symphony could be the soundtrack to a revolution in our ability to detect and measure methane, the invisible, odorless "super pollutant" responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the world's largest producer of oil and gas and its biggest emitter of methane-much of it leaks from oil and gas operations. A raft of new federal and state laws require energy companies to monitor and fix emission leaks. That's why companies are lining up to test methane-detection devices at the Fort Collins facility.

"Things are moving quickly-people have realized legislators aren't messing around," said Ryan Brouwer, facility manager at the testing center. "We have 12 different companies testing now. I am booked until the fall, and we have a waiting list."

Brouwer showed off high-pressure tanks that feed gas into wells, other tanks, and separators. Their valves, pipe joints, and other fittings leak the methane-the main component of "natural gas"-into the air. Then finely tuned handheld sensors, softball-size devices mounted on hefty tripods, and equipment attached to drones and aircraft go to work. These sensors report their readings of the rate, location, and duration of leaks to center scientists, who then compare them with data on the known releases.

Why all the fuss? Because methane is an enormously powerful greenhouse gas, 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat. As an article from the Rocky Mountain Institute put it, "If CO2 pollution wraps one blanket around the earth, methane pollution is like wrapping the earth in over 80 blankets." Studies show that eliminating these emissions would lead to immediate benefits for the climate and public health.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere today is two-and-a-half times preindustrial levels, and accelerating. Agriculture is the largest anthropogenic source (all those belching cows, mostly), followed by oil, coal, gas, and bioenergy, which account for 46 percent of emissions. Rotting organic material in landfills is another major contributor.

Of these offenders, the emissions from fossil fuels are perhaps the easiest to deal with, as it's largely a matter of plugging leaks. According to the International Energy Agency, methane emissions from fossil fuels must drop by three-quarters this decade to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals. Hence the race at the Colorado State center to develop and improve methane-detecting sensors on the ground and in the air. As these technologies improve, scientific studies are finding that earlier calculations widely underestimated the actual amount of the gas in the atmosphere.

"We saw so much variability in methane emissions across the regions," said Evan Sherwin, who led research at Stanford University for a paper published in Nature in March. "If we compare our numbers to the Environmental Protection Agency's numbers, ours were three times higher."

Sherwin worked with a team from Stanford, Kairos Aerospace (now Insight M), and other labs to conduct aerial surveys over six hydrocarbon-producing regions, taking a million measurements over Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. They estimated that the operations emitted 6.2 million tons of methane a year-equivalent to all the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use in Mexico.

"We found [that] as low as .05 percent of oil and gas production facilities are responsible for half or more of emissions," said Sherwin, who is now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We really do now have the tools to find the bulk of the emissions that matter pretty rapidly."

In addition to worsening the climate crisis, methane emissions represent an annual loss of $1 billion to the gas companies. The prospect of recovering that leaking gas is incentivizing energy companies worldwide to fix methane leaks discovered by satellites. Six years ago, energy companies in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative invested in the satellite company GHGSat; they've used the satellites to help detect and quantify leaks in Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. After the results were confirmed with on-the-ground testing, local operators fixed the leaks, said Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, chair of OGCI's executive committee.

"Three problems we discovered were approximately equal to a million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," he said. "It's like taking away close to 250,000 cars." Methane detection and measurement, he concluded, "is now at a point where we may be able to start moving the needle at scale." Indeed, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that the methane increase in the atmosphere in 2023 slowed from the record growth earlier this decade. Even so, the year marked the fifth-highest increase since 2007.

More than a dozen satellites now orbit the planet scanning for methane plumes. Some are privately owned; others are operated by governments and nonprofits. Data from select satellites are available on the International Methane Emissions Observatory's online data portal.

Mark Brownstein is a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, which developed its own methane-detecting satellite, MethaneSat. "This is data that will provide the most comprehensive amount of emissions and the rate at which they are being emitted," he said. "We see this data as being incredibly important to hold countries and companies accountable to commitments they've made."

Satellites have limitations though. They can't see past cloud cover or over water, and they have time constraints on how much data they can collect from any one location. Consequently, said Dan Zimmerle, the director of Colorado State's methane center, all types of sensors are needed to make progress in fixing leaky oil and gas equipment and spotting flares that fail to fully combust all the gas being vented.

Zimmerle's operation is set to receive $25 million from the Department of Energy and industry partners to modernize equipment, standardize testing solutions, and support field trials of methane-sensing satellites. The team is searching for locations to test how the satellites are performing.

"We will put up a test release," Zimmerle said. "They will task on it, we will get a report from them that says what they saw, and we will compare it to the real thing."


Jennifer Oldham wrote this article for Sierra.


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The Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant in Pueblo, Colo., is set to close in just six years -- and community leaders, regulators, and Xcel are considering plans to replace the unit's energy and economic contributions.

A new Energy Innovation report suggests that an industrial-scale energy park that harnesses wind, solar, and battery storage would check all the boxes.

Michelle Solomon, electricity policy manager with the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, said the energy park would create some 300 permanent, high-paying jobs in plant operations, engineering, and more.

"The energy park could generate up to $40 million in annual tax revenue for Pueblo," said Solomon, "which is really important because they depend on this tax revenue that they're getting from Comanche right now -- for things like schools and libraries, things that the community can't afford to lose."

Comanche's connection to the power grid would allow the energy park to meet rising demand locally and in places like Colorado Springs and Denver.

A separate proposal calls for replacing Comanche with a small modular nuclear reactor, an energy source that does not emit carbon but remains controversial.

Tribal lands have been repeatedly targeted as radioactive waste dumps, and many still remember nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Wind and solar are now the cheapest source for electricity - and Solomon said unlike nuclear-reactor or natural-gas plant projects, ratepayers would share startup costs with onsite manufacturers, who get guaranteed low-cost energy to produce fertilizer, hydrogen, and more.

"That could be used at any type of industry that's using heat," said Solomon. "So, that could be a steel plant, a cement plant, anything that's using heat for manufacturing."

Solomon said speed is also important for getting economic benefits flowing back into the community. The energy park could break ground before 2030, years earlier than other options.

"They are also the types of resources that can come online more quickly," said Solomon. "When the coal plant retires, the community can't wait a decade for a new resource to come online."

Trenton is set to become home to the region's largest battery storage facility but federal policy changes might change how it's funded.

The DTE Trenton Channel Energy Center would use clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act but proposed federal cuts threaten the tax credits.

The plant is expected to store enough energy to power 40,000 homes for a day, create union jobs and help offset the area's economic loss from the 2022 closure of the Trenton Channel Power Plant.

James Harrison, director of renewable energies for the Utility Workers Union of America, said he has three generations of family history at the Trenton plant and is concerned about the potential effects of the proposed cuts.

"They're going to probably move forward with projects," Harrison explained. "The difference is going to be whether or not ratepayers are going to be on the hook to pay for that, or whether or not there's an opportunity to utilize tax credits to offset the cost to ratepayers."

In Michigan alone, more than 100 utility-scale projects are in development which could use the tax incentives. Those who want to eliminate the tax credits said the energy sector should compete without federal aid, arguing tax breaks add to the national debt and unfairly favor certain industries.

The Trenton facility is expected to start operations in mid-2026. The battery storage facility is also expected to generate more tax revenue than the former coal plant, which would benefit schools and public services in the Trenton/Wayne County area.

Harrison shared how his family history at the plant site colors his personal feelings about the new facility.

"I've been in the power industry almost 50 years," Harrison noted. "It's nice to see that the very first power plant that I worked at is being repurposed with modern technology to do the very same kind of job that original plant had provided to the community."

Some Republican lawmakers support keeping certain clean energy tax credits, citing their benefits for jobs and local economies. The Trenton project is also expected to contribute to Michigan's efforts to meet its renewable energy targets of using 60% clean energy by 2030, and 100% by 2040.


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By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Tennessee News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Methane isn’t exactly the sexiest greenhouse gas. It’s often trumped in the climate conversation by carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas known for its longevity in the atmosphere. Yet, methane is more potent — it traps about 80 times more heat over a 20-year period. Human activities are responsible for about 60 percent of methane emissions, with the largest offender being food, such as cows belching out methane during digestion. A new report suggests large supermarket chains, including Walmart, have an important role to play in bringing down methane emissions from food — but for now, none of them are taking action.

Supermarkets are the place where we, as consumers, interact with food systems and to a greater extent, those systems emissions. Food-related methane mainly comes from farm animals — their belches and manure — and food waste in landfill sites. A new report from Mighty Earth and Changing Markets Foundation found that none of the 20 top-grossing retailers in the U.S. and Europe — including household names like Lidl, Kroger and Walmart — are addressing methane emissions within their supply chains.

This leaves a crucial blind spot in reaching 2050 net-zero targets — an emissions reduction goal of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change — which many of these retailers have committed to. U.S. supermarkets performed especially badly, “displaying a stark lack of climate accountability and ambition from their European counterparts,” the report found.

Retailers Omit Indirect Emissions From Climate Promises

Since none of the 20 food retailers surveyed had set a methane reduction target, Mighty Earth designed a scorecard to assess what action on methane emissions retailers have taken within their food supply chains. Only one UK supermarket, Tesco, scored above 50 points while U.S. retailers Kroger and Walmart lagged behind severely at a mere 9.5 and 7 points, respectively.

Many of the retailers named in the report do have climate plans, and goals to reduce their emissions. Walmart, for example, aims “to achieve zero emissions across global operations by 2040” and reduce their scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025. Scope 1 and 2 emissions are what’s directly emitted by the company — the energy needed to keep food cold, for instance. Yet there is scant mention of efforts to reduce scope 3 emissions, which are indirect emissions generated from their supply chain, including methane emissions from foods like beef.

Scope 3 emissions aren’t just a drop in the ocean. For grocery stores, they’re the bulk of their climate pollution, estimated to make up 93 percent of European retailers total emissions profile, with meat and dairy accounting for almost half of all scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. In this way, retailers are missing the elephant — or rather the cow — in the room when it comes to creating meaningful climate plans, Gemma Hoskins, global methane lead at Mighty Earth, tells Sentient.

“Supermarkets talk a lot about climate change, but very, very few are acknowledging meat and dairy, given that could be almost 50 percent of their emissions — that is a huge proportion,” Hoskins tells Sentient.

Paul West, senior scientist of Ecosystems and Agriculture at Project Drawdown says most retailers don’t address scope 3 emissions because they can’t directly control them and it requires changing consumers or companies’ behaviors through incentives or penalties. A 2024 decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that retailers aren’t required to disclose their scope 3 emissions.

Despite these challenges, reducing demand for high-emissions foods remains a critical component of climate plans. “Aside from deforestation, supermarkets’ largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chains come from raising beef and dairy cattle. Changes in manure management, feed additives and other practices can reduce emissions a bit, but the only big way to do it is to reduce demand. Supermarkets, or any business, have little incentive to reduce demand for one of its products unless there is more demand for an alternative,” West tells Sentient.

A Question of Consumer Demand

Mighty Earth’s researchers argue that retailers are in a unique position to initiate the necessary changes in the food environment due to their ability to negotiate with producers, set prices and market directly to consumers.

The U.S. and EU launched the Global Methane Pledge in 2021 committing to reducing methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. “Since the food sector is the largest source of methane emissions by people, it needs to lead the way to meet this target,” West tells Sentient.

There is a lack of accountability for retailers. Take food waste, for instance — while in the last year of the Biden administration, the USDA and EPA pledged to cut food waste in half by 2030, there are no legally binding targets for retail supermarkets. Companies can play a role by redirecting unsold food to pantries or educating shoppers on how to effectively reduce waste at home.

The report did note that eleven of the supermarkets do call out animal agriculture emissions as a key contributor to climate change, with many suggesting eating more plant-based foods could help, but the researchers also found these companies often fail to implement the kinds of actionable changes that would address their role in fueling emissions.

This is a missed opportunity, according to Project Drawdown scientist Paul West. “Supermarkets are a critical part of the supply chain. The majority of environmental impact happens earlier in the supply chain, mostly driven by what and how food is produced. On the flipside, most of the food waste in the U.S. and Europe is when it reaches people’s households. The big stores are right in the middle. Because they control so much of the market share, larger stores have more influence on what and how food is produced than consumers do,” West tells Sentient.

In Europe, there is more consumer demand for plant-forward foods because of their Green Deal and other initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainable food systems. In some European countries, there are efforts to knock VAT off plant-based milk to reach price parity with cows milk and “protein split” initiatives to expand supermarket sales of plant proteins. In much the same way that retailers helped inform consumers on the downsides of single use plastics, Hoskins says they need to be transparent about sources of their emissions.

“If you said to the average shopper, do you realize that half of the emissions coming from a retailer are meat and dairy, I think people would be really shocked by that…and would make people think very differently about what was in their basket,” she says.


Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.


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