A great energetic gift is on the horizon. Indeed, up at the top of our gaze, in the space where the satellites fly. We would really like to recover practically for free at least 80 billion cubic meters of methane gas per year which are now being dispersed with bad practices of extraction and transport, more than what a country that is decidedly greedy for methane like Italy consumes, more than half of the gas that the whole of Europe imported from Russia in 2021, before the tragedy in Ukraine. We would like to cut half a degree of global warming on the planet in this way: an important although not decisive step in the fight against the devastation of climate change due to "greenhouse effect”. The launch of the surveillance and monitoring satellite within a few days could make all this a reality MethaneSAT, conceived by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), financed by a good combination of investments and donations and set up, and launched soon (within this month, according to the announcements) thanks to a consortium led by the EDF and in collaboration with the Agency New Zealand Space Agency, Harvard University, Ball Aerospace, Blue Canyon Technologies and other partners.
A gain that is not only environmental
“A demanding challenge, but in the end we will discover not only that the environmental benefits will be significant but also the economic balance of the operation will be in clear advantage, generating profits greater than the expenditure incurred" ventures Flavia Sollazzo, senior director for the energy transition of the European Union on behalf of EDF Europe.
The operation starts off with good auspices. At Cop28, world leaders put on the table a new loan of over a billion dollars to strengthen anti-methane emission strategies, in the wake of the commitment of over 50 global extraction companies, responsible for just under half of production of hydrocarbons to reduce by 2030 to just 0,2% the losses now directly attributable to the methane released into the atmosphere and to that uselessly burned (flaring) in extraction plants compared to dispersions which today are difficult to register with sufficient precision but which are estimated to range from 0,5% in the most efficient plants to over 10% in the most dilapidated ones.
A gigantic progress, just as the expected benefit is equally gigantic, if we think that only on the basis of what is officially ascertained (and which represents much less than the real quantities) as many as "112 billion cubic meters of gas - states Flavia Sollazzo - are dispersed in the atmosphere in the world every year" and of these "at least 80 billion cubic meters can be recovered and brought to the market with a greater income for the oil companies which we estimate is higher than the cost of the operation".
Old systems to be completely replaced? It's not always like this. To cause dispersions and to induce companies to directly burn the gas that escapes in the appropriate "chimneys" to control the danger of accumulations and explosions, works that are limited in impact and cost are often sufficient. The problem, as often happens in these cases, concerns the regulations and related obligations but also a good Monitoring of existing situations.
What will the sentry from space do
Once upon a time, when the cost component of the methane well was negligible compared to the quantities, the problem was practically ignored. Today this is no longer the case, partly due to the progressive nature disappearance of the “easy” gas in terms of deposits and a little (a lot) precisely for the environmental implications, if we consider - Flavia Sollazzo points out - that methane gas has an impact on the climate effect in 20 years that is 80 times greater than the direct emission of carbon dioxide" and that in light of this "only 13% of methane emissions are covered by mitigation policies and hydrocarbon operators dedicate just 2,5% of their spending to new clean technologies."
Of course there are good and bad guys here too. Our Eni group, which operates practically all over the globe, is considered at the forefront in technological updating and in the search for the best environmental solutions, but "there are countries like Romania where it is estimated that real emissions are three times higher than declared and registered".
From now on the satellite will give us a hand (to paraphrase the old advertisement "methane gives us a hand", a bit fallacious today). MethaneSAT will scan the planet with a resolution of a few meters, but above all with sensors able to discriminate between clean air and an area saturated with methane or methane combustion, precisely indicating quantity, persistence and above all the exact areas where the phenomena occur. Everything will be transformed into a temporal database. The only and decisive (hopefully) solution to really put those responsible for the phenomenon not only before their responsibilities but also before the opportunity - if Flavia Sollazzo is really right - to transform the "clean methane" operation into a cost but in a welcome opportunity for profit.
