As PennFuture has been urging for quite a while now, industry and government must act soon to limit methane leakage from natural gas wells and pipelines.
As important as it is to crack down on CO2 pollution from coal-burning power plants (which is why we are such strong supporters of the Presidents' Clean Power Plan Rule), if we don't simultaneously stop methane leaking from natural gas infrastructure, we'll still be off course for slowing climate change.
What has us scratching our heads is why the natural gas industry hasn't already voluntarily stopped the leaks. Since methane is indeed natural gas, all that leaky methane entering that atmosphere is simply wasteful on industry's part, since they could sell that captured methane and help offset the cost of implementation. Why let potential revenue vanish into thin air?
An encouraging new report prepared for the Environmental Defense Fund shows that fixing the leaks can be a win-win proposition: Dozens of American companies now manufacture, sell and support methane control technology that works.
Pennsylvania, with so much natural gas infrastructure, should see many new jobs from the commercial deployment of this technology—if the natgas industry would start using it. (Explore this cool interactive map to see what's already happening here.)
And since we can't rely on the industry to do the right thing voluntarily, we need our governments—state and federal—to require them to do this.
Why should this be a fight? How can we resist technology that creates new jobs for Pennsylvania families and helps stabilize climate change?
There's no reason that we can see for industry not to jump on this technology.
Joy Bergey is federal policy director for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey.
