Methane Removal - Current State and Needs

Hi there,

We’re Overview Capital and we invest in the mitigation of methane and other super pollutants at the earliest stages. Welcome to the eleventh edition of our newsletter, The Overview: Our biweekly dispatch on the world of methane and other super pollutants.

In collaboration with Spark Climate Solutions, a science-driven non-profit accelerating progress in emerging, high-impact climate fields by working directly with scientists, policymakers, and peer organizations - one of their active programs is in atmospheric methane removal.

Methane removal is an early but growing field looking at approaches that might accelerate the breakdown of methane once in the atmosphere. If successful, methane removal approaches could be a critical additional climate mitigation tool, particularly in light of the risk of increased methane emissions from tropical wetlands and permafrost thaw in our changing climate. Growing interest in the field in the last few years has led to new research efforts, legal analysis, and pending reports on methane removal by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. As more people become curious about the field, this piece aims to situate readers on its current state and needs.

About 90% of methane is naturally broken down by atmospheric chemical reactions, and the other roughly 10% by methane-consuming microbes in soils and on trees. Scientists are just starting to study the many possible forms methane removal approaches might take, ranging from machines with fans to process air to surface treatments and panels, and from soil amendments to atmospheric oxidation enhancement via aerosols. Some of these methods, could be engineered systems with clearly measurable outputs, while others could have wider-ranging impacts when done in the natural environment, as opposed to “in a box.” Like marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) and other similar areas, for the possible approaches that are not neatly contained into engineered systems, rigorous and independent science into the full system effects of any interventions, side effects, and risks will all be critical to understand what role if any these approaches may play in the future, and inform future decision making. 

Current state

The field of methane removal is currently in a very early state, with research just starting in the last few years (much of it in the last year or just kicking off now). Given that, researchers, scientists, and engineers are still coming up with entirely new ideas for possible approaches. The work into understanding the impacts of possible approaches is ramping up, with much more science needed. There are not any methane removal approaches for which we yet know that they are effective and safe, and there is active research into seeing if that can be changed. For engineered approaches like reactors (think “the direct air capture of methane”) and surface panels and treatments, the current hurdle is discovering or inventing catalytic processes that are efficient enough to make the processes net climate beneficial and cost effective, given the large energy inputs required. For open-systems approaches, scientists are still coming up with various possible approach ideas, and the early ideas will all require substantially more research to understand safety, efficacy, health impacts, and other side effects. This research is all important to know if there are approaches that could contribute towards further decreasing the 0.5°C and currently growing of methane-driven warming, and to understand the full impacts of possible approaches, whether that ends up suggesting that these approaches are valuable and safe additions to the climate mitigation portfolio, or showing that they aren’t and additional caution and regulation is warranted.

Each potential approach should be independently researched and evaluated. Like carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which includes diverse approach categories ranging from direct air capture and biomass-based approaches to enhanced rock weathering and marine CDR, methane removal approaches vary extensively in their chemical and physical mechanisms, known climate impacts, the current level of verifiability, and the degree of scientific uncertainty around potential ancillary health and ecosystem impacts. Future possible deployment considerations are likely to vary by the approach, dependent on the ancillary factors of each approach — any contained and low-side-effect methods are more likely to be proactively and commercially deployed, while higher-side-effect or less-contained approaches may require more government action.

Early work is starting on understanding the current legal landscape around methane removal approaches, and where it needs to go from here. While there aren’t any methane-removal specific regulations or legal frameworks today, field testing or deployment of many of the methods would fall under the purview of existing environmental regulations.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has an ongoing study on atmospheric methane removal, with their research agenda expected to be published this fall.

Needs

To advance the field of methane removal, work across various pieces need additional support towards understanding if approaches in this category may be safe and feasible while developing the ecosystem around them from a policy, communications, governance, and legal point of view to shepherd the work towards public-good goals.

Scientific Research and Funding

Scientific research is core to the field, to discover and investigate new potential approaches, and robustly understand the full system impacts of proposed approaches to enable informed decision-making. Funding is currently limited in the field and is nearly entirely philanthropic (and through Spark) to date. The field needs more funding, additional informed funders, and federal and other public agency funding support to grow and advance the field.

Scientifically-grounded field testing, with guardrails and social license

Depending on early scientific results from laboratory and computer modeling studies, research into some methane removal approaches may get to the stage where further scientific process will depend on doing small release experiments, to measure effects in the real world. When research gets to this point, it will be critically important that these experiments comply with all relevant laws and regulatory requirements, and engage their local communities.

Social science, policy, governance

As approach research progresses, how these potential additional climate tools are viewed, used, and governed will depend on how policy, regulation, governance structures, market considerations, and community engagement develop. To benefit the climate, methane removal approaches would need to be deployed in a way that does not come at the cost of other available mitigation measures.

In the case of viable methane removal methods, there are many unanswered questions here that will need development over time, for example including:

• What are the community impacts of these methods, and how are local deployment decisions made?

• How should rising natural methane emissions as a result of climate change be accounted for?

• Where does responsibility for methane removal lie? Who pays?

• How can approach quality — including veracity of impacts, as well as monitoring for possible side effects — be maintained?

• For approaches that have impacts across national boundaries, how is deployment governed?

Ways to get involved

Given the early stage of the field, one of the most critical needs in the field is research funding to accelerate approach development and advance robust, independent scientific understanding of the effects of the proposed approaches, through both philanthropic funding and engagement with public funding agencies and lawmakers.

Spark is a science-driven non-profit accelerating progress in emerging, high-impact climate fields by working directly with scientists, policymakers, and peer organizations - one of their active programs is in atmospheric methane removal. 

Folks wanting to get involved in the field should reach out to plug into the growing community.

Odds and ends

Methane emissions are getting more attention—and rightfully so. The latest research covering the growing methane emissions challenge comes out of Stanford, where researchers including Rob Jackson, a Professor in Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science, published a new study examining how methane emissions from human activities are rising globally and represent a growing share of all methane emissions. As methane emissions rise, they threaten successful achievement of any and all climate targets.

This research makes a compelling case for the need for more resource allocation across both the public and private sector for methane mitigation (and removal). At Overview Capital, we’re proud to continue telling the same story and doing our best to accelerate the needed resource allocation to the methane ecosystem.

Further note: Rob Jackson also has an excellent new book out that includes a lot of narrative-led exploration of methane emissions and mitigation.

Thanks for reading the eleventh edition of The Overview. If you are a methane or super pollutant focused company or want to connect on our investment work, please reach out to [email protected]. We appreciate you taking the time to read and engage.

– Team Overview