European Gas Pipeline Operators And Association’s Led Project Aims To Curb Emissions

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European Gas Pipeline Operators And Association’s Led Project Aims To Curb Emissions

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Reducing methane emissions (© Shutterstock/nexusby)
Reducing methane emissions (© Shutterstock/nexusby)

The European Gas Research Group (GERG) and Enagas are leading a project in cooperation with 14 other European countries to boost the knowledge on using new technologies to quantify and reduce methane drastically in midstream infrastructure, OGE stated in a press release dated October 13, 2021. The project reaffirms the critical role gas infrastructure plays in the efforts towards energy transition.

The project coordinated by a Spanish Transmission System Operator, Enagás, and supported by Bureau Veritas (field coordinator), will involve the participation of 13 other European Gas associations and gas infrastructure operators.

The 13 players include Gassco, Danish Gas Center, Gasunie, GERG, Medgaz, GRTgaz, National Grid, Snam, Storengy, Open Grid Europe, Synergrid, Sedigas, and Uniper. In addition to that, The revolutionary initiative supports the European Commission’s objective of developing legislation before the end of 2021 to upscale methane emission quantification in the energy sector.

Besides that, the initiative will assist European energy companies in streamlining their strategy for obtaining the OGMP 2.0 gold standard—a voluntary initiative usually coordinated by United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).

Based on the press release details, the project’s work will demonstrate midstream gas’s commitment to improving the quantification of emitted methane to bring it down using the knowledge acquired in the project.

With methane being one of the Greenhouse gases (GHG), it forms a significant proportion of emissions. As such, the energy sector considers methane emission minimization as an opportunity to contribute towards short-term climate change mitigation, increasing environmental commitment and further boosting the environmental value of gas infrastructures and natural gas.

The strategic project is meant to ensure methane emissions are adequately quantified. This will be useful in guaranteeing that further methane gas emission reduction in the future can be achieved.

The joint project also aims to provide the participants with advanced knowledge at the use site level and the new top-down technologies for greater accuracy, in addition to the bottom-up approach that gas industries commonly use.

With the two approaches combined in reducing methane emission, the bottom-up approach focuses on equipment and individual sources. And the top-down approach comes in handy in providing in-depth information about methane emission in a region or at the site level.

According to the GERG project’s result led by the Research and Innovation Center for Energy of GRTgaz (RICE ), where a revolutionary study of site-level technologies was developed, the most promising technologies have been selected for a blind test.

Basically, the project has so far tested the behaviours of 12 cutting-edge technologies, with 9 of them being focused on the top-down and three focusing on the bottom-up approach. The testing also included a mobile and fixed behaviour test to ascertain their reliability and accuracy for methane emission quantification.

The blind test involving controlled leaks has already taken place successfully with varied flow rates at the Enagás’s Spain infrastructure. The next project’s phase will be implemented at LNG underground gas storages, regasification terminals, and compressor stations in many different European countries to ascertain the real site behaviours of these cutting-edge technologies.

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