Ground-based mobile measurements to track urban methane emissions from natural gas in 12 cities across eight countries

To mitigate methane emission from urban natural gas distribution systems, it is crucial to understand local leak rates and occurrence rates. To explore urban methane emissions in cities outside the U.S., where significant emissions were found previously, mobile measurements were performed in 12 citi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Vogel, Felix, Ars, Sebastien, Wunch, Debra, Lavoie, Jean-Michel, Gillespie, Louis, Maazallahi, Hossein, Röckmann, Thomas, Necki, Jaroslaw, Bartyzel, Jakub, Jagoda, Pawel, Lowry, David, Curcoll Masanes, Roger|||0000-0002-8025-673X, Grossi, Claudia|||0000-0001-6678-4440
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/404942
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/404942
https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c03160
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Methane
Natural gas
Greenhouse gas mitigation
Mobile surveys
Cities
Metà
Gas natural
Gasos d'efecte hivernacle--Mitigació
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Energies
Descripción
Sumario:To mitigate methane emission from urban natural gas distribution systems, it is crucial to understand local leak rates and occurrence rates. To explore urban methane emissions in cities outside the U.S., where significant emissions were found previously, mobile measurements were performed in 12 cities across eight countries. The surveyed cities range from medium size, like Groningen, NL, to large size, like Toronto, CA, and London, UK. Furthermore, this survey spanned across European regions from Barcelona, ES, to Bucharest, RO. The joint analysis of all data allows us to focus on general emission behavior for cities with different infrastructure and environmental conditions. We find that all cities have a spectrum of small, medium, and large methane sources in their domain. The emission rates found follow a heavy- tailed distribution, and the top 10% of emitters account for 60-80% of total emissions, which implies that strategic repair planning could help reduce emissions quickly. Furthermore, we compare our findings with inventory estimates for urban natural gas-related methane emissions from this sector in Europe. While cities with larger reported emissions were found to generally also have larger observed emissions, we find clear discrepancies between observation-based and inventory-based emission estimates for our 12 cities.