You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast
with Nori. I'm Ross, Kenyan, I'm one of the
cofounders of nor in the creative editor here.
Today I have with me, Siobhan Montoya, lavender of, thanks to
Tom and also a meme writer author.
I don't know. There's me Means I should have
redundant author. Hey, Roz!
How's it going? I feel like I messed up the
taxonomy of what exactly that job should be called.
Literally every single time I've introduced to you, but glad glad
you're here. That's okay.
I like that. We have encircled on it.
I like that. It exists in the nebula space
here. Also with us today is someone
with a proper title, we have with us Erica Reinhard, who is
the co-founder and executive director of spark, a climate
Solutions. Thanks for coming.
Erica. Yeah, you're welcome.
Thanks so much fun. Yeah, we are going to be talking
And Erica today about methane, which is a topic.
I think we have not discussed enough on the Pod and is growing
in the cultural like based of Interest, I believe we shall see
what the receptions are once we are this.
But I believe that people really want to know what's happening
with methane and so today we're going to dive in, we're going to
hear what the problem is with methane, what the solutions are
and then what sparked climate is doing to address it, I think the
only other time that we've really spoken in detail about
methane was near the beginning of the A shows start with Julio
Friedman. I remember we talked about Dairy
lagoons and I think for a long time, I don't think I've heard
anything about methane forever because I know it's much more
dilute in the atmosphere. People have got their hands
full, just going to get carbon dioxide down or maybe there's
nothing destruction and landfills and that sort of
thing, but it's always come up tangentially.
I think I hear about it a lot now where I didn't before or
I'll say something about carbon dioxide removal and somebody
will jump up and do it. What about methane?
Which I think is an important inject.
To have so. Okay, Erica tell us why we
should care about methane. I thought it was just about
carbon dioxide. Why should we care about this
greenhouse gas methane? Has a surprisingly large impact
on our warming. I think it's often
underestimated. So currently we have about one
point one degrees C of global temperature, rise and half a
degree point five degrees of that is from methane.
So it's it's playing a really big role kind of right after ER
CO2 and so when we think about what does it take in order to
bring our temperatures down after we minimize Peak
temperatures? Nothing has a really important
role to play in parallel with carbon dioxide as well as all
other greenhouse gases, just want to make sure, you know,
don't get completely ignored here.
I think part of the reason that methane recently has gotten a
lot more attention is as we grapple with what it would.
Take to stay under one point, Ivor the to see guardrails given
where we're at there. Methane has to play a really
important role in bringing temperatures in limiting,
temperature, increase and bringing temperatures down.
And one of those reasons, only reasons behind that is that
methane has a somewhat unique, girl, as a greenhouse gas in
that it is short-lived. So when we emit carbon dioxide,
it stays in the atmosphere for For centuries.
And this is where you got that, you know, bathtub analogy,
right? We keep adding more CO2 into the
bathtub. That's the spigot.
And it's only with, you know, opening the drain or scaling
carbon dioxide removal that we can start bringing that level
down. That is a really good analogy
for carbon dioxide. It doesn't quite work that way
for methane and that methane does naturally degrade in the On
the sphere, over a few decades and kind of, you know,
quote-unquote, go away by itself and given where we're already at
given, how much carbon dioxide? There's the atmosphere given,
how many other greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere?
Our climate models are fundamentally, depending upon us
dramatically, reducing our methane emissions.
So that our atmospheric methane levels come down over the next
few decades and basically free up some temperature before.
Buffer for that CO2. Transition.
And so at this point, the really is no way of hitting these
targets, without methane playing a really important contribution
to Bringing Down our overall emissions and helping to
decrease the methane portion of our warming.
So if we are to ignore methane and just focus on other
greenhouse gases, we would be ignoring roughly 25% of, today's
global warming. Is that true that accounts for
roughly a quarter of temperature warming?
Even more than that actually. And So currently it's half a
degree out of one point one degrees.
So whatever that you know, 40th percentile, that works out to
be. Wow.
So super significant, if you also look at today's emissions
and you look at what impact those emissions are, A have in
the near term nothing. Similarly has a really really
large role and that is really because of how potent it is.
So the global warming potential which is kind of measure of how
potent a greenhouse gasses compared to C A2 is about 124
methane. Right, when it's released and
then it decreases over time. And so by the time your Looking
at a 20 year average the here number, like 86 someone's.
You're looking at 100 year average or looking at something
closer to 30 to 35 but it's incredibly potent.
And so when we are, we think about what?
Impact? Where missions today?
Have in the next few decades, the impact of methane is quite
large. And of course this is a temp,
same time frame on which we're talking about.
How do we slow temperature increase?
As these impacts are becoming more evident.
How do we minimize our Peak temperatures?
If we are to hopefully succeed at achieving Peak temperatures
and some methane can play a really important role in
addition to dramatic carbon dioxide emissions reductions, as
well as the scaling up of carbon dioxide removal to really bring
to enable us to Peak or temperatures and bring those
Peak temperatures. Down which will have many
positive impacts so you know directly on human society as
well as helping to reduce some of the natural feedbacks in
Tipping Point risks that we otherwise face.
The explanation that I've heard this is the PE teacher who has
to fill in for the science teacher version but that methane
turns into CO2 at some point it just becomes CO2 or degrades
through through UV or something like that or if you're getting
if your pork you're burning methane which is as far as I
understand it, the same as natural gas.
It just turns into your one of the byproducts is CO2.
That's all correct. Yeah, so there's a number of
different oxidation processes, but the primary output of those
oxidation process is carbon dioxide.
So that is that is correct that that is kind of what the carbon
and methane gets converted to. When you look at what happens
when you emit methane into the atmosphere, what happens is that
you have methane or some period of time, and then it goes
through one of these sink processes.
One of these oxidation processes where it is converted to carbon
dioxide and water usually and a few other byproducts.
And so while it is absolutely true, that emitted, methane does
result long-term also in CO2 that long-term, CO2 impact ends
up being kind of a minor overall factor in comparison to that
short-term warming. But it does lead to long term.
Warming as well. It's pretty amazing that it can
be improved or the radiative forcing potential of this gas
would be improved by converting. It into CO2, I think people
think of carbon dioxide as the main villain here and maybe
maybe in general, it is, but it's pretty interesting to think
that in some ways, CO2 would be preferable to methane.
Absolutely, this is actually the potent point, right?
This little molecule is strong little guy, it's not on the end,
so as much as we can, You know, first prevent them going into
the atmosphere and then get them out of the atmosphere via that
conversion process makes a big difference from some very rough
calculations. It looks like on a molecule by
molecule basis as opposed to a tonnage basis that you can
basically think about the warming impact of a molecule of
methane, being about 40 times as strong as In molecule of CO2,
which just shows you how? Yeah, I'm very, I listened to
Ryan or back on the Catalyst with Shao Kahn businessmen, like
six months or a year ago, talking about how he wishes that
offsetting and crediting were denominated in terms of
radiative forcing rather than tonnage.
It is dropped a big, big. I don't know.
If you saw the Blended time white paper that we published
last week, I did cool like One of the I like possible Blends
for the future. I was thinking is what if you
had end and you could do something like methane
destruction, maybe did like 1/40 of a molecule of methane was
destroyed and then you stored. The the carbon dioxide that
resulted in a sink. Land-based carbon sink like soil
for 10 years until you had a permanent removal.
Come and stop. It is that not like the perfect
end to end solution for like like a full cycle carbon acid
that's Blended together. That's the combo.
I love that. We're In straight to radiative
forcing credits here. So I mean in any animals have to
go back to what our core goals are right, which is making sure
that were mitigating overall warming as much as we safely can
at every point in time and so all these different approaches
permanent carbon dioxide. Removals temporary carbon
dioxide removals potentially in the future methane removals.
All are going to have so a different shape of packed right
of how much warming mitigation potential do they have and on
what time frame. And so, I think our Collective
job is to figure out how we can accelerate all these different
categories of solutions. And then, you know, deploy them
in an appropriate and responsible ways to help to
bring a 24 thing down at every point in time.
Independent that sometimes of which Specific gas.
It is and instead make sure that we're pulling all of these tools
together in the most comprehensive ways we do need to
be careful. We talk about any sort of
crediting that in those situations in particular where
you're sort of setting up for there to be trade-offs between
between different activities that those activities do fully
cancel each other out. And so that sort of look at
impact over time is particularly important.
Of course, there are many ways of deploying solutions, that
don't create those those trade-offs and we should be
pursuing those as aggressively. How are you thinking about the
time value of carbon? Should we be thinking about the
radiative forcing over decades? Or I know a lot of the drive
towards permanent carbon removal, my guess is a lot of it
remains a political economy question, where we just were in
a carbon accounting world. We don't want corporations to be
greenwashing by Burning fossil fuel and then negating it with
temporary storage, but if you thought about it from a more
radiative forcing angle, should we be looking at the decade
scale? Is it more important to stop
climate change in the Centre? And the permanence is a nice
thing to think about later. How much of this is impacted by
carbon accounting. Enormous question, good luck
Erica, thanks for sending me all the easy ones today.
I think about it differently, I think which is how many that we
need to be very aware of and prioritizing both near-term and
long-term warming. And wherever we can really
pursuing both to the maximal degree because these things
can't shouldn't be traded off from each other.
And we don't want to be making the problem worse for future
generations to try to solve and No, I think our our current
carbon with chocolate metrics, for example, really is anchored
around long-term warming, right? We talked about gwp 100, that is
the average global warming. Potential impact of an emission
average over a hundred years. When we look at something like
methane, methane, is starts incredibly potent, right about
120 times. In the impact of CO2 on a
percentage basis and goes down significantly over time.
And what we see is that when we start just averaging to 100
years, you actually lose those Dynamics.
We don't take those into account.
And so rather than thinking about kind of at what point in
time, do you want to optimize? I'm really much more interested
in. How do we pursue actions that
help us optimize at all and just generally Understand the system
better because for example if we have really high overshoot on
the way to coming back down and still by 2100 reaching 1.5 but
say you know, peaking at 2 degrees Celsius along the way
that has a lot of impacts. There's a lot of impacts on
human systems due to we're just talking before about the heat
wave going on. And that also has impacts on
natural systems and how those impact humans and some of those
are going to be irreversible changes.
And so we need to be very cautious about what warming we
have at every point in time to help us avoid those risks.
When we talk right now about like 1.5 degrees scenarios, I
think it's important to talk about what those numbers
actually. Those Celsius numbers, kind of
mean in those models, which is talking about our temperature in
2100, it's not time at the curvature of our temperature
from here to there and depending on what model were looking at,
they can very well write, you can have 1.5 stay with high over
shoe which means we go a lot higher than 1.5.
Then we slowly come back up and 1.5 and maybe at 2100, right?
We are on a downward horse. Stable trajectory 1.5 If you
look at some of the three or four degrees C models at 2100,
those usually still have upward slopes at 2100, right?
It's not actually saying that those models would have US
state, you know, quote, quote stabilize.
That also be very unstable state, but, you know, stabilize
it three or four degrees, whatever those models are.
It's actually saying that at this point of time, between 100,
that's where we'd roughly be expected to be, but in those
cases, are usually still, you know, on and off.
Upward trajectory I'm kind of curious for those of our
listeners who are new to methane.
Could you tell us a little bit about where does Methane come
from? Why, how much of it is
anthropogenic? How much is natural?
Why is this becoming such a big problem?
Most of the elevated methane, emissions are anthropogenic
there have always been natural emissions from systems like
wetlands and there's slow. But from termites, which is a
fun fact. Most of the Mission stay or
anthropogenic and those come from a few different sectors.
Agriculture is a very big sector primarily driven by a livestock,
as well as rais'd oil and gas is about about the next kind of
third largely coming from leaks and different operational
practices and a different sort of industrial processes.
Actually just in do leaked men, do have some methane.
Emissions related to them today. And there's also number of
waste, sectors. So landfills are a big generator
of methane as our Wastewater systems.
So these categories are fairly different than see the CO2
categories, obviously High overlap in oil and gas but you
know, when we talk about CO2 were were not as focused on
agriculture and waste usually, and I think this is part of the
ship that has to happen there. Only recognizing all of the
different sectors that are contributing to climate change
right now and emissions and making sure that we have plans
on engaging with all of them. Yeah, I'm curious because, you
know, you're talking to two carbon dioxide removal nerds.
I certainly got, I got introduced to carbon dioxide
through my Master's Degree where I spent measuring carbon fluxes
using the Eddy covariance technique over mixed Urban
ecosystems. And then I was like, woah.
CO2 CO2, CO2, this is fascinating.
You took a different trajectory and you ended up at methane and
I'm really curious how you decided to care about methane
and engage with methane. And then why you decided to I
found a two found spark and then what you guys are doing its part
to address nothing. Yeah so the way I got to methane
was really trying to understand all the different pieces of what
needed to happen and what was happening and methane coming up
as needing to be a very large priority given its large role in
overall warming and particularly having this really important
role in helping us to mitigate near-term temperatures and Peak
temperatures that need to happen.
Quickly order to achieve that rule and seeing That we are
really behind on being able to achieve those goals or a wide
number of reasons. But you know, we were only now
having this so called methane moment, which is wonderful.
I'm so glad we're here and that it is getting more attention,
but the work isn't, it's relatively early days especially
compared to many parts of CO2 related work.
And one of the resulting challenges in the methane space
right now is that we don't have full Suite of ready solutions to
deploy. So there's really an important
work going into deploying that solutions that we do have and
also there's a lot of innovation needed in order to more fully
flesh out, the portfolio of things that we can do to
mitigate the rest of the anthem. Oh Jenna commissions for which
we don't have Solutions the other piece of methane.
Overall you're asking before about internet versus National
emissions right now, anthropogenic emissions are the
vast majority of elevated methane emissions.
However, due to our current kind of warming trajectory there are
increasing risks and increasing evidence as a starting to
happen. Natural systems emitting more
methane and that's a risk that hasn't been fully incorporated
into our ipcc modeling. For there are really high,
scientific uncertainties still and we don't really have
anything directly to do about it, which is sort of,
additionally scary. So tons of working with a needs
to happen across all different flavors of work from Innovation
to policy change and incentivization to Actually,
making the changes, the ground. And so one of the big motivators
are starting spark, was to be able to focus on a few of the
sectors related to unmitigated or not fully mitigated risks
that we saw in the system that weren't yet getting the level of
attention that would give us comfort.
That those risks would be resolved by existing And that
led us to methane has a really important near-term priority.
And so, the two areas we've been focused on so far to date, have
been, and tareq methane mitigation.
So, this is colloquially cow burps.
It's roughly a third ever methane emissions or just from
cow burps. And then we're also looking at
atmospheric methane removal, which is potentially a
particularly interest to the carbon dioxide removal.
Folks, listening to this podcast.
Cast, which is trying to understand.
If there are ways that we might be able to accelerate the
atmospheric methane sink, in some ways analogous to the
carbon sinks, but different given how the molecule acts
differently in order to help draw down some of that warming
from historical methane emissions faster.
The natural systems would alone as well as build a tool that
could be deployed on top of methane.
Emissions. Reductions in order to help
mitigate some of the impact of elevated, natural methane
emissions, for which we don't currently have any other
Immediate Solutions, There's a lot to ask about here, but maybe
we'll cut to the chase for our listeners that I can.
And will go roll the clock back here and start at the beginning.
But I've always heard that methane is both more dilute in
the atmosphere and ambient air than carbon dioxide.
And it's also a less reactive molecule than carbon dioxide.
So, it's harder than carbon dioxide to actually practice
active removal or are those things true, or, or no?
It is absolutely more dilute that is somewhat made up for by
how much more potent, it is on a per molecule basis.
For, I know a given volume of air, the going back to your
radio, forcing comment before, and you do more radiative
forcing, from CO2, then from permanently midair, but it's
methane is a pretty significant chunk.
The one thing is actually very reactive, which is why we do,
see that it has. This short-lived dynamic in the
atmosphere, is that it is undergoing these reactions, but
it is a lot harder to capture. So whereas for carbon dioxide,
we think about capturing that molecule and then storing it for
methane. We really think about how do we
sort of catalytically. Net and destruction is that I've
always heard, right? Yeah, this yeah, just destroy
it. Convert it to again, primarily
water and CO2 are the byproducts of those reactions.
That's where we come from probably.
It's been a primarily one of methane, destruction of the term
effort for young years and years.
At this point, it's not necessarily a new idea, such
with landfills being able to like glare off the gas, that's
collected as pretty common. There'll be other things that
we've done with. Methane emissions debate, to,
I've heard eating seaweed to cows various types of see.
We can reduce the, the methane burps.
Here, are there other things like that that are either
waiting to be scaled, or have already been tried, but are not
enough, like, we're have. We started and where are we
going with methane? So there are lots of available
solutions that we need to be deploying as quickly as we can.
And basically every sector has some portion of the emissions
that are able to be addressed today, those are going to
obviously very bisectors to what they are, but you brought up
landfill flaring. So when we think about existing
solutions for destroying methane, those are those really
apply to high concentrations of methane emissions.
So flaring for example, combustion works at, we have to
have at least four percent methane in that Airstream.
And there are some other technologies that bring that
concentration of carbonate down. But still don't address, many
many emissions sources. There are things that we can do
Upstream of that though before we talk about layering or
combusting it in different ways to avoid that methane being
generated in the first place there.
Behavioral changes that we can make to avoid within each other
in the first place. So, for example, diverting food
waste from landfills helps to prevent that food from then
becoming methane in the landfill of being leaked.
So that's kind of the most Upstream thing we can do.
And then there are ways that we can even once even sort of
without that behavior change in some cases that we can prevent
that, And from being created or being emitted to the atmosphere.
And so, the seaweed example you brought up is for cows for
enteric. Emissions is cow burps.
Basically, there are some things that are being studied that we
might be able to feed cows that would change their digestive
systems such that they were producing less methane, seaweed
is being studied. There's an additive a feed
additive called 3 N O P. That is being deployed in Europe
right now. There are other just changes in
kind of overall feed ratios that can be made without any
additives. And then there's a lot of
research going into other methods that may be helpful here
as well. And so, the across categories,
there's there's there's a portion of things that we can
do, but there are these Really large categories where we don't
have ready Solutions yet and so one of those is grazing cows.
We don't yet have a way or a cow that isn't constantly being fed
something by a farmer where feed additive could be added in order
to bring those methane emissions down.
And so there are these kind of really large Innovation
categories across sectors that will help us to add ready
solutions to the portfolio. That can you know, once they're
ready. Also be deployed and further
enable us to bring our antigenic emissions down there.
I know you have more to say but I love the idea that feedlots
just because I have food additives that can be done in a
centralized kind of way, man. It creating at least on one
metric. A more ecological beef product.
It's going to make everyone's head explode and that's one
Isabel, is it? I mean, in Earth, small potatoes
in comparison to like, Reducing the amount of livestock on the
planet period like like although the runoff is all toxic and this
is 2 by 1 metric only. But you know, they're going to
spend all of these systems have many trade-offs that needs to be
looked at you know very holistically so that we don't
often my systems around any single metrics that might that
might, you know, blind us to the full, the full ecosystem and
system. In fact, that were having Sorry,
Erica. I heard the one little factoid.
The now I'm going to repeat at parties for the next three
decades. Please don't necessarily do you
want to hear? Thank you.
That's all where we headed the like.
Oh sorry. Chevy, you know, I know God.
Where are we? Where are we headed?
And kind of what sparks role here, because it seems like
there's a lot of research needed.
You've sufficiently alarmed us in a good way.
There's a high risk here. Doesn't seem like a whole Lots
being done. What sparks role of unlikely.
Where are you going with spark? And what's your kind of
immediate term Mission there? So, fortunately, there is more
and more being done on methane across the ecosystem.
And so I want to make sure that, you know, that that is is clear.
There are many players here who are doing really important work
on all different sides of this equation, right from Innovation,
new solutions, to policy change to communication, Etc.
And so that's been really heartening to see scale up a lot
more and In the last few years, building on really important
work, that was started a few decades ago.
So we're specifically focused on a few of these sectors to start
and when we hope to add more over time as we have bandwidth
to do so. Where we see, you know, many
more have additional efforts needed to be added and in a role
that we can sort of play with a particular focused right now on
major Innovation areas. And so, our long-term goal is to
help accelerate the pathway to being able to repair the climate
by developing support. Courting the development of new
Solutions and solution, ecosystems to provide more
options for deployment down the road, particularly around where
we have these two types of risks.
So, we've been really focused recently on helping to build
this field of atmospheric methane removal, which is really
look at this question of, are there ways of accelerating
methane sinks from the atmosphere?
Which could play an important role in addressing historical
methane emissions as well as these other risks of rising
natural emissions and just in general given where we're at any
new tools that we can have that will bring down read the first
things over time and and help to manage temperatures will be
incredibly valuable. It's a very early field and so,
we're really focused right now on helping to support.
Scale up or research around a number of ideas that scientists
have had that. Haven't yet been fully explored
to see what might be possible here.
What we want to add to the portfolio while also starting to
look at how do we ensure that as those Solutions potentially get
proven out scientifically that we're able to pave a way towards
good governance and sort of supportive and appropriate
policy to ensure that these Solutions are as additive as
possible. We're also starting to scale up
our work and tareq methane. So about a year ago, we started
doing some Road mapping and the need for solution development
and research funding came up. And so we've been doing some
work there, but we're finally building a much larger team
around this and have more dedicated time on it.
And so, we're working on building right now what that
strategy is and where to focus the different state of a field.
A lot more is already happening Then which is really exciting to
see. And we're also convinced that a
lot more needs to happen. And any role that we can play
and helping to identify what those remaining gaps are in
field development and helping to fill them be that through
additional film topic funding or spinning up new projects.
We think will be really additive to ensuring that all of our
bases are covered in these fields to give them their best
shot at fulfilling the need. We kind of need them to fill in
order to mitigate our overall climate risk.
What is the state of methane removal right now?
Are their direct air capture prototypes being built right now
that actually capture methane from ambient air is, it is
something that parallels carbon removal or is it very different
from some familiar with carbon removal?
Such that they would even recognize it today.
There's a number of different approaches that are being
discussed. Different levels of research.
Have gone into different to them.
And they really widely vary. And so some of them actually may
be some of the same Solutions as carbon dioxide removal.
And some of them are going to look very, very different.
But overall, just given how much you haven't when focus on this
field started on the research side, we're in a very, very
early days and so we don't yet know what that portfolio of
solutions will be and which ones are going to pan out.
The ones that may end up overlapping heavily.
With carbon dioxide removal. Are some of the soil based
approaches. So, one of our current methane
sinks our soils, relatively small saying about 5% dish of
methane that enters into the atmosphere is Sox down by potato
chips and soil but some of the changes that we might look at
for carbon sequestration like biochar enhanced Rock.
Weathering may also impact the Soil bacteria that are
generating or consuming methane. And so, one really important
thing that we should all be aware of whenever you make any
of these changes is that you these systems are all complex
and can change, lots of different things, including
different greenhouse gases this, and fortunately, sometimes these
things come as co-benefits but no matter what approach were
sending me to sort of make sure we understand a whole Suite. the
oven packs to make sure we're not, you know, producing
methane, well, drawing down CO2 or vice versa and that looking
for those opportunities where we can draw down both outer seems
like there may be some Look. Yeah, I got it.
No, no. I'm just I'm thinking, you know,
is it is it worth talking about removal or disruption if we're
going to call it that or conversion when we're talking
and I feel like I'm becoming My Own Worst Enemy because I always
hate it. When people say, should we even
talk about carbon removal, shouldn't we just spoke
decarbonization? And I'm going to do that to you,
and I apologize but because it's such a short.
Lived gasps, is it really just about avoiding As opposed to
removing. Oh man.
I love it. You really have really set
yourself up perfectly good. Everybody.
My own villain here. This is, this is no.
It's, this is a great question, and it's a common question.
And, you know, the yes, if you emit methane, it will Decay over
the course of a few decades. And and yet despite that we are
already seeing half a degree and rising of temperature increase
from methane. And unfortunately, we are not on
a yet on a trajectory to have that go down or atmospheric
methane, the holes are still accelerating.
And so, I think the most basic answers, that question is, if we
care about the current warming that we see, and if we care
about the warming that we see until was mad, Oracle day when
all of elevated, natural emissions and anthropogenic
Emissions, go away. Then we should absolutely care
about any tools that we may be able to add, to the portfolio
that help to draw down or break down that half a degree and
growing of warming. As quickly as we can, which
atmospheric Ali. We are depending on the
atmospheric levels going down in order to achieve any of our
targets. And so, I think this could
partially comes back to, you know, How much emphasis we put
on your term versus long term warming?
And what those trajectories actually mean, the unfortunate
reality is given where we're at our trajectory really, really
does matter. And every tool that we could be
deploying here, that can be additive and play an important
role and bringing down overshoot and our overall Peak
temperatures, which have numerous impacts On Nationals
and feedbacks and tipping points, where it's not only our
long-term trajectories here, that matter and given sort of
predation of natural systems and if we don't do everything, we
can to keep temperatures down. We're also an increasing risk
over time of iron higher natural system machine would normally on
methane but also on carbon dioxide from these systems.
And so we're setting ourselves up to be sort of hiking.
You taller and taller Mountain here on, how much carbon dioxide
removal? How much math in removal could
be needed down the road? And so every ounce of
preventative action is is valuable and ownership a
trajectory My favorite question of this show, I feel like you've
been crying over that around in your soul for however, long you
been involved in. Speedy are Siobhan and now you
got to Spring the trap on someone else.
And there you go. That was a really, but that was
a really good answer. I like the to framed in terms of
like, if we care about this stuff, I'm going to start saying
that more often. It's like, why don't we do?
We care about 1.5 degrees. We care about 2 degrees.
If so, we have to care about carbon removal and it sounds
like methane removal and It all solutions, right?
It definitely feels like you and Spark in general has a very yes
and approach. And I think that's true of a lot
of climate Solutions, right? I mean, we just, we all have to
go in with like this. Yes and approach.
And so, I think, obviously bringing that to methane is
really important and the potency is really getting me because I
had read all these statistics around 80, you know, 80 times.
But when you when you point out that, you know, fresh out of the
source we're talking about, 120 times.
It really makes me rethink. So, for our listeners, who don't
know, Erika, kindly called us out on our memes Channel and was
like, you're not doing any methane memes and ask and you
shall receive, we responded with a methane Meme.
And now I'm thinking, it wasn't, it wasn't potent enough, like I
didn't do a good enough job bills.
It wasn't exactly right. That's just that's really
potency of just Pow. Wow, we really need to we really
need to get methane under control.
We sure do. We're all depending on that and
many other things going, right? So as long as we can all
continue on, you know, each of these important things in
parallel. We've got a shot that man is are
there a lot of a lot of challenges that we all need to
be figuring out how to tackle right now, what about the third
greenhouse, gases, nitrous oxide?
What's the status of that are people thinking about, removing
that? I've heard, I've heard mumblings
about it but I feel like it's the people who are Really
bleeding edge and trying to find something that is kind of blue
sky and any other business turns of phrases that may apply here
what's going on with that, you know, not as much as method
removal which is definitely not as much as carbon dioxide
removal and of in the, you know, in the order of size of impact
on the atmosphere. So so also follows focus on
removal, you know, we haven't, we don't, we haven't had a large
focus on nitrous oxide removal. There's a lot of work to do on
nitrous oxide reduction or sure my dentist's office is right.
No, largely agriculture, agriculture category, but
probably correct me on that our overall warming impact from
nitrous oxide. Side is important.
And also unfortunately growing, and yet also much smaller than
either carbon dioxide or methane.
And so, if you think about any approaches that are going to
require air movement and the energy costs of that, then
you'll be getting much less climate impact from just nitrous
oxide than you would from just methane or just carbon dioxide.
There may be ways of combining some of these systems.
Perhaps, if you are able to actually have a process that
would capture or convert that nitrous oxide, sort of low
overall, climate Sprites, like low energy cost I have yet to
see any proposals for how that might be done in a way that
would be so cos plausible and A beneficial, there may be natural
systems approaches. This hasn't been an area that I
have dug a bunch into given, just how much work we see to do
on methane removal right now and the much higher overall impact
that methane currently has an atmosphere composed of nitrous
oxide. Erica.
What do you think for our listeners who want to get
involved, or who want to make policy, or advocate for policy,
or want to start research? What's the most impactful area
right now and methane? Is it just getting the facts
down on paper? Is it still in the research
phase or what something people can interact with?
So on methane overall, we need to be all hands on deck and
figuring out how we cut methane emissions.
And there are lots of different places to plug in there.
There are there there are many existing solutions for some of
those sectors that we need to figure out how to deploy them
faster. And depending on the sector
that, you know, might take business model, Innovation
Finance, Innovation, technical innovation.
Awareness, building for different behavioral changes,
Etc. So, tons of places to get
involved in methane, mitigation or methane emissions avoidance.
And, you know, within methane, that is absolutely our sort of
the first front of the methane. Fight is cutting emissions.
We talked the removal space given the current state.
It really is right now focused on sort of really fundamental.
Research to understand what these methods are and Advance
the science around them. And so at this stage, I think
there are there are fewer places to get as directly involved
outside of more of the sort of act, you know, Academia policy
type angles and that work right now is incredibly important and
still very and it's really small days.
There's a there's a our variety of activities on that methane.
Emissions side, putting methane emissions, reduction side, hang
on people's backgrounds, which may offer more different ways of
plugging in I have one final question as we near the
conclusion, which is Erica. Can meet thing.
Be stored in aluminium I've never heard that.
Just like the way the British people say, both of those words
you think amazing I miss I miss the leaf and just copy
aluminium. We're in the bad part of the
show. It always goes one joke further
than it really needs to. Then you're like, cool.
We're going to cut five minutes ago and wrap it there, but we're
gonna be will follow. Work.
I'm going to try and save it. Now, we're gonna move all your
work. Erica.
They want to stay involved with parking you personally.
Yes, you can find me on Twitter and you can find spark on
Twitter as well. You can learn more about spark
and and these fields on our website that's part climate
dot-org. Think our Twitter handle is at
spark climate super original and we have a newsletter which we
occasionally some things out too, but there's a lot of
information on our website right now, particularly on really
understanding what the different Approaches are that are being
researched for atmospheric methane removal.
If anyone wants to jump deep down the nerd whole of what
these approaches are, what some of the trade-offs might be.
And what the Innovation areas are that we required to help see
them through to fruition. We have a lot more coming on
that front as well, which we will update our newsletter about
as well as our our Twitter really looking at High party
research are Areas and research questions that need to be
answered and some road maps for the field.
And so those are additional places for folks to engage
particularly, who are on. The, you know, the science and
R&D side. I will be helping to highlight
where we see some of the highest leverage needs to help sort of
further illuminate where people can get involved in different
ways. One other question that came up
to I felt I had to catch myself. So used to saying carbon removal
I'm talking to a methane specialist.
Should I be saying carbon dioxide removal if you think we
should be pedantic? And really insist that we're
talking about a specific gas or is it just carbon removal when
it's inclusive of all of them. Is that the taxonomy here?
I'm, I don't think she pretend expert in corner of one carbon
dioxide removal. I think carbon removal.
This point is largely understood be carbon dioxide removal.
Usually, when we talk about greenhouse gas, It's wide or
agnostic removal. We say greenhouse gas removal or
negative emissions Technologies, to avoid that confusion.
And so yeah, to do the umbrella term.
You can use either of those and then not, then have to, you
know, remind ourselves that yes, indeed, methane does have carbon
in it which it sure does. Yeah.
Go on. Don't be that person.
Well, thanks both for coming and hanging out.
It was fun. Got some laughs in there.
Even snuck one by Erica there at the end.
So confusing. I'm gonna make it.
I'm gonna make the cut. It's gonna be too hard to edit
out. Now there's too many allusions
to it. Stay, it's in there.
Now I'm no longer thank you so much for listening.
If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and
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