The Exchanges

Q of removing atmospheric methane, you've got 200 X less concentration plus or minus versus CO two in the atmosphere. But methane has, if you're looking at like a 20 year basis, 80 X the global warming potential. So there's like a ratio there that makes it still seem harder Right? But not 200 X harder. It's like 200 divided by 80 harder. So a little more than twice as hard.

A So in terms of impact aspect, so that, when you, when you introduce that global warming potential, that 80 to 90 times more potent over a twenty-year lifetime, yes, if you're talking about climate impact, the amount of methane that you have to remove for a comparable climate impact to CO₂ When, you know, we're talking about gigatons of CO₂ removal, we're talking about megatons of methane removal for a comparable scale impact. But there's another piece, though, for that to be comparable that relates back into lifetime, which is because that methane would have gone away eventually over time, to maintain that temperature impact over time, you actually need to continue to remove the methane, not at the original scale, But there's this concept of effective methane removal, so you have your initial large removal, and you have to continue to remove a tail if you want to have a comparable temperature impact to CO₂ because of that, the fact, that lifetime difference.

AI assessment note: “we're talking about gigatons of CO₂ removal, we're talking about megatons of methane removal”

Q So maybe you answered this, but one of my questions was just going to be like, what might this look like practically? So you're saying some farmer changes, are there input changes, like what, what types of things might we have to do to enable this?

A Yeah, so there are, there's this idea of amendments, so things like biochar or other substrates that you could add to the soils that would essentially, um, change some of those soil conditions that make the methane-eating microbes happier and able to compete more effectively. So there's a, there's a set of potential amendment approaches, but then again, because, um, some of that activity has to do with the state of water and air, oxyc, Conditions. It could be how the soil, right? How a farmer, uh, you know, till versus no till. There's, there's also management practices that could be different that could affect that balance. And so there's, there's a, there's really interesting work, um, here just to look at maybe some of the practices that farmers are already using in certain conditions, uh, may have promise for this, uh, for, for essentially enhancing that, that ecosystem uptake.

AI assessment note: “things like biochar or other substrates that you could add to the soils”

Q hundred times the PPM to deal with there versus two PPM methane. You know, what is the thinking around like Just at a most basic level, are we, are we really gonna need to do this? And do we really believe it could possibly be reasonably economically affordable? Like, we'll talk about the details, but from a high level, is your view this is, this is likely in our future?

A It's a really good question, and one that it, especially people who approach this thinking, well, methane is short-lived. It doesn't behave the same way as CO₂ in the atmosphere, where CO₂ builds up because it lasts so long. Methane, because it has a shorter lifetime, this idea is it will take care of itself. And that is true if those methane sources turn off. But here's the, here's the rub. Human sources of methane, there are some that we have mitigation alternatives for, and when we talk about hard-to-abate sectors for carbon dioxide, there are also hard-to-abate sectors for anthropogenic methane sources that we don't have good mitigation options for that will continue to emit into the future, and on top of that, about 35%, about a third of current Emissions to the atmosphere are from natural sources of methane, and these are expected to increase their emissions in a warmer and wetter world, and we have no mitigation technologies currently available today to deal with these generally diffuse and, you know, low concentration sources, like, uh, recently a big surge of, of these emissions in the tropical wetlands, for example.

AI assessment note: “we have no mitigation technologies currently available today to deal with these generally diffuse”

Q the similar processes MRV challenges, I think, that you end up with certain forms of carbon dioxide removal too, which is like, you put your, you put your surface treatment catalyst on your wind turbine blade, and then how do you know how much methane you have actually removed? Can you, can you measure that? Do you have to model it? Like, it starts to get a little complicated there.

A Really good question. So yeah, a big piece of the research agenda in the report is the specific Research needed around the MRV for each of these types of technologies. Like, the methane reactor is pretty much, it's a lot easier in the sense that you could put some kind of, um, methane monitoring at the front end and at the back end, and you would probably be able to detect, uh, the change. Whereas some of these open system, uh, so which, this is, uh, the surface treatment is the first of the, of the open system technologies we are discussing. The open systems are where we have the greatest need, uh, and limited, uh, current technologies to really have a robust, the robust MRV.

AI assessment note: “open systems are where we have the greatest need, uh, and limited, uh, current technologies”

Q Okay, so we've covered our categories. It's clearly very early, but a bunch of interesting possibilities to run down. I guess just to wrap it up, what do you, what do you hope to see over the next few years? What, what are the biggest gaps that we need to fill? Obviously, there's more opportunity for R&D funding and so on. What's, uh, what's on your wish list?

A Yeah, so, like, as we were talking about, like, this is still really early stages, and I think just to get to what you were alluding to earlier with these technologies is that, um, you know, atmospheric methane removal, we're still just talking about just a research agenda. We're not even talking about a field yet. This is, this is really new. Uh, all of the, at the two ppm level, all of the, those five technologies we just talked through are at very early technology readiness levels. And so that's why the main recommendation of the National Academies report is actually to divide this into a multi-phased assessment, and so that this would be really a first-phase assessment where we've identified a number of foundational research questions that need to be answered that would enable a more robust assessment to get to some of your quantification questions, like, what's the potential? You know, I'm not, I'm trying to avoid answering here. It's like, ah, we don't know. We don't have enough data to provide a robust, reliable estimate on the potential of these technologies. And so the research questions, so the report sets out five research areas, uh, with specific research questions that are in the material science, in the biological sciences, in the social sciences to understand. Uh, again, this is any kind of climate intervention technology. It's really important to have a better u…

AI assessment note: “the report sets out five research areas, uh, with specific research questions”

Q report that you guys put together laid out a bunch of different possible technologies. So I want to talk through each of them individually, talk about the premise, and then kind of state of the art. Like, how far down the technology maturity, uh, road are we? Starting with methane reactors. So describe what a methane reactor is and does, and you know, how far are we from building one?

A Yeah, so methane reactors are essentially, uh, you know, methane reactors in a box is what I like to think of them, so they're physically bounded systems, and so they are partially closed in the sense that the reactions are taking place in a closed environment, but air and energy is able to move through, and so they are, uh, intended to oxidize methane, um, Inside the bounded system, and the, you know, so they're most similar to some of the direct air capture kinds of conception, right? You bring air in to a system that has some kind of catalyst. It could be a thermal catalyst, or a biocatalyst, or a photocatalyst. Those are all things that are being looked at. Essentially, to your point, The advantage of methane is that carbon-hydrogen bond can be oxidized. Now you have to add some energy because those bonds are quite stable to break them, but, um, that, uh, amount of energy, uh, is, uh, you know, this is where you have to put energy in, right? You have to, uh, heat the air, or heat the catalyst, or provide some kind of form of energy to break that bond, you have to, and you have to move a large volume of air. If you're gonna have a megaton scale Uh, impact. That's a lot of air that you have to move, but, uh, we did some very rough back of the envelope calculations for the study, and when you look at some of the projections for the amount of direct air capture or carbon dioxid…

AI assessment note: “methane reactors are essentially... physically bounded systems... intended to oxidize methane”