How not to manage CO2 reductions

BIOMETHANE is a promising area of energy development and is particularly appealing to climate policymakers who put a great deal of emphasis (albeit somewhat incorrectly) on methane emissions abatement. Here in the Philippines, it is of some interest because, first of all, the country will not have its own reliable source of natural gas after about 2027, and second, there is a substantial amount of raw materials for biomethane here in the form of agricultural and domestic waste. For example, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has researched the prospects for methane capture from solid waste landfills, and I know of at least one startup interested in developing a supply from the prodigious amount of banana farm waste that is continuously produced in the Davao Region.

As I explained last week ("Making sense of methane," December 26), methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas, and it behooves humanity to prevent its release into the atmosphere. A volume of CH4 has a much stronger heat-trapping effect than an equal volume of carbon dioxide (CO2), roughly 30 times stronger, but CH4 breaks down relatively quickly — in about 20 years — whereas CO2 is, for all intents and purposes, permanent. Therefore, the notion that methane has a "CO2 equivalent" value is erroneous; in controlling methane, it is the rate at which CH4 is released into the atmosphere which is the concern, whereas with CO2, the concern is the volume accumulating in the atmosphere.