WASHINGTON, D.C.-
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $47 million in funding for 22 research projects, including one at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) aimed at reducing methane emissions in the oil and gas industry.
PNNL will receive $1 million in DOE funding and an additional $250,000 in non-DOE funding for the development of an Integrated Methane Emissions Monitoring Platform (IMMP).
According to a DOE press release the selected projects will help to ensure an efficient, resilient, and leak-tight U.S. natural gas infrastructure and support President Biden’s U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan and the Biden-Harris Administration climate goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
“Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, making methane reduction a critical part of our nation’s long-term climate solution,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
DOE’s methane mitigation program addresses critical environmental issues associated with the production, transmission, and storage of domestic oil and natural gas according to DOE’s press release. Projects will focus on technical challenges of quantifying and mitigating methane emissions along the U.S. oil and natural gas supply chain.
According to DOE’s press release PNNL’s IMMP project will:
Develop a monitoring platform to analyze data from various sources, including environmental, stationary and satellite.Platform will be engineered to allow data analysis capabilities for monitoring and alerting methane emissions.Platform will include functions for data collection, access, transmission, retention and reporting.
