In this webinar, Professor Euan Nisbett from the University of Royal Holloway will present an overview of the project ‘New methodologies for removal of methane from the atmosphere’ and its main findings. It is one of eleven components of the Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) programme.

Methane is a potent global warmer, and is the second-most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Methane is rising rapidly and is emitted by both natural and anthropogenic sources, with about three-fifths of the emissions caused by human actions.

These human-caused emissions include agriculture and waste (about a third of global total emissions), such as cattle breath and rice fields, landfills, and sewage systems, as well as fossil fuel sources such as gas leaks and coal mine venting. Many such sources are widely disseminated (e.g. cow breath) and thus regarded as intractable to reduction. Similarly, while larger gas and coal mine leaks can be identified and stopped, smaller disseminated leaks are harder to eliminate.

As such developing low-cost methods for removing methane from ambient air is a very important pre-requisite for reducing the global methane burden, but disseminated emissions of high-methane air are not easily amenable to leak reduction efforts.

The purpose of the project is to design and prove low cost ways of taking methane out of air, in ways that can easily be applied in settings where large amounts of methane are emitted. The aim is not to remove all methane, but to reduce mixing ratios of high-methane air where it is ‘habitually’ present.

The webinar will be presented through zoom and registration is required.