ERL特刊精选|Focus on Methane Drawdown

特刊详情

客座编辑

• Robert Jackson，美国斯坦福大学
• Desiree Plata，美国麻省理工学院
• Gabrielle Dreyfus，美国治理与可持续发展研究所 (IGSD)
• Sam Abernethy，美国斯坦福大学
• Celina Scott-Buechler，美国斯坦福大学

主题范围

Since methane has high warming potential and a relatively short atmospheric lifetime, reducing its emissions (e.g. mitigation) is one of the fastest ways to slow warming. Methane removal (e.g. enhanced oxidation) may prove to be a crucial lever to address hard-to-abate emissions and begin drawing down the atmospheric methane that has already warmed the planet by 0.5 °C.

This focus issue emphasizes methane mitigation and removal through oxidation at relatively low methane concentrations of <2000 ppm, for which few or no commercial options are currently available at scale. Many methane mitigation and removal technologies oxidize methane to carbon dioxide, the eventual fate of all methane released into the air. However, this process occurs on a timescale of up to a decade or two, jeopardizing more immediate climate goals. How can we generate knowledge and technologies to extend methane oxidation to lower-concentration sources—working our way towards eventual atmospheric removal at ~2 ppm CH₄?

Examples of the knowledge and technology gaps we hope to address in this focus issue include:

• Technologies and concepts – engineered, physical, chemical, or biological – for oxidizing low-concentration methane sources, including from the agricultural and waste sectors and natural emissions;
• Sensors and measurement approaches that could be applied to low-concentration sources to increase available data, improve understanding of sources and sinks, and monitor and verify future methane mitigation and removal activities;
• Opportunities to enhance methane sinks (i.e., oxidation) in air, water, soils, and engineered systems;
• Quantifications of co-benefits and unintended consequences (e.g., co-produced gasses) associated with methane mitigation and removal technologies;
• Assessments of governance and social acceptance for technologies that propose releasing radicals or other oxidizing agents into the open air, including the social justice and distributional implications of environmental protection
• Atmospheric modeling, including controls on oxidative capacity, mixed-phase processes and transport;
• Enhanced microbial oxidation of methane in nature, ruminants, and in controlled systems