Lyra Wang & William Daniels: Multi-scale methane measurements

The Inflation Reduction Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to use empirical measurements of methane emissions from oil and gas operators for greenhouse gas reporting. Accurate inventory estimates rely on technological advancements to improve the quantification of spatially and temporally varying methane emissions. Here we demonstrate a quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification framework that pairs snapshot measurements with continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) to reconcile measurements with inventory estimates and account for intermittent emissions events. We find site-level emissions exhibit significant intra-day and daily emissions variation. Snapshot measurements alone, consequently, may have limited application in developing annualized inventory estimates at the site-level. Using CEMS, we characterize the distributions of the frequency and duration of intermittent emission events. We propose an extension of this method to scale snapshot measurements using survey-type technologies to enable reconciliation with annualized inventory estimates. Finally, we preview the use of CEMS data to estimate emission rates and add context to snapshot measurements. 

Bio

Lyra Wang is a PhD student at the Sustainable Energy Transition Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Lyra’s research focuses on using field measurement data to improve inventory estimation and the cost-effectiveness of emissions mitigation.

William Daniels is a PhD student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Colorado School of Mines. His current research involves methods for methane emission detection, localization, and quantification on oil and gas facilities using continuous monitoring data.