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Should you buy a tankless hot water heater? Well, it's complicated...

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Methane and natural gas

This article was first published in Castanet Tuesday, October 31, 2023 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Methane and natural gas Methane is bad. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential approximately 30 times worse than carbon dioxide. It is, in fact, the second largest contributor to global warming. In order to limit climate change to 1.5 C, we need to make immediate and severe reductions in methane emissions. Natural gas is good. It has the word “natural” in its name. It is a cleaner fossil fuel, creating less air pollution than coal. For every kilowatt hour of electricity, coal emits 1,975 grams of carbon dioxide. Natural gas emits only 700 grams. That’s a 60% reduction. The paradox of these statements is that natural gas is methane—the methane content of natural gas is 85% to 90%. And natural gas contributes to global warming from the well to your kitchen stove. Let’s look closer at points where natural gas contributes to global warming, especially flaring at th

Demand Side Management

Photo by Arthur Lambillotte on Unsplash This article was first published in Castanet Dec 12, 2023 / 6:00 pm It’s not easy being an electrical utility. Electric utilities have to be able to meet the demand every minute of the day, no matter how much electricity we use. To make sure electricity is available around the clock utilities have peaking generators (often a natural gas plant) that they can fire up when demand is really high. As you might expect, building a “just in case” power plant and leaving it idle most of the time is expensive and those expenses are passed on to consumers. Rather than unendingly increasing electricity, we could reduce power during peak times. That is called “demand side management.” A dramatic example of demand side management was the emergency alert California sent to 27 million cell phones on September 6, 2022. The message read “Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety. Extreme heat is straining the state energy grid. Power interruptions

Campbell Mountain Landfill project stops powerful greenhouse gas

This article first appeared 11/20/2020 in The Penticton Western and nine other Black Press Okanagan newspapers. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas. The good news is that methane doesn’t last very long in the atmosphere: it has a half-life of nine years, while carbon dioxide lasts 27 years. The bad news is that during the first 20 years in the atmosphere, methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas that a single molecule of methane warms as much as 84 molecules of carbon. Rather than seeing this as a problem, think of it as a lever. If we can focus on reducing methane immediately, we will see an immediate impact on global warming. If we can focus on reducing methane immediately, we will see an immediate impact on global warming Methane is naturally emitted by wetlands, oceans and termites, but the largest amount of methane comes from human activities. Land conversion, for example in South America where forests are converted to agriculture, creates a large amount of methan

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