Champion in garbage dumps and gas leaks. Why Russia refused to sign the emission of methane emissions
The point of the conference held in Glasgow is to assimilate the main greenhouse components of the atmosphere. In the case of methane, the second most important greenhouse component, this means combating its concentration in the atmosphere. If it is possible to reduce its anthropogenic emission by 30%, it will stop growing. This is incredibly important for the preservation of the climate.
Big problems remain in the field of gas production and transportation. Methane leaks during production and transportation are estimated at tens of millions of tons per year. Mainly old gas pipelines are flowing and continue to operate. Another source of methane emissions is coal mines. When coal is mined, a huge amount of methane is released – for every ton of coal, about 150 cubic meters of gas. As it was done in the USSR and now in Russia, it is simply blown out into the atmosphere, but this coal mine methane can be extracted in several ways, as it is now in China. For comparison: China produces much more coal mine methane than it receives from the well-known Power of Siberia gas pipeline.
At the same time, in normal countries, the use of methane already does not strongly poison the atmosphere. This gas is used to generate heat, just like natural gas in general. There are also technologies that make it possible to collect methane from landfills for these purposes. Amid widespread concern, even special agricultural technologies have been developed over the past 30 years to reduce methane emissions from rice paddies.
But you have to pay for everything, including the pleasure of protecting the climate. Its stabilization costs astronomical money, but there is no other way. In some problems over time, this may be beneficial, but at the initial stage it will always be costly. It used to be that the development of green energy was a wealthy man’s fad. Today they produce much cheaper electricity than gas and coal. But before that, quite serious funds were invested in them.
Millions of people in the West are giving up on excess consumption.
We must not forget that farm animals are as powerful a source of methane emissions into the atmosphere as gas pipelines and coal mines taken together. Is humanity ready to give up meat? What about the Chinese and Hindus from rice? These problems and others related to the production, processing and distribution of food are very sensitive areas. In the West, millions of people give up excessive consumption in order to contain global warming, but in Russia it sounds strange.
Among the leading countries in terms of emissions, the only signatory to the agreement was Brazil, which does not produce natural gas in large quantities and is not covered by a network of gas pipelines. Despite the development of agriculture, the country is one of the world leaders in the field of green energy and the absolute world champion in the production of biofuels. There is not a single gas station in Brazil that does not sell bio gasoline and biodiesel.
The so-called “carbon factor” – the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from fuel combustion in Brazil is two times lower than in Russia. The country can itself join this agreement on methane emissions. Brazil has a different problem – how good the country is in terms of green energy, and how bad it is in protecting forests. This problem is much more serious there, and the Brazilian authorities are very reluctant to heed the insistent recommendations of the world community to stop deforestation of tropical forests. Their current mad president says, “Europeans, Americans, cut down their forests 500 years ago, so we will follow suit.”
Russia did not join the agreement for its own reasons. First, we have the natural problem of a large amount of waterlogged land. In addition, we have big anthropogenic problems with garbage dumps, burning biomass and everything related to natural gas – its leaks during production and transportation.