Josh Romo presents work on midstream emissions at Columbia University

The abstract for his talk with the title "Advances in Emissions Measurement and Air Quality Impact Quantification from the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry" can be found below.

Abstract: “What gets measured gets managed.” Measurement-informed emissions inventories are becoming the benchmark for leadership in emissions quantification and reduction. Furthermore, the reduction of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector has been identified as a “low-hanging fruit” for climate change mitigation, and recent advancements in emissions monitoring technology have enabled the use of measurement data at an unprecedented scale. These improvements present a critical opportunity to enhance our understanding and quantification of emissions and air quality damages from the oil and gas industry.

Traditional “bottom-up” emissions inventories, such as the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, have been shown to underestimate regional methane emissions. Recent work has focused on developing methodologies to incorporate relevant measurement data—especially for high-volume, short -duration emissions events—into regional emissions inventories. The increasing availability of emissions data across various spatial and temporal scales also enables a more robust analysis of environmental justice impacts from the industrial sector.

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been utilized to quantify damages from criteria air pollutant emissions in the oil and gas sector. By incorporating measurement-informed emissions and gas composition estimates into these models, we can potentially improve the quantification of air quality damages and better inform policy and mitigation strategies.

This talk presents recent advancements in methane emissions measurement, relevant policy drivers, and ongoing research efforts in the Brandt lab at Stanford. Specifically, it will highlight results from controlled-release testing of emissions monitoring technologies, the development of improved hybrid regional emissions distributions, and enhanced estimation of natural gas composition. Additionally, preliminary results of facility-specific emissions simulations for midstream infrastructure and associated air quality impacts will be discussed.