Advancing Measurement Techniques and Methods to Improve Methane Emission Estimates from Urban Natural Gas Infrastructure and Inform Mitigation

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:メタン排出測定の新手法と都市ガスインフラの排出特性に関する知見を提供。

🏢実務担当者:ガス事業者は排出量算定の精度向上と緩和策の優先順位付けに活用可能。

🏛政策担当者:都市部のメタン排出削減政策の設計に有用なデータと手法を提供。

Methane (CH4) is a potent short-lived climate forcer (SLCF), and atmospheric concentrations continue to increase despite more attention globally on reducing emissions. This underscores the need to expand mitigations of anthropogenic sources, which empirical measurements can help guide. Urban areas emit large quantities of CH4 in aggregate. In the U.S. and Canada, large proportions of urban CH4 emissions often originate from natural gas infrastructure, presenting a mitigation opportunity. However, the individual drivers of emissions are poorly resolved, with implications for attributing, estimating, and reducing emissions. This dissertation addresses that gap through a review of CH4 emissions studies in U.S. and Canadian cities, development and testing of a new quantification method, and two case studies in Calgary, Alberta. The review synthesizes the current understanding of U.S. and Canadian urban CH4 sources, measurement approaches, and mitigation effectiveness across cities, providing a roadmap of research priorities. In doing so, it confirms that natural gas distribution and end-use are important contributors to U.S. and Canadian urban CH4 emissions profiles, motivating the sources examined in the case studies. The first case study examines CH4 emissions from residential natural gas meter set assemblies. To enable the second case study, a human-portable flux plane method was developed and tested for quantifying emissions from tall sources, addressing the logistical challenges, costs, and limitations with other approaches. This method was then applied in a second case study of CH4 emissions from natural gas distribution stations in Calgary, in collaboration with the gas utility, alongside component-level measurements and modeling to improve characterization, estimation, and mitigation of emissions at the stations. Overall, this dissertation advances understanding of CH4 emissions from urban natural gas sources to improve estimates and inform mitigation by synthesizing the state of knowledge across U.S. and Canadian cities, developing, testing, and applying new measurement methods and techniques, and generating new source-level insights through field measurements and modeling.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.11575/prism/51636first seen 2026-08-01 04:59:13