Collaborating with Industry on Protocols for Calculating Methane Emissions Based on Measurements
Once a niche climate topic, the need to reduce methane emissions has become an urgent, collective priority for energy companies and governments across the world. Companies and countries are in the midst of the complicated process of evaluating the most effective methane emission measurement technologies, monitoring emissions, and setting methane emission reduction targets, all in an effort to make actionable progress on reducing emissions globally. Enabling these ambitions amid all of this complexity requires a simplifying step: a widely accepted, straightforward framework for turning measurement-derived data into information that is trusted and used by a wide array of stakeholders.
This week, GTI Energy, along with our partners in Veritas, released the first comprehensive open-source protocols for a standardized, science-based, technology-neutral, and measurement-informed approach to assemble methane emissions inventories verified by direct field measurements. We partnered with dozens of companies to ensure they are useful and transferable, and to provide operators in each segment of the natural gas industry with a useful tool to mitigate methane emissions.
Simple, Standard, and Open-Source
At the heart of Veritas is the goal of bringing simplicity, comparability, and transparency to reporting and comparing emissions across companies and countries. Measuring methane emissions for a single company in one location at a single point in time can be relatively straightforward. Accounting for and comparing emissions across an entire facility or a company’s entire portfolio and employing an array of measurement technologies is much more difficult — not just for the company, but for the investors or other stakeholders who want to compare methane emissions management. As emissions mitigation evolves into an expected corporate function, reporting through an open-source standard will enable investment that makes a meaningful impact on the environment.
Tested and Refined
Veritas has been tested and refined by the industry leaders whose methane emission mitigation strategies will define the entire sector’s collective performance. Since GTI Energy announced this initiative in 2021, our experts have worked with scientists, academics, environmental organizations, certification organizations, and industry participants to develop, implement, and refine the protocols — more than 35 companies have contributed to developing the Veritas protocols. The protocols are available for immediate use now and will be continuously improved as information evolves.
A Powerful Complement to Industry Initiatives
The list of methane coalitions, pledges, and initiatives across industries and around the globe is vast, and from the outside looking in, this activity may seem competitive or exclusive. However, the purpose of GTI Energy’s Veritas protocols is to integrate with and be useful to other methane emission reduction efforts that call for transparent and comparable accounting and reporting of methane emissions. Veritas can be used by an individual company to document its internal emission strategy or to adhere to a framework developed by external coalitions or investors.
A Positive Demonstration of Competitive Community
We see the energy transition as a team sport, so we are particularly enthusiastic about the collaborative power that emerged from competitors working together to develop Veritas. In less than two years, GTI Energy convened a robust coalition of experts and stakeholders to launch this initiative, and now we are witnessing the true potential of the protocols to increase the effectiveness of mitigation efforts around the globe.
We are grateful to those whose contributions helped us release this tool and excited about others who will put it into practice, accelerating our shared goal of accelerating efforts that reduce methane emissions from natural gas systems.
To learn more and access the protocols, visit veritas.gti.energy.
