How a simple valve could cut fossil fuel emissions but won't

It can plug methane leaks but must overcome gas market dynamics

- DAVID FICKLING

A world that's serious about cutting a quarter of the world's emissions that come from methane should be expecting a boom in electric valve actuators. If your response is "a what?" you're not alone. But this humdrum piece of equipment is one of the lowest-hanging fruit if we want to rein in methane leaks, which warms the atmosphere 72 times as rapidly as carbon dioxide.

At the 2021 Glasgow climate conference, global leaders unveiled the Global Methane Pledge, a promise to cut emissions of this gas 30% by 2030. Nearly four years on, progress isn't just falling short, it's non-existent. Our failure to replace millions of devices that routinely vent methane (CH4) into the atmosphere is a sign of how lacklustre efforts have been.

Actuators are ubiquitous throughout the oil and gas industry, which uses them as automated taps to control pressure and flow in the millions of miles of pipes connecting petroleum fields to refineries and processing plants. Traditionally, they're powered not by electricity, but by the pressure of the gas itself. The side effect of that method is that they're constantly leaking small amounts into the atmosphere.