Leaky pipes, cow burps, food scraps, and clay: In methane-reducing innovation, New England leads the way - The Boston Globe (2024)

Methane, a main component of natural gas that is also naturally produced by cows, traps more than 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide within its first 20 years in the atmosphere. The molecule breaks down much faster, though, losing potency over time. Although methane occurs naturally in wetlands and other habitats, humans are responsible for roughly 60 percent of methane emissions, with the biggest sources coming from fossil fuels, agriculture, and the decomposition of landfill waste.

While biotech continues to drive many of the innovations in the state, including methane reduction, some of the most substantial changes have resulted from the pairing of extensive environmental research and aggressive policies.

Originally launched as the Home Energy Efficiency Team, HEET has published a map identifying nearly every gas leak in Massachusetts in the past decade, including “super emitters” that spew the most methane into the atmosphere.

A little over five years ago, in response to a state law requiring gas companies to fix leaks with significant environmental impact, HEET partnered with natural gas companies to identify the worst leaks, and it has served as a watchdog since then to verify repairs and publicly report that data.

The partnership is a first-in-the-nation approach to reducing environmentally damaging but non-life-threatening methane leaks. The team estimates it has cut the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by up to 3 percent. An official report on the findings is expected this fall.

Historically, utility companies “will fix stuff that could blow up, and they are totally committed to that. But if it’s not near an enclosed space [where there is likelihood of an explosion], up until now, they hadn’t had any incentive to fix it,” said Katherine Fisher, HEET’s methane emissions director. “And in states other than Massachusetts, there’s no reason for them to fix those. They’re not obligated to consider climate impact as part of their work.”

Schulman said repairing gas pipes should be seen as a temporary Band-Aid while the state transitions toward renewable energy. The natural gas industry is the second-biggest source of methane emissions in the country but is number one in Massachusetts.

Addressing methane at the source has also become a focal point for environmental engineer Desirée Plata, an MIT researcher who designed a kind of clay that mimics the behavior of underwater microorganisms to break down methane into water and carbon dioxide.

While the technology is still in the lab, Plata is hopeful that it will be able to be used at natural gas storage sites around Boston, and coal mines around the country, before 2030.

Plata said that while releasing more carbon dioxide into the air might sound terrible, because there are far fewer methane molecules in the air than carbon dioxide, converting one or two extra particles “is like a tiny little blip in the total balance of CO2, but a huge warming savings because methane is way stronger.”

The next major source of methane comes from landfills. To attack that, New England states are making efforts to reduce waste. Massachusetts has already implemented bans on tossing mattresses and textiles, which can be reused or recycled. Meanwhile, Rhode Island became the latest New England state to ban single-use plastic bags earlier this year. (Massachusetts still does not have a plastics ban, though a bill passed the Senate last month.)

Another key way to slash trash: diverting food waste to composting centers.

Consider Gloucester-based Black Earth Compost, which recently opened a new, state-of-the-art indoor facility in Manchester-by-the-Sea on the site of the former town dump. The operation relies on excavators and wheel loaders to stir the compost up regularly, as well as pipes embedded in the floor that pump air through the piles to keep them oxygenated, which minimizes methane production. (Methane is created as a byproduct of anaerobic breakdown, or when bacteria run out of oxygen while attempting to digest nutrients.)

“About 40 percent of residential material, at least, is compostable. So if we can take out that 40 percent, we’re going to save money, we’re going to reduce [greenhouse] gas emissions, and we’re going to be able to recycle all the nutrients from that food scrap back into our soil,” said Black Earth Compost’s onboarding manager, Justin Sandler.

That same anaerobic process also plays out inside the stomachs of cows. Across the nation, including in states such as Vermont where farming remains a major industry, agriculture is the leading source of methane. Due to their digestive process, cows release methane when they burp, while their manure also produces significant amounts of the gas.

In New England, Lactalis USA, a dairy operation that owns Stonyfield Organic, is piloting methane-reduction strategies at its farms in Maine and New Hampshire with the goal of slashing emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

The best methane-reducer currently on the market is a kind of seaweed from the South Pacific and the Mediterranean that can be added to cow feed. The natural additive is proven to decrease methane emissions in cattle by up to 70 percent, but it is challenging to farm on an industrial scale.

With the help of Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Stonyfield is exploring “whether there might be North Atlantic varieties of seaweed that can deliver similar benefits,” said Britt Lundgren, Lactalis USA’s senior director of sustainability and government affairs. Researchers are experimenting with local seaweed to see if fermenting it might help it better replicate the success of the Mediterranean variety.

Lundgren said the possibility of locally sourcing seaweed is exciting not only because of the impact on dairy cows, but also because it could create jobs to offset Maine’s struggling lobster industry.

“It’s too soon to put a number on it, but we think there is reason to believe that with one or the other of these seaweed additives, we’re going to be able to get to a substantial reduction in [methane] from our cows,” she said of the ongoing clinical trials. “We really love this solution because if it works, it’s good for our farms, it’s a local solution, and . . . it’s also something that can be done in partnership with rural coastal communities.”

Taken collectively, these methane-reduction strategies could bring a huge payoff.

“The estimates are that you could save a half a degree of warming by 2100 if you cut human-made methane emissions in half, so that’s a pretty big deal,” Plata said. “It’s the only greenhouse gas that can do that. It’s just a question of whether or not we’ll start to see people doing that . . . [regionally] and in Massachusetts.”

Ivy Scott can be reached at ivy.scott@globe.com. Follow her @itsivyscott.