Gassing about gas
When considering climate change and the steps we should take to try to prevent it, there are some easy things that can be done, and other more difficult things.
So in a domestic situation you fit low energy light bulbs and stop up the draughts before paying out for photovoltaic cells on the roof or a geothermal heat pump.
You would have thought that businesses would do the same. So I was startled (although perhaps not entirely surprised) to read an article in the New York Times section of the Observer (which I have found online for you here) that some three trillian cubic feet of natural gas leak into the atmosphere every year, for example through pipes, equipment and containers not being properly sealed.
The leaks are invisible to the naked eye but can be seen through an infrared camera, as you can see from the two pictures below.
You would have thought that all energy companies would be rushing to plug these leaks – not least because they must be losing money as a result of the the lost gas. But it seems that “the industry has been largely resistant to an aggressive cleanup”.
Extraordinary. Is this perhaps something that should be raised at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen?
If this post has interested you, you should read the original article as it says a lot more which I have not covered here.
