CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Exploitable results
Russian emissions of methane to the atmosphere, both biological and anthropogenic, are very large. These emissions come from the vast boreal wetlands, especially in Siberia, from the huge Russian gas industry, and from the coal industry, as well as from agricultural sources. They constitute a major, globally important source of atmospheric greenhouse gases. The purpose of this project was to study ways of determining the emissions. In particular, reducing anthropogenic emissions of methane from Russia/FSU, especially gas leaks, may be a very cost-effective way of addressing global greenhouse warming: identifying and stopping leaks will also be of major financial benefit to Russia, and its western European gas customers.
The project was designed to set up atmospheric methane monitoring in Russia, to use published data to access Russian methane losses, and to carry out field experiments in Russia to investigate the sources themselves.
During the project, there have been several major achievements. A laboratory was set up at a field station near St. Petersburg, intercalibrated to international standards, to measure atmospheric methane in Russian air. This station can be run continuously and provides important data about the methane content of air over Russia, as well as on air masses entering Europe from the NE, a necessary parameter in assessing the European methane budget. In addition, air samples were collected on a continuous and spot basis for shipment to Heidelberg and London for concentration and isotopic analysis. The results, together with trajectory analysis of air masses, provide insight into the nature of methane sources over Russia, their seasonal variation, and their geographic location.
As part of the project, a detailed statistical assessment of Russian gas leaks was undertaken, using published data sources. The results were striking: as much as 7-8% of the global methane budget may come from leaks in the FSU gas industry. This is a significant financial loss to Russian and the FSU, and investment in leak-reduction is an obvious target for global greenhouse-gas reduction efforts. In addition, a field-campaign was carried out in Siberia to attempt to direct verification of the conclusions, using atmospheric information. The results are preliminary, but imply that western Siberian gas fields are indeed a major source area. Clearly, more study is needed, using isotopic measurements to distinguish between methane from gas leaks and from natural wetland, and over the seasons, to differentiate between summer emissions (including major wetlands), and winter emissions (gas industry).
The results are potentially of major interest in several ways. They imply that the Russian gas industry is losing large amounts of gas (and hence income) from leaks. By implication, given the total volume of the leaks in comparison to western gas norms, investment to reduce leaks would be very beneficial to Russia. Secondly, the methane lost from the FSU gas and coal industries is a significant component of global anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Targeting Russian greenhouse emissions may be among the most cost-effective ways of addressing the global greenhouse problem. In the longer term, the results may be important for global greenhouse reduction efforts (e.g. for the Kyoto meeting this year); it may also be possible to devise methodologies to monitor and verify compliance with agreements.
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