Evaluating net life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions intensities from gas and coal at varying methane leakage rates

The net climate impact of gas and coal life-cycle emissions are highly dependent on methane leakage. Every molecule of methane leaked alters the climate advantage because methane warms the planet significantly more than CO _2 over its decade-long lifetime. We find that global gas systems that leak over 4.7% of their methane (when considering a 20-year timeframe) or 7.6% (when considering a 100 year timeframe) are on par with life-cycle coal emissions from methane leaking coal mines. The net climate impact from coal is also influenced by SO _2 emissions, which react to form sulfate aerosols that mask warming. We run scenarios that combine varying methane leakage rates from coal and gas with low to high SO _2 emissions based on coal sulfur content, flue gas scrubber efficiency, and sulfate aerosol global warming potentials. The methane and SO _2 co-emitted with CO _2 alter the emissions parity between gas and coal. We estimate that a gas system leakage rate as low as 0.2% is on par with coal, assuming 1.5% sulfur coal that is scrubbed at a 90% efficiency with no coal mine methane when considering climate effects over a 20 year timeframe. Recent aerial measurement surveys of US oil and gas production basins find wide-ranging natural gas leak rates 0.65% to 66.2%, with similar leakage rates detected worldwide. These numerous super-emitting gas systems being detected globally underscore the need to accelerate methane emissions detection, accounting, and management practices to certify that gas assets are less emissions intensive than coal.