New Study Shows Methane Leaks Prevalent In Connecticut Cities

Courtesy: Sierra Club

A new study of natural gas infrastructure in Connecticut says harmful amounts of methane are leaking from aging underground gas pipes. The findings add to an emerging body of science demonstrating the scale of methane leaks in America.

Methane is the main part of natural gas. Like carbon dioxide, it’s a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. But Nathan Phillips, a professor at Boston University, said there’s a big difference.

“Methane is like carbon dioxide on steroids,” Phillips said. “It’s dozens of times more powerful in heating up the atmosphere than CO2 is. So if you leak that methane, instead of burning it, it’s very damaging to the climate.”

And one way methane can leak here in New England? From old buried pipes.

To quantify those leaks, Phillips and his team rigged up a high-tech “gas sniffer” to a car outfitted with a GPS. They drove around three cities in Connecticut, pulling in air from surrounding sidewalks, pinging their location and measuring the amount of methane to produce a highly resolved map of where those leaks are happening.

Read the rest of this story at WNPR.org.