The Schrödinger’s Methane Leak Paradox - and How to Solve It
Regulators want to minimize false negatives while industry wants to minimize false positives. The result is a gamed system where each group errs on the self-serving safe side. The reason this tension exists is because of imperfect methane monitoring technologies. If operators had perfect information - that is, if the cat’s box was always open - truly problematic leaks would be fixed and ephemeral spikes would be ignored.
Why We Support Blocking the Waste Emissions Charge
At first blush, the WEC seemed like a sensible approach: create an annually rising cost for emissions and thus set a gradually rising cost of inaction. However, the unintended consequence was a shift toward cheaper, less reliable sensor platforms, undermining the goal of meaningful emissions reductions. It follows that canceling the WEC could, counterintuitively, accelerate real material progress in methane emissions abatement by driving the adoption of higher-quality, continuous monitoring solutions.
Methane Monitoring Is Just Getting Started
There is no one silver bullet for all methane monitoring, and therefore they will all have their place. That said, we are on a mission to prove that TrelliSense will be a “prime mover” in the market, and will fill today’s significant gap in cost-effective, continuous and site-wide methane leak detection, localization and quantification.