The International Energy Agency (IEA) has charged global leaders on the need to address emissions from gas supplies, in spite of natural gas increasing roles in rapidly growing world’s energy markets.
The Executive Director of the global organization, Fatih Birol, gave this charge during the July 18 LNG Producer-Consumer Conference which held in Tokyo, Japan.
According to the industry expert, natural gas will still be needed as the world transitions to cleaner energy sources, but stakeholders must clean up emissions to meet global climate goals.
Birol said: “Gas has a long-term role to play in the global energy markets, however, there is a strong need to cut emissions from gas supply.
“The challenge is how to balance the near-term needs for additional gas supply when the global markets are volatile, with the longer-term need of reaching our climate goals.”
“We think that strategies to future-proof investments in gas infrastructure are needed by incorporating technologies like carbon capture and storage throughout the value chain, or by allowing for the integration of low emission gas”, he added.
It would be recalled that the IEA in its recently published ‘Financing Reductions in Oil and Gas Methane Emissions’ report stressed that oil and gas companies would need to adopt a more proactive policy measures to increase investments in methane emissions abatement.
This is even as the agency noted that international oil and gas companies had two options to achieve this goal, namely by significantly reducing their methane emissions or phasing out fossil fuel operations faster than anticipated to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
As a result, the IEA tasked investors and insurers to establish methane performance requirements for future lending; request disclosure improvements to promote emissions reporting transparency; and set up underwriting standards that include methane reductions, among other remedial options
It would be recalled that the International Gas Union (IGU) in its recently published ‘July 2023 World LNG report’ maintained that decarbonization was becoming a more prominent feature in recent developing and newly proposed projects, adding that decarbonizing the liquefaction segment of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) value chain offers a significant opportunity to minimize lifecycle emissions today.
