Gas Utilities Turn to Picarro’s Emissions Quantification to Enhance Asset Management and Meet ESG Goals

Gas operators are increasingly being challenged to reduce methane emissions, and to do so in a continuous, verifiable way. This challenge at its most extreme has some cities recently banning  natural gas in new construction, with affected utilities facing an existential threat to the extent that this potentially reduces growth in their revenue base. Further, as the infrastructure ages, gas operators face challenges in managing budgets and unplanned work due to an accelerating – not constant – rate of growth in the number of leaks emerging from leak-prone pipe.

These headwinds are driving a revolutionary change in how gas utilities approach asset management – they are actively seeking out technologies and new business practices that enable them to more rapidly reduce risk and emissions in the infrastructure while simultaneously improving capital efficiency and financial outcomes – the Risk Spend Efficiency (RSE) is now a term of art in the industry.

The advances in mobile methane detection technology and analytics pioneered by Picarro allow natural gas emissions data to be collected at a speed and scale not previously possible. The resulting data-driven decisions in asset management are consistently being shown to yield better outcomes in such applications as pipe replacement, risk reduction, leak survey and emissions reduction as compared to what has been possible with traditional processes that are slow, labor-intensive and have a 66% false negative detection rate on average.

Utilities are discovering that the most significant impact they can make in reducing emissions (and, in fact, also in reducing costs) is by making the best decisions they can on how to prioritize their ongoing pipe replacement programs and how to find and repair their highest-emitting leaks. Using methane data collected on their networks to better inform capital replacement decisions leads to significant cost savings (often O&M) through avoided leak repair. This is accomplished by prioritizing replacements of pipelines with high leak densities before the leaks are found by compliance survey or odor calls and incur repair cost. When this methane data is combined with traditional risk models and SME inputs, the leak repair cost avoided through pipe replacement is maximized.

The collected methane data also allows the highest-emitting leaks to be identified and prioritized for repair to take advantage of the significant reduction in overall network emissions that these leaks represent. Multiple studies have shown that an extremely small fraction (1% to 10%) of “super emitter” leaks on gas networks account for 50% or more of the total network emissions. Repairing this small number of leaks is not particularly costly, especially in light of the emissions reduction benefit and reduction their repair provides.

Only in the past few years has the gas industry so noticeably pivoted in response to their concerns about methane emissions. The technologies the industry can leverage to meet these challenges have matured just in time and are becoming a key part of the digital transformation and asset management strategies at many utilities.

Around the world, Picarro is helping utilities navigate the digital transition, enabling them to leverage their massive amounts of available data, along with methane emissions data, and garner actionable insights for decisions around pipe replacement, reducing fugitive emissions, and advancing leak survey and repair.