The easiest thing to do in Southeast Asia to reduce methane emissions is to capture the biogas produced in palm oil mills and use it either to generate heat/electricity or upgrade it to biomethane for use as a higher value fuel/chemical.
Recently, I had a chance to look at Malaysia's GHG emissions. For 2019, it reported to the UNFCCC that it had CH4 emissions from its industrial wastewater treatment sector (mainly from POME - palm oil mill effluent) equivalent to 14.5 million tons of CO2e.
At the same time, in 2019, biogas recovery from POME had resulted in 3.75 million tons of CO2e emissions reduction.
So biogas recovery from POME is well established, but not yet a dominant practice.
Biogas recovery in the Indonesian palm oil sector is even less common.
You can refer to these links for reference:
● Malaysia's Fourth Biennial Update Report to the UNFCCC
https://lnkd.in/gDDGg74M
● Technical Paper - Pollutant in palm oil production process
https://lnkd.in/gqPV6k4P
Biogas capture can reduce the CO2e emissions from palm oil processing by ~80%. Mills are literally venting methane to the atmosphere. Even captured biogas is often flared instead of being put to use.
● Producing Biogas from Palm Oil Mill Effluent in Southeast Asia—the Green Elephant in the Room?
https://lnkd.in/gKDzPwhR
"Methane mitigation through biogas capture at 850 palm oil mills in Indonesia alone would contribute to approximately 41 million tCO2e reduction...However, as of 2019, less than a tenth of palm oil mills in Indonesia are equipped with biogas capture."
I have put screenshots of the relevant extracts in the comments section.
"Atmospheric methane concentrations have grown at a record rate since 2020, and they found that processes in nature are to blame: “The post-2020 CH4 growth is almost entirely driven by increased microbial emissions.”
They weren’t able to say whether the microbes in question were living in farms and waste dumps, for which humans are directly responsible, or in wetlands and other landscapes we have little control over. Still, other evidence points to the latter.
A study in 2022 noted that methane concentrations accelerated in 2020, despite the fact that most fossil fuels went through a once-in-a-generation decline due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while waste generation grew at normal rates. That points the finger at rainier weather (which will cause wetlands to spread over a greater area), and rising temperatures (which make the methane-producing microbes more productive).
Another paper in 2023 plugged recent weather observations into a model of how much CH4 swamps will produce. It estimated that they were belching gas at rates consistent with some of the most hellish predictions for a warming climate.
Many of the scariest scenarios of these climate feedbacks relate to releases from exotic environments that few of us have ever seen: permafrost in the high Arctic or icy methane deposits buried deep below the ocean."
https://lnkd.in/gAB5e5Jg
