"Better accounting can go a long way in establishing sound policy to tackle the climate crisis."
"The Environmental Protection Agency recently earned applause from environmental groups for a move that went largely unnoticed.
For the first time, the U.S. government in 2022 included methane emissions from dams and reservoirs in its annual report of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions to the Inventory of Greenhouse Gases and Sinks required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“It’s a big deal that they’re now reporting this,” says Gary Wockner, executive director of the river advocacy group Save the Colorado.
While we’ve long known that coal and gas-fired power plants emit troubling amounts of greenhouse gases, research has found that reservoirs can emit significant amounts of methane, too — which has a global warming potential 85 times that of carbon dioxide over 20 years — along with smaller amounts of nitrous oxide and CO2."
Tara Lohan reports for The Revelator February 3, 2023.
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