Colorado again leads the way with methane verification protocol

By Nini Gu

Developing more accurate emissions inventories with real-world measurement data of oil and gas climate pollution is key to verifying our progress toward addressing climate change.

Earlier this month, the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division achieved a major breakthrough to do just that when it finalized its Greenhouse Gas Intensity Verification Protocol, marking the first time a government agency has created a comprehensive framework for measurement, reporting and verification of methane emissions at oil and gas production sites.

For far too long methane emissions have been undercounted and underreported, making it all the more challenging to cut them without understanding the scale of the problem and what solutions are most urgent to deploy in the field. Our efforts to establish an accurate inventory of methane emissions have been based largely on emissions factors…