A method of calculating methane emissions that does not use measurements at all. Almost universally, bottom-up estimates are inventories based on engineering calculations. Inventories are activity factors, which are counts of equipment or throughput, multiplied by emission factors, which are estimates of gas-loss rates per unit of activity.

Learn More: Robert Kleinberg

The practice of selecting only the most advantageous data to monitor and report on, strategically ignoring certain metrics, equipment, or operations that would produce a less than advantageous result. For differentiated gas, this could mean tightly monitoring well heads with higher environmental standards while ignoring legacy operations with below-average standards.

A market in which participants create, sell, and utilize credits to comply with certain regulatory standards, typically based on environmental or performance attributes. Examples include carbon markets, renewable energy credits (RECs), renewable identification numbers (RINs), etc.

Information provided to investors, regulators, customers, and sometimes the public in the form of reports (e.g. Form 10-Q, Form 10-K) regarding the health of the business. Increasingly, investors and regulators are requiring corporations to report on the environmental impacts of a company’s business practices including but not limited to the emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases.

Learn More: SEC, IFAC, EPA, Deloitte

The technological infrastructure and protocols that allow simultaneous access, validation, and record updating across a networked database. This includes blockchain technologies and smart contracts.

Learn More: EarnDLT

A situation where two parties claim the same item of value, specifically a specific quantity of carbon dioxide removed or mitigated from the atmosphere.

Learn More: Corporate Finance Institute

An initial set of critical observations or data used for comparison or a control when considering the emissions impact of a given policy, investment, or other action.

Learn More: GHG Institute

An emissions factor is a representative value that attempts to relate the quantity of a pollutant released to the atmosphere with an activity associated with the release of that pollutant.

Learn More: Environmental Protection Agency

The process or methodology of investigating, analyzing, and combining different emissions measurements and estimates to create a more accurate estimate of total emissions. This usually includes combining top-down measurements with a bottom-up inventory, improving the accuracy and transparency of emissions reporting.

Learn More: Highwood Emissions Management

A Fugitive Emissions Abatement Simulation Toolkit (FEAST) is a model designed to evaluate the effectiveness of methane leak detection and repair (LDAR) programs at oil and gas facilities. FEAST models help operators and regulators compare a variety of LDAR program configurations such as continuous monitoring systems and hybrid aerial and ground surveys to develop cost-effective mitigation protocols.

Learn More: Sustainable Energy Transitions Lab

The controlled combustion of waste gases, typically hydrocarbons such as methane, to reduce the environmental impacts of oil and gas operations.

Learn More: The World Bank, Baker Hughes

The practice of intentionally making false, misleading, unsubstantiated, or otherwise incomplete claims about the environmental attributes of a product, service, or business operation.

Learn More: Corporate Finance Institute

Instances when actions that are intended to reduce environmental impacts at one site are locally successful, but increase environmental pressures and impacts elsewhere.

Learn More: Lancaster Environment Center

MACCs are a useful tool for assessing the cost and abatement potential of various mitigation options and for prioritizing which of a list of potential measures might be most actively pursued.

Learn More: Stockholm Environmental Institute

The multi-step process to measure the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduced by a specific mitigation activity and report these findings to an accredited third party. The third party then verifies the report so that the results can be certified and carbon credits can be issued.

The amount of methane emissions created in the process of producing a unit of gas that goes to market, expressed as a percent. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) set a target to reduce by 2025 the collective average methane intensity of its aggregated upstream gas and oil operations by one fifth to below 0.25%, with the ambition to achieve 0.20%, corresponding to a reduction by one third.

A unit of measurement for metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. For example, one metric ton of methane reduced is equivalent to 25 metric tons of carbon dioxide reduced.

Learn More: Environmental Protection Agency

Refers to the netting of emissions that the EPA will calculate when determining the total emissions charge obligation for facilities under common ownership under the Inflation Reduction Act.

A reduction or removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gasses made in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere. Offsets are measured in CO2 but convertible to methane.

A permit that represents one unit of some type of pollutant that was either removed from or avoided release into the environment. Credits are typically used in offset markets for greenhouse gas emissions. In carbon offset markets, a single carbon credit equals one ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Learn More: Carbon Credits

A market in which participants create, sell, and utilize credits to offset the production of greenhouse gases in one location, operation, or sector with the production of the good, product, or service without the related emissions factors. Offset markets may be mandatory or voluntary and are typically related to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, but can be used to reduce other environmental pollutants.

Learn More: McKinsey & Company, Offset Guide

The Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) was created as a voluntary initiative to help companies reduce methane emissions within oil and gas operations. The most recent form of the initiative, OGMP 2.0, includes five reporting levels, with the highest level requiring that emissions tracking and reports include site and source-level measurements.

Determining an emission rate directly by measuring emissions using advanced
technology.

Emissions from sources that an organization owns or controls directly, as categorized under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Emissions that a company causes indirectly when the energy it purchases and uses is produced, as categorized under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Emissions that are not produced by the company itself, and not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain, as categorized under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. This is the most important type of emission for the DGCC.

The cost of the damages created by one extra ton of greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane. In calculating social cost, the calculation includes primarily what happens to the climate and how these changes affect economic outcomes, including changes in agricultural productivity, damages caused by sea level rise, and decline in human health and labor productivity.

Lawmaking or rulemaking which does not specify what kind of technologies can or cannot be used to mitigate, track, and quantify methane as a common standard. In the past, the methane monitoring industry has been slowed down by regulations that specify technologies in their requirements. This blocks future technologies that may even be more efficient or beneficial to the industry. Technology neutrality is beneficial to a growing market of methane mitigation because it continues to reward those who develop new, more efficient technologies.

A market in which different types of products or services are marketed and sold to different types of stakeholders. For natural gas, the market could be viewed as a two-tier market. The first tier being gas that meets regulatory minimums, the second tier being gas that meets higher standards based on consumer and investor demands.

Top-down is a method of calculating methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. They are based on measurements of the concentration of methane in the atmosphere. These measurements may be made on the ground, with towers, by aircraft, or by satellites.

Learn More: Robert Kleinberg

The intentional release of natural gas into the atmosphere, as a method of the disposal of unwanted gasses such as methane. Regulators prefer flaring to venting when possible because the methane released as a result of venting is a more potent greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide released as result of flaring.

A Gas Technology Institute (GTI) initiative with the goal of standardizing the approach for incorporating measurements into methane emissions inventories. Veritas contains protocols for measurement and reconciliation along the entire natural gas value chain, ensuring consistent, credible, and transparent verification of differentiated gas.

Learn More: GTI Veritas

Informal or formal collaboration by diverse ministries, public administrations, and government agencies to provide a common solution to a problem, such as climate change.