DSO's METHANE EMISSIONS CALCULATION METHODOLOGY

摘要

Action against climate change reaches a critical momentum. Public and private actors gather their efforts to substantially increase the pace of decarbonisation. In this context, methane emissions linked to gas distribution is expected to make a contribution. Although emissions related to gas networks represent a very little part of global emissions, CH4 is a powerful greenhouse gas and increased attention is currently consented to assess its impacts. In this context, the main French gas distributor, GRDF, has developed an innovative and efficient method to assess CH4 emissions. This method, departing from the usual statistical approaches, rely on representative data of the network structure, yearly maintenance operations and incidents. CH4 estimates obtained with this method is accurate and allows to settle and pilot efficient safety and environmental action plans. As a result, incidents monitoring has been improved and CH4 emissions have decreased by 18% since 2012. GRDF recommends to include this method among best practices spread in the DSOs community and in any potential future international guidelines. In addition, GRDF recommends to enhance biogas injection goals into gas network. Renewable gas injected in the network contributes to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions both for gas final usage and the agriculture sector through the methanisation process.