You’re listening to A Climate Change with Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got Ilissa Ocko with me on the program. Welcome to the show, Ilissa.

Thanks.

Well tell us a little bit about your background and what you brought you to the environmental movement.

Sure, so I knew in high school that I loved math and science, but I really had no idea what I wanted to do with that. So I went to college for engineering. And thankfully, there was the small department that was called atmospheric oceanic and space sciences that was in the College of Engineering.

And it just sounded so cool. And I remember meeting with the director of the program, and he told me all of these plans, he had to send students into tornadoes to go tornado chasing and to strap instruments on their belt and hang glide into storms, I think in Wyoming to be one with the atmosphere. And I just remember thinking, this is awesome, this is what I want to do.

And then through that department, I learned about climate change. And I had never heard about it before, which is kind of mind blowing to me that I’m so embedded in that world now. But even when I was in high school, I didn’t even know that it existed. And, and learning about climate change, and how you know, it’s it’s arguably the biggest challenge of our time, and it affects everyone everywhere, and it touches every aspect of life, I was immediately compelled to study it more.

And then through one of the department heads really cool, immersive programs with the students, I was able to travel to Greenland. And there I was able to see firsthand the rapid melting of the ice sheet. And that was really a life changing moment for me. And it just solidified that this is something I wanted to learn more about study and also be part of the solution.

So then, where did you focus your studies on the next phase.

So I knew that I wanted to get a PhD and similar to high school, like I knew I wanted a PhD in some sort of aspect of the climate system, I really had no idea what aspect of the climate system it’s pretty amazing all the different professors that I wanted to work with that did research on different parts of the ocean, different departments, different parts of the atmosphere, on lands just all over the place.

But I ended up settling in atmospheric physics, which refers to atmospheric chemistry and radiation. And I specialized in how different types of climate pollutants impact the climate over different timescales. So we have some species that we emit into the atmosphere that are really powerful at trapping energy in the near term, and some build up over time. And so they trap energy in the long term. And that was really my sweet spot.

Yeah, I think that that’s been one of the challenges for me as somebody who’s been having guests on the program for the last few years that there are so many different areas to kind of learn about. And I think, I mean, both, I’m blown away by the quality of scientific research that’s being done by 1000s or 10s, of 1000s of people across the planet to help us solve these problems.

But I’m also a little bit overwhelmed by the technical challenges of dealing with this. So we have a lot of great minds working on it great. But the the problems are, as you said, existential so where did you graduate with your PhD? And should I call you Dr. Ilissa? Or Dr. Ocko? What’s, what’s the right way to, to address you?

So I got my PhD from Princeton University. It was it was an atmospheric and oceanic sciences. And it was a really great experience because they also have a really renowned policy school on campus. So I was able to also get a certificate in science, technology and environmental policy, in addition to my PhD in atmospheric and oceanic sciences, so it really exposed me to that science policy interface. And Dr. Ocko is perfectly fine.

Well, Dr. Ocko, I think that certainly the policy part of this puzzle is is Certainly immensely challenging. And I was just talking to a friend about the the issue of electric cars and that, you know, we’re making tons of electric cars, but maybe we should be making less major electric cars like truck size ones and more smaller ones, because we’re using a lot of lithium for these batteries for Monster Trucks versus we probably need more Prius size vehicles.

Nobody really wants to hear that. But that’s kind of like a pretty basic science 101, there’s less, less photo, there’s less battery materials used and a smaller engine than a larger one. Yeah,

I mean, yeah, you touch on a really central issue to this whole challenge, which is social acceptance, and the the ability for people to really change their behaviors, which is a key part of the problem and the solution. You know, my parents, they, they know, climate change is caused by humans, they know, it’s one of the biggest deals of our time, they know what I do.

And yet, they would prefer me to drive a larger vehicle because they think it’s safer. So there’s that element to that people that are fully aware of the problem and the consequences, you know, would still choose a larger vehicle because of reasons like that. And then there’s also, you know, I’m I have two young children, and we literally can’t fit everything in our, we have a hybrid, we have a hybrid Camry, and we can’t fit everything in there anymore when we travel.

So we need an SUV. And for that we use we have a rav4. And it’s the hybrid. And so we’re trying to be as environmentally friendly as we can, but we need a bit bigger vehicle. So that’s just taking into account someone who is very well aware of the issue and still struggles with this challenge of the size of the vehicle. So then you just imagine how many people aren’t as aware of the challenge or are resistant to changing their behaviors for other reasons. And then it just, you know, it spirals out of control. Sure,

and I don’t want any environmental shaming going on on our show. But you know, I do drive a hydrogen vehicle. But, you know, I really think that that’s kind of the way of the future, but probably more Uber like public policy that all of us don’t need to have cars. And if we could do with less cars, we would be better off as a society. I went over. I was in Copenhagen, you know, over the summer, and they are, are using bicycles so much.

And I mean, of course, that saves a lot of greenhouse gases when you when you ride a bike. But that’s that’s a little bit longer leap. Why don’t we head back to your specialty, which is these gas emissions? And I know there’s there’s a lot of sources of these greenhouse gases, oil, products, landfills, agriculture, what are we going to do? And what’s the what’s the rate of change that we need to achieve to to successfully avoid an existential climate change that will kind of wipe out the species?

Yeah, so I mean, we emit hundreds of different types of climate pollutants into the atmosphere every day from all sorts of activities. But only a handful are causing the massive amount of warming that we’ve been experiencing in recent decades. And so there’s this common perception that emissions of carbon dioxide are causing today’s climate change.

And it’s true that it’s the main cause. But people are often surprised to hear that our emissions of carbon dioxide to date are only responsible for half of the warming we’re experiencing today. So emissions of other climate pollutants are responsible for the other half. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the physical science basis of climate change, suggest that if we look at contributions of climate forcers to today’s warming relative to pre industrial levels, nearly half is from CO2 emissions which is mostly from the burning of fossil fuels but also from deforestation.

29% is from methane which comes mostly from agriculture and energy use mainly the production and distribution of fossil fuels and also from waste. 12% is from volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide from road transportation. 5% is this collection of halogenated gases which includes CFCs and they’re replaced emits a lot of these, these types of pollutants are from refrigerators and air conditioners and other industrial activities.

Five percent’s from nitrous oxide, mostly from agriculture, through fertilizer use, and around 3% is from black carbon. So when we start to boil the problem down, and we look at the main contributors to climate change and how much they’re contributing, it makes the problem easier to solve in a way because you can then look at the different activities that these pollutants are coming from that I just listed, and also the main countries that these pollutants are coming from.

And you are really taking this approach where you’re drilling it down and coming up with strategies for each one of these, which is something that that scientists and others have really been working on. And I myself have been focused on methane strategies, in particular, in terms of curbing climate change in the near term. Well,

I did, I did view your your TED talk, and it was it’s a great talk, and I encourage everybody to take a look at that as well. And in it, you, you do break this down? I guess I have a question. As you were talking about how in Texas, the amount of gas that’s being emitted leaked, would be enough to power a lot of homes. I’m wondering what’s the hot? What are we doing to stop that? And what more could we do?

You’ll hear the answer right after the break. I’m speaking to Dr. Ilissa Ocko on A Climate Change. I’ll be right back in just one minute to get Dr. Ocko’s answer.

You’re listening to do A Climate Change. I’ve got Dr. Ocko on the program, renowned expert in the area of climate change. You did a recent TED talk on on these issues. Dr. Tell us a little bit about the methane leakage. In particular, we’re talking about oil fields. And why don’t we just talk about Texas because that’s a some an area that you’re somewhat familiar with?

Sure. So methane is the main component of natural gas. And so natural gas can leak When extracting any type of fossil fuel from underground. And so that includes coal and oil and of course, natural gas. And then when you move the natural gas around, such as through pipelines, but the majority of these leaks can be fixed with existing strategies, the challenge with these leaks is finding them.

We as you know, we have really focused our attention on big gas leaks for safety purposes, which makes a lot of sense, right, we want to make sure our gas usage we’re being as safe as possible. And, and so that has been a major focus whenever we’re using gas. The issue is we also have small leaks that are pervasive throughout the supply chain and all types of infrastructure for natural gas. And this includes oil as well, because when you’re drilling for oil and gas, it’s it’s in the same, it’s the same type of environment that you’re doing these extractions, and so you’re emitting a lot of natural gas into the atmosphere.

And these leaks up until around a decade ago, we didn’t even have the technology available to detect these small leaks on the level that we’re talking about. So again, we knew the big leaks, but we didn’t know the small leaks, and the small leaks add up. And they make a big difference when it comes to climate change. And so one of the one of the oil and gas basins that emits the most methane emissions from its production is in Texas and the Permian Basin. So it’s not just in Texas, but it’s in other parts of the southern US as well.

And analysts at EDF have looked at how much gas we think is just being wasted in the West Texas part of this basin, and have found that the amount of gas that we think that is being leaked could be powering 2 million homes. So this just shows you the scale of the problem. And these are tiny, invisible, odorless leaks that no one even really knew was happening until we were able to develop the technology that has enabled us to find these leaks and so now we have handheld industry almonds and, and instruments on drones and aircrafts and helicopters that are able to detect these leaks.

We also have a growing number of satellites that are able to monitor these types of emissions from space. We have our own satellite at EDF, that we’re expecting to launch sometime within the next year called methane that that will be able to detect methane leaks across the world with unprecedented precision, which will enable us to find these leaks so that we can fix these leaks.

Because again, fixing it isn’t necessarily the hard part, it’s finding it certainly 2 million homes, the amount of gas that’s leaking out of these wells and pipelines and refineries is a shocking number. I mean, that’s more than the population of a number of states in the United States of less than 2 million people. So that’s, that’s a lot of gas.

So I guess the question, you know, a lot of questions arise from that is like, what actual progress is being made over the last 10 years? What can and will be done over the next 10 years to stop this problem?

And in even if we’re stopping it here in the US, I know that other countries are having problems that are far more significant than ours in terms of leakage, such as in Russia, they’ve got much less sophisticated equipment and much less regulated environmental regulatory protection. So what what are the plans? What are the thoughts as to how we can proceed on these different fronts?

Yeah, you bring up a lot of great points there. And it certainly is a challenge. I mean, over the past decade, the first step was really being able to quantify the challenge better, because we didn’t have the data to really know how much methane was leaking from oil and gas and gas systems. Even in the US, we didn’t know. So we’ve come a long way in terms of having a better understanding of how much methane is emitted in the US.

And it came out to be around 60%, higher than what the EPA had been reporting for methane emissions from the oil and gas sector in the United States. So we’ve made tremendous progress in terms of just better understanding where the emissions are coming from, what’s the overall magnitude of the emissions, that then helps has helped us helps helps us figure out mitigation tactics for minimizing the leaks.

One strategy is to just deploy best practice systems, when we’re building out new infrastructure. Obviously, we don’t necessarily want to build out more natural gas infrastructure. But when that happens, we now have a sense of what systems are tighter than others, we also, you know, have been able to find really, really simple solutions, just you know, that are the equivalent to a plumber, fixing a toilet in terms of fixing some of these leaks.

And that’s a so a lot of that has been got ongoing in the US where different states, Colorado was the first to create regulations around methane emissions from oil and gas that has been spreading to other places companies have, you know, have become more and more aware of this issue and methane, it’s a, it’s a fugitive emission. So it’s not something that needs to be emitted in order for you to have your final product in the way that CO2 emissions are kind of a necessary part of different processes.

So just you know, we can prevent a lot of emissions from different activities by just being mindful about it. So a lot of companies have committed to reducing their emissions of upstream methane from from their production and their facilities. I think maybe a dozen of some of the top companies in the world and oil and gas have made these commitments. And so we’re just trying to, you know, hold everyone accountable to them. So that’s been really helpful.

Last year, or a couple of years ago, we had the global methane pledge. And that was really exciting. Now, more than 100 countries have signed on to this pledge to lower their methane emissions by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. So that’s really exciting. And and my organization Environmental Defense Fund works also with different countries to kind of craft their their regulations and incentives for reducing methane emissions as well particularly in Europe and, and also China and to Japan.

So there’s a number of different things that are going on all over the place, Russia definitely is the hardest one to tackle. As you mentioned, the good thing about this satellite that will be coming online is that it’ll finally finally give us eyes on the entire globe in parts of the world where you couldn’t just go in and fly a drone over equipment to take measurements to take measurements.

So I think we’ll have a much better sense of how much is being emitted in different parts of the world. And, and then we need to strategize about how to reduce those emissions if they’re in places like Russia, where it will be harder to to get the actions taken that we would like to see.

I guess there’s another question is whether or not there are any kind of natural or processes that are being cooked up scientifically to maybe sequester methane in the way they’re talking about sequestering CO2?

Yes, there are definitely efforts to to take methane out of the atmosphere called methane removal, similar to carbon dioxide removal. It’s definitely not as far along as carbon dioxide removal mechanisms. So it’s in the early stages, but it’s a really active area of research right now. And I am not, I am not very well versed in it, but it definitely is something that is being considered.

Well, isn’t that something that from a public policy aspect that we should be having this similar magnitude of the Manhattan Project to focus on things like methane removal, potentially CO2 sequestration, rolling out hydrogen, where we can produce it much more cheaply, things like this, that would would get us to net zero more quickly?

Yeah, you know something about hydrogen is that it is also a climate pollutant. Not a lot of people know that. So hydrogen is a tiny molecule. It’s even smaller than methane. And we know that methane can easily escape from infrastructure, and hydrogen has similar infrastructure. And where we are now with hydrogen and our understanding of how much leaks into the atmosphere is where we were 10 years ago with methane.

We don’t know we don’t have the instruments available to even measure the hydrogen that may be leaking from existing systems. And as we plan to scale up our hydrogen initiatives, we have no way of even knowing what the hydrogen leakage could be in the future. So hydrogen itself does not trap heat in the way that methane and carbon dioxide do. But when it breaks down in the atmosphere, it increases the amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including methane, but also tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor.

So my research right now is actually focused on better understanding the climate impacts of hydrogen initiatives and trying to determine where and when to deploy hydrogen so that we can optimize our decarbonisation strategy and optimize our climate benefits and really achieve the climate benefits that we hope to get by using hydrogen.

And you are here on A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern. And I’ve got Dr. Ocko of the Environmental Defense Fund here talking with us about global warming and what we can do to stop it. We’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern. I’ve got Dr. Ocko from the Environmental Defense Fund on the program. We’re just talking about hydrogen and some potential downsides of using it. Doctor, tell us a little bit about how does hydrogen compare to say methane or CO2 in its dangerousness to the atmosphere?

Sure, so hydrogen is a short lived climate pollutants, which means it does not last very long in the atmosphere. And it also has short lived climate effects. So hydrogen itself does not trap heat, but it increases the amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But those greenhouse gases, namely methane, tropospheric ozone, stratospheric water vapor themselves only have short lived impacts on the climate.

So we can basically put hydrogen as a climate pollution on this theme. Scale of methane in the sense that it’s very powerful at trapping heat. But it isn’t an issue in the long term because it doesn’t build up over time. And its effects don’t build up over time. So when we compare hydrogens potency relative to carbon dioxide, over a 20 year timescale, hydrogen is around 40 times more potent than CO2. For example, methane is around 80 times more potent, so methane is still more powerful than hydrogen. But hydrogen is a lot more powerful than CO2.

In the long term, hydrogens pose potency is around 12 times higher than carbon dioxide. And for comparison, methane is around 30. So Methane is a stronger pollutant, and we emit a lot more methane right now into the atmosphere than we do hydrogen. But hydrogen is kind of this emerging. This emerging energy source that is has has dozens of governments making plans to scale up its use as a climate solution. And people don’t realize that hydrogen for a climate solution comes with a lot of its own climate problems. And specifically, it has three main climate problems.

So the first is how the hydrogen is produced today, 99% of the hydrogen that we produced is using natural gas and coal without CCS. So that is all a big source of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and also methane, because as we just talked about earlier, these natural gas and coal as well are big sources of methane emissions when you extract those resources, and when you move them around. So that’s a big problem with hydrogen right now.

So to get hydrogen to a point where it is low carbon or near zero carbon, you have to really scale up the hydrogen, the blue and green hydrogen that we’re using right now. And we have not done that yet. So right now, just very quickly, over I think less than point 2% of our hydrogen is being produced using green hydrogen, which is water and renewables, that would be the near zero carbon hydrogen, and then using the gray and the brown, which is natural gas and coal respectively, with CCS, that’s called Blue hydrogen. That’s only around, that’s less than 1% of the hydrogen we’re producing right now.

So that’s one of the main problems with hydrogen in terms of its climate impact. The other is how the hydrogen is managed, because it can easily leak from infrastructure. It’s the tiniest molecule in existence. And it has these indirect potent warming effects when it does make its way into the atmosphere. So that’s the second one. And the third one is how we use hydrogen. And the main issue there is that it takes a lot of energy to separate the hydrogen from whatever feedstock you’re using, which could be water or natural gas.

So in many cases, we could directly use that renewable electricity to decarbonize the system. But then if you’re using that renewable electricity to first create the hydrogen to then use the hydrogen in a system that could have been electrified to begin with, then you’re wasting a lot of our precious renewable electricity.

And unless we have excess renewables and additional capacity beyond what we need just for decarbonisation, we could end up delaying our decarbonisation efforts. If we focus too much on hydrogen and use our precious, precious lead generated electrons from renewables, we use it for hydrogen instead of to directly decarbonize society.

Well, isn’t there an issue in terms of you know, mining in terms of you know, an electric battery has more cost to the use of the electricity than just the generation of it? Because you’ve got to you’ve got to mine for the lithium or whatever battery source that you’re using. And isn’t it true that hydrogen can be used as a storage for the electricity that has been generated from wind and solar to to save for a kind of that day when it’s raining or the wind isn’t blowing? Those types of things?

You end company countries like say, Denmark who are generating a ton of wind are creating green hydrogen using this wind power. and are planning to use it to decarbonize, maybe cement the making of cement and steel and those types of things. If they if they use good pipeline management and things of that nature. Can’t they contain that hydrogen, so it doesn’t ever get to the atmosphere?

Yeah, all great points. So first, in terms of the precious metals and needing to mined for metals, you also need these types of metals for hydrogen production as well, for example, in electrolysis, so you still have mining issues associated with hydrogen. So it’s not just for batteries and electric vehicles, you also have a lot of similar issues with hydrogen as well. So it’s not like pursuing hydrogen would necessarily solve some of those challenges.

You’re absolutely right, that there are some there are many use cases for hydrogen, where hydrogen will absolutely be part of the solution in our efforts to decarbonize society. And so and that’s where we really need to focus our attention on these, what we call hard to abate or hard to decarbonize sectors where we don’t have better alternatives.

So it’s really more of where are there where there are options to use, potentially cleaner or less impactful? harmfully impactful. strategies to reduce emissions, for example, by home heating is one of them where we have for the majority of the earth we do not heat pumps will be sufficient. We don’t you know, so we could, you know, use electricity in that way.

We don’t need hydrogen boilers, except for some very cold parts of the world. So for things like that, it doesn’t make sense to use hydrogen. But there are absolutely applications like you, you mentioned, where hydrogen will be vital to the solution for steel production is one of them.

And then like you were saying about cement, in industries like cement, where you need a lot of really high heat, having hydrogen is, you know, you potentially need that solution, because you can’t use electricity to st get that same level of heat that’s needed for those industrial processes.

So we really want to make sure that right now we’re focusing on these no regrets sectors, where we can really feel like, you know, we need hydrogen for these applications. So let’s go all in on that. And then there are certain applications where they’re just better and cleaner alternatives.

And so it doesn’t make sense to deploy hydrogen, especially while we’re trying to work out these other these these unintentional consequences, especially for the climate in terms of using hydrogen. And one of those as you were saying, like, well, with the pipelines, if we’re, you know, they’re really tight systems, can we still use it?

Yes, the problem is, we don’t have the instruments available right now to know what how tight these systems are. And so once we’re able to, to have more of the equipment needed to get those measurements, and we’re able to start building inventories on how much is being emitted from you know, different regions and different parts of the supply chain and all of that, we’ll have a better sense of, you know, where and how to use hydrogen.

But right now, because we don’t know that information, and we could potentially be leaking a lot of hydrogen into the atmosphere, from pipelines, for example, we don’t want to invest our resources and time into really scaling those up until we have a better understanding of how impactful they are.

Well, hasn’t the new IRA bill, which is creating some hydrogen, you know, hubs around the country, isn’t it doing just that or explain to us how that’s working?

Yeah. So yeah, the IRA provided a lot of funding for hydrogen specific, specifically hydrogen hubs. And so one of the strategies to minimize hydrogen leakage is to not move the molecules around so much the more you move them around, the more opportunities you create for leakage. So with these hubs, it could potentially be a really good system for producing and using hydrogen in the same location.

And so by having the idea of a hub is that you have a lot of the the infrastructure and the end uses co located with the production. And so you can, for example, be producing your hydrogen next door to where you’re producing steel and through using the hydrogen. So hubs could be a really great solution to the leakage challenge.

We need to do it right and we’re working very closely with the Department of Energy to make sure that all of these projects are supporting, supporting efforts to monitor and minimize leakage in the future as they get going, for example, by including parts in their proposals and their project plans that specifically mentioned how they will tackle the leakage problems. So that’s already underway. And that’s something we’ve we’ve been working on.

Well, it’s great to hear that we’ve got some good minds on these problems, because they’re certainly very challenging. You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern. And I’ve got Dr. Ocko from the Environmental Defense Fund here with us talking about climate. We’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. I’ve got Dr. Ocko from the Environmental Defense Fund. And doctor, just a little bit in terms of public policy, and in picking winners in the environmental world. It’s, it’s challenging, because things are moving so fast.

We don’t want the government exactly picking the winners and losers, because the government doesn’t have the best track record. But we also need some government direction and regulation as to what are probably the best choices. How do you balance those competing needs?

Well, we’re really, we’re at a point right now, where we’re going to need a mix of a lot of different things. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet, there’s really no clear winner in terms of one, you know, technology is going to fix everything, we kind of need a little bit of everything. And there’s a place for you know, most of the options that have been thrown out on the table.

I’m definitely the most excited about wind and solar, in terms of the trajectory, how you know, how the costs have just dramatically dropped, and how the share of energy that we consume is from renewables and how many jobs it creates, and all sorts of things. So I’m really excited about, about renewable electricity from solar and wind.

But I think there’s a place for you know, hydropower, and geothermal and hydrogen. And there’s all sorts of things that are needed, we’re going to need carbon removal, we’re going to need CCS. So there’s, none of these are perfect systems, there are problems with all of them. I mean, I could literally pick up problems with all of them, but there is no perfect thing.

And so what we need to do is look at all the different problems that we need to solve and find the best solution for each individual problem. And for some of those things, it will be hydrogen. And for other things, it will be electrification. And, you know, in some parts of the world where there’s a lot of hydropower, a lot of geothermal, it will be those things.

And so I really, you know, don’t want to pick winners and losers, more than just, you know, there’s a whole menu of options. And we need to almost play the game of mapping the right solutions to the right problems to just optimize the system to make sure it’s as cost effective as possible, as beneficial to the climate, but also beneficial to the frontline communities and and vulnerable populations that end up bearing the brunt of a lot of these issues.

Well, the Biden administration had had its first Earth shot was to reduce the price of car, hydro, hydrogen to $1 per kilogram, how’s it doing as far as meeting that goal? And is that a worthwhile goal for us to be focusing on? And if so, what other resources should be thrown at this particular problem?

So there are a number of factors that go into whether or not we should use hydrogen. And so cost is just one of the factors. So I’ll kind of I’ll list a few of them. So there’s the feasibility in terms of the different technology and infrastructure that’s needed. There’s there’s political factors in terms of the political climate and how and how easy it is to implement some of these hydrogen initiatives. Then there’s the economical feasibility in terms of the cost, which is where this hydrogen shot and this goal came from in terms of the cost per kilogram of hydrogen.

And then there’s also the impacts that need to be considered in terms of environmental and social impacts. So in order to get where We want to be, we need to address all of these, the hydrogen shot in terms of getting the cost down of hydrogen is just one barrier to the implementation of hydrogen.

But it’s not the only one. And so to get where we want to be, we need a more comprehensive cut more comprehensive analysis of where all these shortcomings and all of these different categories that I mentioned, and then making sure that we are doing the best we can to address each one of those.

So in terms of, say, if we are able to produce really cheap electricity, then hydrogen solves the battery problems so that you don’t need a battery. In order to power a vehicle. If you have a hydrogen system or a much smaller battery. Isn’t that a net positive?

That’s obviously assuming that we get to the point where we could make enough cheap green hydrogen from wind and solar.

Yeah, yeah, the last part, you said hit the nail on the head, because it really and it’s not just about it being cheap, but just us producing enough, because for example, if we have a lot of coal plants that we need to get off of, and we so we need electricity create clean electricity to replace the electricity that we were getting from coal fired power plants, then that renewable electricity that you’re generated is better suited for doing that, then for using it to create green hydrogen to then use in a fuel cell just so we don’t have a battery in the car. It depends on the weight of the vehicle.

But there’s, you know, a lot of light duty vehicles and medium duty vehicles or batteries are perfectly fine and more efficient and more cost effective than using hydrogen, when you start to get into long haul trucking, or even aviation and shipping. That’s when hydrogen becomes part of the conversation and where it does make more sense to, to use hydrogen.

But I will say that we’re advancing our battery technology, you know, just as quickly as we’re advancing all these other technologies. So who knows where we’ll be in the next 1020 30 years, especially by mid century, we may have you know, been able to, to do a better job with the battery storage and not necessarily need hydrogen in the way that we think we may need it now.

So we are, you know, go moving forward with both of these technologies simultaneously. So we just want to make sure that we’re, you know, getting hydrogen right from the get go. And we’re not, you know, just deploying it everywhere we possibly could just because we can, or we think we’ll need to, especially before we get this leakage issue under control.

Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about more about methane and what you see as the the good signs in the last few years that we’re making progress, and what are some of the red flags you need? You think we need to focus most of our energy on here in the US, let’s just focus on the US for the moment.

One of the biggest red flags, I guess, with methane in recent years is just how much concentrations have been increasing, they are accelerating in the atmosphere. And it’s kind of an open question, Mark, in terms of what is the cause of that it’s probably a mix of things. For example, it’s, you know, there are human activities that are driving some of the increases in methane in our atmosphere.

But there’s also there’s also some natural processes that are technically natural, but as we have a warmer climate, we are speeding up those processes and increasing the amount of methane that is being emitted from these processes, for example, from wetlands, so there’s probably part of that as well.

So one of the biggest challenges has just been, you know, well, methane has been more and more on our radar in the past several years, a couple years ago, I think we call it the methane moment, because there was so much global attention on methane and, and countries were able to come together and and have a commitment towards reducing methane emissions, which was really exciting.

The data is showing that the methane in the atmosphere is just increasing and and it’s very complicated because because there’s a lot of chemistry that’s going on in the atmosphere simultaneously, that changes as we increase emissions and decrease emissions that affects the amount of methane in the atmosphere. So one of the things I’m most concerned about is how all that you know, chemistry is being affected by our actions and what it means for the trajectory of methane concentrations in the atmosphere in the future. Because the bottom line is Methane is a short lived climate pollutants. It only lasts in the atmosphere for around a decade.

So I mentioned earlier that around 30% of our warming today is coming from methane emissions. Well, those methane emissions are from recent emissions, as opposed to CO2, which builds up over time. So the CO2 that’s causing half of our warming today is potentially from decades, if not centuries of CO2 that we’ve emitted into the atmosphere.

So if we were to stop emitting CO2, we would definitely get rid of some of the warming, but it would be more gradual. Whereas if we start replenishing the atmosphere with methane, we can very quickly slow down the rate of warming in the coming decades, my colleagues and I released a paper a couple years ago, where we found that using using technologies and strategies that are already available today could cut methane emissions globally in half, which could slow down the rate of warming in the coming decades by 30%.

So those are things that I’m really excited about that we have the technologies available. And we have the momentum in the US, for example, and through the Biden administration to really tackle methane and to It’s on. It’s on the radar for different states, it’s on the radar for different companies, it’s on the radar for the federal government, we’ve made a lot of progress with different methane rules.

And and now even in the livestock sector, there’s a lot of attention for dairy farmers and what they could do, there’s exciting new technologies on the not even just on the horizon, but that are going through the motions right now and being approved, that can be used soon in the US, for example, to suppress the methane that’s produced in a cow’s gut.

And that is a large source of methane emissions globally and in the US. So there’s all sorts of exciting technologies and strategies that are proven and that could really make a big dent in our methane emissions.

Unfortunately, the amount of still rising in the atmosphere and so so that is the biggest red flag that I see that we’re really we feel like we’re making a lot of progress, but it’s going in the wrong direction. And and I really hope that’ll turn around in the coming the coming years as we dive deeper into really mitigating methane as much as we can from every sector. Well,

it’s been fascinating have you on the show. Ilisa Ocko, Doctor, Professor. Great to great discussion with you from the Environmental Defense Fund. Thanks for all the great work that you’re doing over there.

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