The US Department of Energy (DOE), through its Loan Programs Office (LPO), announced the closing of a $162.4 million loan guarantee to LongPath Technologies. The loan guarantee—supported by the Inflation Reduction Act—will help finance the construction and installation of more than 1,000 remote monitoring towers as part of a real-time methane emissions monitoring network.
The network will include sites in every major US oil and gas production region, including those in California, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming.
“As governor, we made sure Colorado led the country with the first methane regulations of their kind,” said U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo. “We’re building on that leadership to create real-time methane emissions monitoring for the rest of the country thanks to these Inflation Reduction Act investments and our homegrown innovators like LongPath.”
LongPath’s Active Emissions Overwatch System project aims to deploy large-area remote methane monitors to provide emissions detection, location, and quantification services for tens of thousands of oil and gas sites.
“Preventing harmful greenhouse emissions from entering our atmosphere is a key pillar of President Biden and Vice President Harris’ Investing in America agenda to improve public health while combatting climate change,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Today’s announcement underscores the Biden/Harris Administration’s continued efforts to create environmentally resilient communities and ensure the United States leads the world in deploying next-generation clean energy solutions.”
LPO financing will support LongPath in the installation and deployment of up to 24,000 sq miles of monitoring coverage. This expansive network is expected to prevent methane emissions equivalent to at least 6 million mtpa of CO2 equivalent annually—the equivalent of taking 1.3 million gasoline-powered vehicles off the road—by enabling subscribers to identify and respond to methane leaks quickly.
Last year, the Biden/Harris Administration took more than 100 actions under the US Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan, including the deployment of $350 million in grants under the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, occur across the oil and gas sector. Leaks during oil and gas production and compression, which are difficult to identify across vast production areas, are a major source of US methane emissions. The longer leaks go undetected, the more planet-warming greenhouse gas enters the atmosphere. Today, monitoring is typically conducted via flyovers or using methods such as optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras, which can leave major gaps in emissions monitoring over time and space, leading to methane leaks going unnoticed for months or being missed altogether. This is particularly true because emissions are intermittent—only continuous monitoring can reliably detect these kinds of emission sources.
In contrast, LongPath’s technology continuously identifies, localizes, and quantifies methane emissions more rapidly and at lower detection levels than conventional methods, allowing operators to mitigate leaks earlier and more often. The LongPath Active Emissions Overwatch System could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions leaks by approximately 90% compared with incumbent OGI technologies. The company is already monitoring hundreds of square miles of oil and gas infrastructure using 50-ft towers topped with lasers that can each monitor an area of nearly 8 sq miles. In addition to filling an important gap in current monitoring capabilities, LongPath’s modular systems are low-cost and can be safely and quickly installed on-site using local expertise.
The technology, which was developed with the University of Colorado and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, and with support from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) and other DOE grants, uses an eye-safe laser to accurately identify molecules in the air, including greenhouse gases such as methane. A single laser can continuously monitor nearly 8 sq miles for emissions, providing updates on the full area as often as every 2 hours. The system can notify operators in the event of a leak (down to .06 kg/h) to facilitate a rapid response, reducing needless emissions.