White Paper: A Look at Fugitive GHG Emissions Reporting and the Effects on Regulated Facilities

A&WMA’s 109th Annual Conference & Exhibition
New Orleans, Louisiana
June 20-23, 2016

John Henkelman, Patrick S. Sullivan SCS Engineers, Sacramento, California, and
Raymond H. Huff SCS Engineers, Long Beach, California

Summary:

Fugitive emissions represent a significant portion of GHG emissions and accurately quantifying those emissions is especially challenging. The increased scrutiny on GHG emissions has led to more attention to fugitive emissions quantification methodologies from several sectors, including petroleum and natural gas systems and MSW landfills. It has also led to increased attention to command and control regulation for GHG and other fugitive pollutants from those sources.

Quantifying fugitive emissions remains a potential major source of error in GHG and other pollutant emissions inventories. As new emission factors and methodologies are developed, they must be reconciled with regulatory requirements. As operational requirements and equipment requirements are imposed by agencies to reduce fugitive emissions, the changes driven by those requirements must be reconciled at the site level as well as reflected in regional inventories.

Finally, significant research and analysis are still needed to refine fugitive emission inventories. Some recent work has been done to refine fugitive emission inventories such as those of the Solid Waste Industry for Climate Solutions (SWICS), a collaboration between academics and the waste industry, and recent improvements to the EPA’s emission quantification for hydrologically fracturing natural gas wells.