Energy · Scope 1
Fugitive emissions from coal, oil and gas
Methane released from coal seams and from oil and gas systems, under IPCC Volume 2 Chapter 4. Simple arithmetic; what matters is which published row applies, and which rows can't answer at all.
On this page you'll learn
- Coal mining, with methane recovery subtracted
- The four states an oil and gas table cell can be in
- What the 2019 Refinement changes, and why it isn't switched on
- Scope
- 1
- Publisher
- IPCC 2006 Vol 2 Ch 4; 2019 Refinement imported, not active
- Category codes
fugitive_coal_mining,fugitive_oil_gas
Coal mining
The factor already contains IPCC's methane density (0.67 kg/m³), applied once at import. Recovery (gas drained and sold or flared) is subtracted from the gas, before the GWP, and can't exceed the gross figure: a negative fugitive emission would be a removal, which coal mining isn't, so it's treated as an entry error.
| Mine | 2019 Refinement CO₂ (m³/tonne) |
|---|---|
| Underground, low / average / high | 0.05 / 5.9 / 12.3 |
| Surface, low / average / high | 0.01 / 0.44 / 0.94 |
Oil and natural gas
A volume of throughput times a factor per cubic metre. The difficulty is that IPCC's tables print four different things in the same column:
| Cell shows | Means | Slate |
|---|---|---|
| 3.3E-05 | A point value | Calculates |
| 3.8E-04 to 2.3E-03 | A range across real facilities, with no default | Asks for your value |
| NA | The emission doesn't arise here | Not applicable |
| ND | IPCC hasn't quantified it | Unquantified, not zero |
Thousands and millions
Oil is published per thousand cubic metres and gas per million, in cells that otherwise look alike. Slate reads the magnitude from each published cell and refuses anything it doesn't recognise.
The 2019 Refinement
The Refinement replaces the 2006 "developed / developing country" split with practice-based categories, and they don't translate: the "lower-emitting" onshore oil row emits 3.6 times more CO₂ than "higher-emitting", because flaring turns methane into CO₂. Mapping one onto the other would get the direction wrong while still producing a plausible number.
Both refined editions are imported and not active. Activating them changes what existing records report, so it's a deliberate step.