The infrastructure released around 70,000 tonnes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gases, the equivalent of Paris emissions for a year. The risk of a “climatic bomb” is excluded.
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This remains bad news, but less serious than we feared. The leaks of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, due to an alleged sabotage in the Baltic Sea, released around 70,000 tonnes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gases, according to the first estimate made from atmospheric observations by researchers From the police station to atomic energy and alternative energies (CEA).
“It is the equivalent of 5.8 million tonnes of co 2 , or the emissions from the City of Paris for a year or 1.4 % of French annual emissions, indicates Philippe Ciais, climatologist (CEA) at the climate and environmental science laboratory. It is a lot if we compare to the decarbonation efforts of a country like France but tiny if we look at the impact on the climate. ” The risk of a “climatic bomb” is therefore ruled out.
These estimates are much lower than the first produced in the days following the underwater explosions on September 26. Experts, based on the length of the gas pipelines and the gas pressure, had indicated that 300,000 tonnes of methane – the main component of natural gas – could have escaped. The calculation carried out by the CEA, it comes from simulations made from the stations of the European Observation Network Icos , which continuously measures atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Two hypotheses
“The results have surprised us, recognizes Philippe Ciais, but our data is very precise, with an error bar of more or less 10 % at most.” How to explain such differences? The researcher evokes two hypotheses: emergency valves have been activated so that only a portion of gas would have fled; Part of the methane would have been dissolved in the water, but “it’s very unlikely”, he says.
Stations make it possible to reconstruct the methane route: after a very important release in the hours that followed the explosions, leaks have decreased to be no longer detectable. The plume was swept away by the winds in the north of Sweden, then in the south, before passing over Norway, then to go, for a part, towards the far north, and for another, towards the kingdom -Uni and up to the tip of Brittany, where a “little excess” of this gas has been detected.
If the concerns were great, it is because the potential for warming methane is much higher than that of carbon dioxide (co 2 é>) – 82 times more on a horizon of twenty years , 29 times more over a hundred years -even if it deteriorates faster. Methane is thus responsible for a third of global warming from the pre -industrial era.
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