The Best Way to Lower Earth's Temperature — Fast | Daniel Zavala-Araiza | TED

(Spanish) Este es una historia de esperanza.

(English) This is a story about hope.

I grew up in Mexico City,

and as a little kid,

I had no clue about global climate change,

the problem I'm working on in Europe today.

But I did know air pollution.

The smog was so thick back then

that you could literally see the air you were breathing.

Today, Mexico City's air is dramatically cleaner.

What changed?

A combination of policy and data.

Mexico City started inspecting vehicles every six months,

using cleaner fuels

and improving energy efficiency.

Mexico City's air pollution problem dropped from number one in the world

to 999.

I realized firsthand how this combination of smart policy and data

significantly improved the air in my city.

And it was clear to me:

I wanted to make a career out of finding solutions to pollution.

I studied chemical engineering in Mexico

and went to Austin, Texas for my PhD.

And that's where I found out

about the huge climate problem caused by methane,

which also happens to be the main component of natural gas.

In the short term,

methane is more than 80 times more potent than CO2

[at] trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Let's compare this year's CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels

to this year's methane emissions.

As you can see, there's way, way more CO2.

But this methane

will cause as much warming over the next 10 years

as all of that CO2.

My research team in Texas used these newer handheld devices

to detect and quantify methane emissions

from oil and gas facilities.

This is something very important.

Once you're able to know where the leaks are coming from,

the solutions are extremely simple.

And in most cases, they're not expensive at all.

I realized that methane pollution from the oil and gas industry

is so important, that five years ago,

I packed my things and moved my entire family from Texas to Europe

to do something about it.

But does that make any sense?

I moved from Texas,

which is one of the world's major oil and gas producing regions,

to Europe,

who is already pushing to phase out fossil fuels.

What was I thinking, and why was I needed in Europe?

Well let me explain.

The EU has set a very ambitious goal

to become climate neutral by 2050,

and this is part of the European Green Deal.

Climate neutral means more than reducing greenhouse gas emissions

within Europe's borders.

It also means not importing products

that are causing emissions elsewhere.

For example,

what if oil and gas companies were releasing huge amounts of methane

as they drill for the oil and gas that they want to send to Europe?

The good news is that the EU recently passed a landmark law

to avoid that from happening.

And this is how it works.

To gain access to the European oil and gas market,

which today remains one of the largest in the world,

companies all around the world

are going to have to cut their methane emissions,

just as European producers are also required to do.

The details are still being sorted out,

but this access to market is likely to be based on methane intensity.

That is the total amount of methane emissions

as a percentage of production.

For example,

companies could be held to a standard of as little as two-tenths

of one percent of their production.

As with all policies,

success depends on implementation,

and the EU methane policy still needs to be implemented

across the 27 member states.

Now here's something really important.

How are we going to know

that oil and gas companies all around the world

are actually complying with this?

How are we going to be able to check that emissions are really going down,

which of course, at the end of the day, is what we need to see?

It sounds unrealistic that we could walk around the world

with those handheld devices, like the ones my team was using in Texas.

But the good news

is that methane monitoring tools have significantly evolved,

and scientists have developed newer sensors

that work from larger distances.

First from airplanes,

and most recently from space.

MethaneSAT and other satellites are already scanning the globe,

looking at all those different places

where oil and gas production is taking place.

They're already delivering accurate methane data in near-real time,

which is at the heart of making the new EU methane strategy work.

It also explains why the EU helped establish

the International Methane Emissions Observatory,

where I do some of my work.

This observatory is not a telescope.

It's a global data hub

hosted by the UN Environment Programme,

and it's already bringing together data from different satellites

and monitoring tools.

It will soon allow us to measure, monitor,

report and verify methane emissions

from different oil and gas producers in a consistent way.

The world is watching

as this unprecedented public access to data

promises to hold oil and gas producers accountable for their emissions.

Data will make a difference, just as it did in Mexico City.

And we’ve got momentum.

More than 50 companies,

representing 40 percent of global oil and gas production,

have already committed to reduce their own methane emissions

by almost 90 percent by the end of this decade.

And more than 150 countries

have already signed the Global Methane Pledge,

committing to serious methane action.

Of course, all of this commitment and pledges need to become real.

And Europe is just the beginning.

Already, Japan and South Korea have formed a coalition

and are also looking at methane emissions

as a condition to access their own oil and gas import market.

In a sense,

the EU methane policy can serve as a blueprint

as other countries and regions implement

data-driven climate action.

Even beyond methane.

For example,

we could look at the emission footprint from other products

such as cement, steel or wood.

Or we could look at other sources of methane beyond oil and gas,

such as agriculture and landfills.

My day-to-day work as a scientist

revolves around data, technology and policy.

But I'm also a father of two little kids,

which makes my hope for the future deeply, deeply personal.

Picking up the pace at which we phase out fossil fuels

will dramatically shape

and change the world our kids will inherit,

and we need to do this fast.

But in the meantime,

cutting methane emissions is by far the fastest way

to slow warming today,

having an immediate impact for the people,

just as Mexico City did with air pollution,

by using data and policy,

when I was a little kid.

(Spanish) Y es por eso que tengo esperanza.

(English) This is why I’m hopeful,

because we're using data not only to understand the methane problem,

but to actually fix it.

Thank you.

(Applause)