Integrating Climate into our Strategy - 25 Removing Uncertainty Surrounding Global Data Reliable data is crucial to industry-wide progress on this issue. Global methane emissions are primarily extrapolated from U.S. data. Additional estimates that are more representative of global production are required to reduce uncertainty where emission calculations are concerned. In 2014, we decided to step up our involvement in this field by becoming one of the first members of the Climate & Clean Air Coalition2 Methane Partnership between governments and industry to improve methane emission measurement and control methods. In addition, in 2016, the OGCI plans to launch a program to improve knowledge of methane emissions in the oil and gas industry beyond the United States and to help develop reliable, low-cost continuous emissions detection technologies for facilities. 2  CAC, promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) C and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a U.S.-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Advantages of Gas Over Coal 2015 CIRAIG Study In 2015, we carried out studies with CIRAIG4 comparing the use of coal and gas for power generation. They found that, over the full life cycle, gas emits around half as much greenhouse gas as European domestic coal. This proportion is unvarying even in the case of coal-fired plants equipped with supercritical steam generators. Despite genuinely improved efficiency, the gap in emissions between gas and coal is not significantly narrowed. If coal-fired and gas-fired plants with the same capacity were combined with a carbon capture and storage solution, the amount of carbon to be captured, transported and stored would still only be half as much for the gas-fired unit. The electricity generated by the gas-fired plant would be more cost-competitive, despite the higher cost of capture due to the more diffuse concentration of emissions. This would remain the case even when carbon storage facilities were located at some distance from the emissions sites or if storage capacity were limited. In addition, on average, gas-fired power plants have a much faster restart time and can build up to full capacity twice as fast as coal-fired plants. Pending the development of electricity storage capacity to meet demand, these advantages make gas-fired plants the ideal solution to partner renewables to offset their variability. 4 International Reference Centre for the Life Cycle of Products Processes and Services, Polytechnique Montréal engineering school in Canada. kgCO2-eq/MJ of electricity Shale gas Coal Conventional Liquefied natural gas natural gas margin of uncertainty Power Plant Comparison Gas Coal Nuclear Minimum restart time (hours) 1-3 hrs. approx. 5 hrs. approx. 10 hrs. Ramp up (%/minute) 8-10%/min. 2-4%/min. 3-5%/min.