Integrated modeling of methane source, sinks, and emissions control costs. Final report

The overall objective of this three-year collaborative project between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was to develop a framework which would incorporate computationally efficient representations of the latest knowledge concerning science, scenarios, and technical change, to allow for the effective and efficient analysis of possible future strategies to control methane. As part of this research project, we developed a model that takes into account more explicit treatment of the mechanisms controlling each important methane regional source and sink to study non-linear effects involved in methane chemistry in the atmosphere. On the policy front, we developed the relationship between economics and climatic impacts of methane emission reductions. On the application front, we applied the newly developed advanced methane modeling capabilities to study the effects of a wide range of possible scenarios of future methane emissions on climate and to examined the costs associated with achieving specific greenhouse gas reduction targets for a range of emission pathways. The significant findings from the DOE supported study are outlined