For the world to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” by mid-century, scientists say removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere will be essential. Dozens of companies have been created and billions of dollars spent already for carbon dioxide removal.  But another greenhouse gas getting a lot more attention for different reasons is methane. 

Methane is critical for many reasons.  The relative concentration of methane in the atmosphere has grown more than twice as fast as carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Removing methane from the atmosphere could mean reducing future temperatures even faster than just removing carbon dioxide alone because methane is about 81 times more potent in terms of warming the climate in its initial 20 years after its release. Tackling methane emissions could also be one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel producers. And removing Methane pollution from the atmosphere would improve air quality by decreasing the concentration near ground-level ozone  which causes an estimated one million premature deaths every year from respiratory illnesses.

Dr.  Jessica Swanson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah, has focused her research endeavors on the emerging science of atmospheric methane capture.  Her research group – the Swanson Group – has decades of experience modeling enzymes central to bioenergetic transformations and developing kinetic models of complex processes. In this episode Dr. Swanson talks about what it’s like to work in this exciting and quickly growing research and development space.