The cool effect

There's a lot of hot air out there when it comes to carbon emissions reductions projects. So it helps to have credible and thorough analysts to help.

Today, I gave to a rather unique methane recovery project, which was vetted by the Cool Effect. This one might be controversial to some, but I had no qualms about it. Here's what the Cool Effect says:

Colorado is home to an abundance of coal. When coal emerges from the ground and creates a seam, methane escapes into our atmosphere. While conventional methods are unable to capture this leakage, the Southern Ute tribe found a genius solution. Though they don’t mine any of the coal on their land, they did team up with scientists to use a system of wells to naturally capture the methane and funnel it to existing gas pipelines.

Methane leakage is a pretty serious problem, estimated to have 86 times the impact of carbon dioxide. The method is a proven success. The coal mines that are being tapped here already exist, so we're not talking about new mines or even creating new demand for coal. And it's creating jobs in Native American communities. I'm comfortable with all of that.

The Cool Effect project, by the way, is in partnership with the Climate Reality Project, by the way, for the launch of An Inconvenient Sequel this week.