HR752-119

What This Bill Does

This bill amends the Energy Policy Act to establish a methane emissions detection and mitigation research, development, and demonstration program. The Energy Secretary, consulting EPA, Commerce, and other agencies, must support technologies and methods to detect, quantify, and reduce methane emissions; enter cooperative agreements with state or local governments, universities, and for-profit entities; create public best-practice resources for pipelines, compressor stations, wells, storage facilities, incident response, and emission-reduction technologies; research methane quantification through atmospheric conditions, machine learning, spectroscopic databases, isotope detection, and Lidar; identify high-risk infrastructure and coal-mine mitigation methods; and map natural methane seeps. The bill also creates a Methane Emissions Measurement and Mitigation Research Consortium, reports to Congress, and authorizes $36 million for FY2026 rising to $44 million for FY2030. A NIST program would establish national facilities for methane measurement standards and technology intercalibration.

Who Benefits and How

National Laboratories, universities, NIST, methane-detection vendors, state governments, local governments, oil and gas operators, community organizations, environmental researchers, and public-health agencies benefit from cooperative agreements, shared data, test facilities, best practices, and research priorities. Communities near methane infrastructure benefit from better leak detection and mitigation tools.

Who Bears the Burden and How

The Department of Energy must run the RD&D program, support the consortium for up to 10 years, conduct a 5-year review, and report after 18 months and annually. NIST and Commerce must establish national measurement facilities. Oil and gas operators, technology vendors, universities, and community organizations participating in the consortium must share data and coordinate on research goals.

Key Provisions

• Creates a DOE methane emissions detection and mitigation research, development, and demonstration program.
• Authorizes cooperative agreements and public best-practice resources for methane leak detection, infrastructure monitoring, incident response, and emission-reduction technologies.
• Establishes a Methane Emissions Measurement and Mitigation Research Consortium within 1 year for data sharing, research prioritization, and cooperative leak detection and repair strategies.
• Requires reports to congressional science and energy committees after 18 months and annually thereafter.
• Authorizes $36 million for FY2026, $38 million for FY2027, $40 million for FY2028, $42 million for FY2029, and $44 million for FY2030.
• Directs NIST to establish methane measurement facilities for standards, testing, intercalibration, spectroscopic reference data, and rapid performance testing.