Methane is an incredibly harmful greenhouse gas, trapping 30 times the heat of carbon dioxide. We hear a lot about methane from cows, but a large percentage of methane emissions come from wastewater treatment plants and landfills. Capturing that methane and converting it into a gas diverts the methane from the environment and provides usable energy. That’s a good thing, and where methane exists (waste management, industry, and agriculture), we should encourage the use of anaerobic digesters and other technologies to convert the gas where good alternative energy sources don’t exist.

In fact, California’s climate goals include capturing 40 percent of methane by 2030, converting it to biogas.

However, renewable natural gas is not a panacea. It’s greenest if it’s used onsite, powering the farm or utility that produces it. When it’s piped away, it encounters the same leakage problems that plague fracked gas. And even if all existing methane were converted to biogas, there’s not enough to fill the niche that fracked gas currently serves. Gas infrastructure is also hazardous, and it requires major safety upgrades and expensive investments in leak mitigation.

We should capture as much methane as we can, but meanwhile, we should be working to eliminate methane emissions at landfills, reduce the emissions at dairy farms, and disassemble the natural gas infrastructure as we transition to truly renewable, sustainable energy sources.