Official: Gas leaks around 1/3 of Denmark's CO2 emissions

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The Nord Stream pipeline leaks pumping huge volumes of natural gas into the Baltic Sea could discharge the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday.

Kristoffer Böttzauw, head of the Danish Energy Agency, said emissions from the three leaks on the underwater Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines correspond to approximately 32% of annual Danish carbon dioxide emissions. Danish emissions in 2020 were approximately 45 million tonnes of CO2.

Sabotage is suspected to have caused the leaks, and seismologists said Tuesday that explosions rattled the Baltic Sea before they were discovered. The incidents came as the EU struggles to keep a lid on soaring gas and electricity prices.

The visuals of the methane bubbling at the ocean surface was an indication of “a strong upward flow,” according to Paul Balcombe, a member of the engineering faculty at the department of chemical engineering at Imperial College London.

The loss of pressure in the pipe likely meant a large amount of gas was already lost, he said. The impacts of the gas leak are still coming into focus, Balcombe said, but are likely to be significant.

“It would have a very large environmental and climate impact indeed, even if it released a fraction of this.”

Methane is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.

Böttzauw, told a press conference that the agency expects the gas to be out of the pipes, that run from Russia to Germany, by Sunday.

Böttzauw told a press conference that his agency expects the gas to be out of the...