Developing an Implementation Plan for ‘You Collect We Buy’

The document identifies operational, financial, and market barriers to gas-capture projects and proposes a framework for the EU's 'You Collect We Buy' initiative to overcome them through better data, risk-sharing financing, and a credible certification system.

• An estimated 267 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas could be recovered globally by reducing methane emissions and non-emergency flaring, representing over 70% of the EU's 2023 annual gas consumption and a potential value of $48 billion.
• Pre-project development is hindered by high costs for technical and economic feasibility studies, which can reach $500,000 USD, and a lack of internal prioritization by operators who may view these projects as having unattractive economic returns.
• Operational barriers to flaring reduction include poor data quality, as flares are often unmetered or unreported, and a tendency for facility managers to prioritize production targets and safety over emissions reduction.
• In Nigeria, the divestment of International Oil Companies (IOCs) to state-owned industry has complicated gas-capture efforts by increasing the number of stakeholders that must be aligned to advance projects.
• Financial viability is often undermined by tax regimes that can decrease a project's internal rate of return by 5% to 8%, and a lack of enforcement of flaring penalties, which in Nigeria is estimated to result in under-collected penalties of several hundred million USD per year.
• Multilateral development banks (MDBs) have become more restrictive in financing the upstream oil and gas sector due to concerns over 'fossil-fuel lock-in' and alignment with the 1.5 degree Celsius carbon budget.
• Fugitive emissions and venting projects generally require lower CAPEX than flare capture but are harder to finance due to their small individual scale; for example, one LDAR project in Azerbaijan had CAPEX under $200,000 USD but recovered only 0.005 BCM of gas.

APA

Locke, B., Kislitsyna, J., & Turitto, J. (2024). Developing an Implementation Plan for ‘You Collect We Buy’. Clean Air Task Force. https://www.catf.us/resource/developing-implementation-plan-you-collect-we-buy/

Chicago

Locke, Brandon, Julia Kislitsyna, and James Turitto. Developing an Implementation Plan for ‘You Collect We Buy’. Clean Air Task Force, 2024. https://www.catf.us/resource/developing-implementation-plan-you-collect-we-buy/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Locke |first1=Brandon |last2=Kislitsyna |first2=Julia |last3=Turitto |first3=James |title=Developing an Implementation Plan for ‘You Collect We Buy’ |publisher=Clean Air Task Force |date=15 October 2024 |url=https://www.catf.us/resource/developing-implementation-plan-you-collect-we-buy/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{locke2024developing, author = {Locke, Brandon and Kislitsyna, Julia and Turitto, James}, title = {{Developing an Implementation Plan for ‘You Collect We Buy’}}, institution = {Clean Air Task Force}, year = {2024}, month = oct, url = {https://www.catf.us/resource/developing-implementation-plan-you-collect-we-buy/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }