Biological Methane Removal Workshop

In November 2024, Spark Climate Solutions and Homeworld Collective co-hosted a workshop focused on identifying challenges in the field of biological methane removal. We convened about 40 researchers from 7 countries, across both academia and industry, to share the state of the art in biological methane removal research and dive deeper into the key challenges that the field faces.

Why did we organize this workshop?‍

Methanotrophs, methane-oxidizing microbes, contribute to about 5% of the global methane sink. Researchers around the world are beginning to explore increasing that sink through ecosystem uptake enhancement (EUE) or leveraging methanotrophs in bioreactors. Biological methane removal lies at the intersection of Spark’s interest in addressing super-pollutants like methane, and Homeworld’s interest in biological climate solutions. 

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‍What did we learn?

Participants divided into 3 groups – bioreactors, soils, and plants/trees – to surface potential challenges that constrain progress towards developing viable, scalable, and safe methane removal approaches. After prioritizing a few of the most important of these challenges, they broke off into smaller working groups to draft problem statements.

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Problem statements were developed by the Homeworld team to support clear articulation of problems for research communities. They consist of a “Motivating Factor”, a “Specific Bottleneck”, and “Actionable Goals”, and are designed to concisely capture context and priorities for research. Problem statement drafts developed during the two day workshop were refined into finalized problem statements by the Homeworld team in collaboration with the researchers who authored the draft.

• Measure environmental growth rates of atmospheric methane oxidizing bacteria
• Estimate atmospheric methane removal potential of engineered plants expressing MMO
• Lab validation and characterization of atmospheric methane uptake by microbes in the phyllosphere
• Measure the heritability of methane flux in plantation trees and crops
• Standardize protocols and instrumentation for measuring methane flux in trees
• Mechanistic study of tree methane flux hotspots globally
• Survey tree methane flux across biomes globally
• Develop a sensitive and high-throughput assay for methane oxidation
• Design a de novo methane monooxygenase
• Optical biosensors and lipidomics for biophysical characterization of pMMO function

These problem statements could serve as seeds for proposals to Homeworld’s early 2025 call for proposals, Garden Grants: Biotech in Greenhouse Gas Removal. Homeworld received 180 proposals, and funded 11 of them, one supported by Spark.

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Sam Abernethy and Homeworld’s Dan Goodwin and Paul Reginato discussed the challenges of biological atmospheric methane removal on Homeworld’s The Climate Biotech Podcast, and Paige Brocidiacono interviewed Paul Reginato about the workshop and lessons learned on Spark’s Methane Removal Webinar Series.

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Paul Reginato also authored a perspective on Biotechnology in direct air capture, enhanced weathering, and methane removal: emerging opportunities and gaps, published February 2, 2025 in Frontiers in Climate.

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How can I learn more about methane removal?

To learn more about ongoing research, explore Homeworld’s grantees and Spark’s grantees. To stay up to date on future events, sign up for Spark’s methane removal newsletter.

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