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A Summons to the Challenges Ahead!
The Fugitive Emissions Summit Americas took place at the LyondellBasell Centre for Chemical, Petrochemical, Energy & Technology at San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas on April 2 nd-3 rd, 2025. Event Chairman Dave Anderson of Score, a long-time member of several event steering committees and an industry expert, delivered a keynote presentation to discuss the future of the emissions industry and how the current landscape is being impacted.
By Dave Anderson- Score
I would like to use my opening address here to focus our attention on some key topics that are likely to be golden threads running through all our sessions. Framing our initial thoughts around key topics will ensure that we engage in relevant and lively discussions and debates, to further the goals and objectives we have set ourselves at individual, company and market levels.
Motivation
Ask yourself: Why are you here? Why did you personally invest your time to come to the Fugitive Emissions Summit? What are your personal goals and objectives for the next two days? Did you even set any? We need excited, enthusiastic, self-starters to lead others and take them on an emissions elimination journey.
Almost every single person in this room is an emissions champion to some degree, prepared to challenge anything, anyone and everyone that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. The planet and your family members, current and future, need you to do your best now, because the evidence of greenhouse gas emissions being directly connected to extreme weather events, poor human health, and other measurable impacts and effects are growing increasingly compelling with each day that passes!
In my travels this year I have seen snow in Houston, and we all watched in horror as high temperatures and strong winds fanned devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. These are just two things that we have seen in the last few months that amplify how our weather events are changing. According to statistics from the Envi- ronmental Defence Fund, 2-3 % of all gas produced leaks directly into the atmosphere and this is contributing to global temperature increases.
As a result of air temperature increases, a 2.5 km wide perimeter of the Langjokull Glacier in Iceland has melted away between 1980 and 2020. A further 300m has been lost from 2020 to 2024 – with 30 metres of that being lost during the summer months alone. At the rates of shrinkage and melting recorded to date, the estimation is that this glacier will be 1 / 3 of it is current size by as early as 2065 and it will be completely gone at some point within the following 100 years. We have to believe that we are capable of slowing or even stopping this.
Motivation to do this is both internally and externally driven. The internal drivers are prevalent where we focus
JUNE 2025 • FUGITIVE EMISSIONS JOURNAL 31