Today I Learned: Fugitive Emissions
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) defines fugitive emissions as emissions that are not produced intentionally by a stack or vent, and stipulates that they may include leaks from industrial plants and pipelines [IPCC, 2006]. Potential sources of fugitive emissions maybe be caused by production, processing, transmission, storage, and use of fuels and include combustion emissions only if they do not meet production needs (e.g. natural gas flaring at gas and oil production facilities). The exact definition of fugitive emissions may vary from one sector to another. In practice, they generally include accidental emissions (pipeline breakage, coal seam fire, etc.), leaks and diffuse escapes (defective valves or seals, migration of gas to the surface near wells or mines, emissions from abandoned wells, etc.) and unintentional but non-productive discharges (mine ventilation, flaring, degassing, etc.). Many phenomena are therefore involved in a category that is primarily nega
