Former University of Washington Vice Provost for Research Mary Lidstrom is researching how to reduce methane emissions. To do so, she plans to utilize bacteria that can consume the greenhouse gas, which accounts for 30% of global warming emissions.

For nearly three years, Lidstrom’s lab has been working to address two primary challenges associated with harnessing bacteria for methane mitigation. The first was to find the right methane-eating bacteria, methanotrophs, for the job.

Lidstrom and her team are designing a bioreactor to house the methane-consuming bacteria in a shipping container-like structure. The goal is to deploy the technology by 2030 to slow global warming by 2050. Scale-up projections indicate significant reductions in methane emissions can be achieved by 2050.

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