On September 17, 2021, President Joe Biden of the US and the President of the European Commission, Von der Leyen, announced a joint agreement titled the ‘Global Methane Pledge’ at the Major Economies Forum (MEF) meet. The pledge is essentially an agreement to reduce global methane emissions by up to 30 per cent from 2020 levels by the year 2030.
The agreement was launched on November 2, 2021, during the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
More than 100 countries are a part of this pledge, representing about 50 per cent of global anthropogenic methane emissions and over two-thirds of the global GDP.
The main objective is to prevent about eight gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from reaching the atmosphere annually by 2030.
Highlights
Highlights of the pledge are as follows:
- Methane accounts for about 17 per cent of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, globally, through human activities. These include the energy, agriculture, and the waste sectors. Further, the energy sector holds the greatest potential for mitigating these emissions by 2030.
- Significant reductions in methane emissions must be achieved globally by the year 2030 in order to ensure that the global community meets the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- Reducing the methane emissions could significantly minimise the rate of global warming due to its short atmospheric lifetime. The readily available, cost-effective methane emission measures have the potential to avoid over 0.2 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050. Further, they also provide essential co-benefits that include improvements in public health and agricultural productivity.
- While there are several international initiatives that address the methane emissions, a high-level political engagement is required in order to catalyse global methane action.
- Improvements are required in the methane emissions data assessed and validated in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Paris Agreement standards, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in terms of accuracy, completeness, comparability, transparency, and consistency.
- In order to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach, methane emission reductions must complement and supplement, and not replace, global action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This includes combustion of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal), industrial processes, and the lands sector.
- The mitigation potential for methane emissions, among various sectors, varies between different countries and regions. Further, most of the available mitigation measures have low or negative costs. The International Energy Agency (IEA) had stated that over 75 per cent of the methane emissions could be controlled with the current available technology. Additionally, 40 per cent of this could be achieved at no additional costs.
The participants of the pledge should adhere to—
- work together in order to collectively bring down the global anthropogenic (human source) methane emissions among all the sectors by at least 30 per cent below 2020 levels by 2030.
- take comprehensive domestic measures to achieve the goal. Also, they should work on developing standards in order to achieve all feasible reductions in the energy and waste sectors. They should also work towards removal of agricultural emissions through technology innovation, incentives, and partnerships with farmers.
- promote the usage of the top tier IPCC good practice inventory methodologies, consistent with IPCC guidance, along with emphasis on high emission sources, in order to control methane emissions.
- The participants need to work individually and cooperatively, and show consistency in enhancing the accuracy, transparency, consistency, comparability, and completeness of national GHG inventory reporting under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement. Additionally, greater level of transparency needs to be provided in important sectors.
- provide the latest, transparent, and publicly available information on the policies and commitments related to this pledge.
- support existing international methane emission reduction initiatives, including those of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the Global Methane Initiative, and the relevant work of the United Nations Environment Programme, including the International Methane Emissions Observatory, in order to advance further in their technical and policy work. This would be essential in strengthening their domestic actions.
- encourage and promote any further parallel specific domestic actions by the other participants and commitments taken by the private sector, development banks, financial institutions, and philanthropy to support implementation of the pledge and the reduction of the methane emissions worldwide.
- invite and encourage the other States to join this pledge.
The progress on the pledge would be reviewed by the participants annually until 2030 by convening ministerial level meetings.
Methane Emissions
Methane is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, after carbon dioxide, and, contributes significantly to global warming. It accounts for about 25 per cent of the global warming effects which is being experienced on a global scale, according to the UN.
Methane emissions arise from leakages from natural gas systems and leakage from natural gas systems, as well as by natural sources such as wetlands.
The anthropogenic sources (industries, agriculture and livestock rearing, and oil and gas sectors that contribute to some of the largest sources of emissions) may amount to about 60 per cent of the global methane emissions.
According to the IEA, methane has an atmospheric lifetime of about 12 years, which is much shorter than the centuries in the case of carbon dioxide (but methane has a global warming potential that is 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide). Due to this, it is much more efficient at trapping radiation. Per unit of mass, the impact on climate change due to methane, in a span of 20 years, would be about 86 times greater than that of carbon dioxide; over a 100-year period, it is 28 times greater.
In India, the Ministry of Coal, in 2019, requested coal miner Coal India Limited (CIL) to produce about two MMSCB (million metric standard cubic metres) per day of coalbed methane (CBM) gas in the following two or three years.
CBM is extracted from unconventional gas reservoirs. The gas is extracted directly from the rock, that is, the source of the gas—shale in case of shale gas and coal in case of CBM. Methane, which is trapped underground within the coal, gets released once there is a pressure drop during extraction of coal by drilling into the coal seam and removal of the ground water.
Controlling the Emissions
Studies have shown that controlling the methane emissions could minimise global warming, increase crop yields, and prevent premature deaths. Rapidly reducing methane emissions is complementary to action on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It is seen as the single most effective strategy to reduce global warming in the near term and keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.
According to the IPCC report, methane accounts for about half of the 1.0 degrees Celsius net rise in global average temperature since the pre-industrial era.
The UN has stated that a 2.3 per cent average rate of methane leak is adversely affecting the climate advantage that gas has over coal.
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