Global Methane Pledge launched by more than 100 nations

More than 100 countries, including the US, Japan and Canada, have pledged to significantly cut emissions of methane, a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas.

The Global Methane Pledge announced today at COP26 in Glasgow, UK, commits signatories to reducing their overall emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, compared with 2020 levels. The US government also published a detailed blueprint of how it intends to meet the goal.

Key Highlights

• The new initiative emphasises making cuts by tackling methane leaking from oil and gas wells, pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Significant amounts of the gas also come from other sources, such as livestock farming and decaying waste in landfill sites.

• While international climate summits usually focus mostly on carbon dioxide, the dominant driver of the 1.1°C of global warming that has occurred since pre-industrial levels, methane is responsible for about 30 percent of global warming to date, and atmospheric concentrations of the gas have surged since 2007, sparking concern from scientists.

• The voluntary pledge is backed by 15 of the world’s biggest methane emitters including the European Union, Indonesia and Iraq. In total, 105 countries have signed up and John Kerry, the US president’s special envoy on climate, said he expects the number to grow.

• Global methane emissions from the oil and gas industries stood at 70 million tonnes last year, roughly equivalent to all the EU’s annual CO2 emissions.

SOURCE: The Hindu

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