Rosie Allen  00:03
Welcome to the green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership to the environment. I’m Rosie Allen, a policy advisor at Green Alliance. With COP 29, the UN’s annual International Climate Conference, less than two weeks away, in today’s episode, we’re taking a deep dive into the need for increased leadership on methane, both domestically and on the international stage. We’ll be exploring the potential of a national methane action plan, and hearing from experts who are calling for bold steps to tackle international methane emissions. 

Rosie Allen  00:41
I’m here with Liam Hardy, senior policy analyst at Green Alliance. So Liam, how does methane contribute to climate change? 

Liam Hardy  00:48
Methane is a greenhouse gas. Unfortunately, it’s a lot stronger or better at warming than carbon dioxide, so around 80 times stronger within a 20 year time period, and so methane is responsible already for about a quarter to a third of the current warming that we’re experiencing. But it’s also very short lived, and it breaks down into carbon dioxide after about 12 years in the atmosphere. So that means that our methane emissions right now are affecting global temperatures right now, and kind of only for the next 10 or 12 years or so into the future. So if we can cut methane emissions now, we can slow down global heating and reduce the peak temperature this century. That’s really important, because it could mean avoiding really dangerous climate tipping points like the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, or the die back of the Amazon rainforest, or the thawing of Arctic permafrost, and so cutting methane emissions urgently can act like a sort of emergency break on climate change. It doesn’t mean that we should slow down on action on carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, but it’s an opportunity to have an outsized impact on slowing warming in the short term. 

 Rosie Allen  02:01
I love that image of methane as the emergency break. Can we talk a bit about what parts of everyday life are emitting methane that we might not like to think about 

Liam Hardy  02:10
At the moment, methane comes from three main sources. The first is fossil fuel activities. So methane escapes from coal mines. Thankfully, we don’t have any of those left in the UK, but it also escapes from oil wells. And in fact, methane is the main ingredient of natural gas or fossil gas, so when you’re taking oil and gas out of below the North Sea or onshore, usually some methane is leaking out into the atmosphere when you do that, although some countries like Norway do a really good job of regulating the oil and gas drilling to minimize that leakage. Then finally, methane, in the form of fossil gas, also escapes from our gas pipelines wherever there are those small leaks. Secondly, the waste sector, especially when we put biodegradable waste into landfills, it breaks down over time without the presence of oxygen, and that produces something called landfill gas, which is about 50% carbon dioxide and 50% methane. And there’s also some methane that comes from sewage, and sewage works, and that’s part of the waste sector as well. And then finally, and biggest of all for us in the UK is agriculture, particularly from ruminant animals such as cows and sheep. And basically, methane is produced in their stomach and is burped out, but it also comes from the way we often store their manure in essentially big wet tanks or ponds called slurry stores. And then finally, there are also natural sources of methane too, mostly from places like wetlands. But those three are the main human made sources of methane. 

Rosie Allen  03:41
Wow, that’s a lot of sources across a lot of sectors. What is the government already committed to doing when it comes to reducing methane emissions? 

Liam Hardy  03:50
We’re not starting from scratch here. And in fact, the UK is generally considered to have been doing very well on methane emissions in the past because we phased out a lot of coal mining and coal power, and because we currently kind of capture and use landfill gas, we have reduced our methane emissions reasonably well in the past, although those reductions have tailed off now, and the government, through the net zero strategy and the carbon budget delivery plan, has talked about a few different interventions that it’s already doing or planning to do to reduce methane emissions further, but it does that kind of wrapped up altogether in its overall carbon budget delivery, rather than having a specific goals for methane. But what it’s doing at the moment, one of the things it’s been doing for some time, and will continue to do, is replacement of our existing gas pipelines, particularly in towns and cities, to try and reduce some of those leaks. It’s also agreed with the oil and gas companies in the North Sea that they will stop the kind of routine day to day flaring and venting of methane from 2030 onwards. So not for another six years, but they will, apparently do it in 2030. The government’s also said that it will stop putting biodegradable waste into landfills. That’s something that should be in place. They say by 2028 at the moment, maybe that might come sooner, or it might come later. We’ll see. And then finally, they’ve said that they will be encouraging and pushing dairy farmers to use something called methane suppressing feed additives, which can reduce the amount of methane a cow produces while it consumes those additives as part of their diet. 

Rosie Allen  05:28
It’s great to hear about all of the action in different sectors, but you said that we don’t talk enough directly about methane, so we don’t have that specific methane target, at least not at the UK level. Why do you think we don’t talk enough about methane directly? 

Liam Hardy  05:41
Yeah, it’s a great question, Rosie, and to be honest, I think it’s because it’s a bit complicated. We often simplify the impacts of methane into something called the carbon dioxide equivalent, which is based on its warming impact over 100 year period. And that’s kind of okay, and it makes sense to be able to compare emissions and the actions taken to reduce those emissions. But when you bundle everything together into a carbon dioxide equivalent, you lose that sense of short lived nature of methane, and therefore the sense of urgency as well. I think, to be honest, I also think it doesn’t get talked about enough, because we don’t really want to talk about reducing the number of cows and sheep that we raise and that we consume, is a difficult policy area with delicate politics, so it’s not surprising that governments have typically tried not to dig into it, but I think that’s one reason that it makes it difficult. But then, on the other hand, in the case of oil and gas, the methane that we’re letting go in the form of wasted gas. It’s a valuable resource, so we should be talking about it a lot more, and we should be capturing that wasted resource. 

Rosie Allen  06:49
Well I’m convinced! We’re looking forward to COP next month, where the UK has previously used the opportunity to show International Climate Leadership. If you were the UK’s COP envoy, what would be your lead announcement? 

Liam Hardy  07:02
Oh, that would be great. I would have so many things to say. But of course, I also don’t envy them. It’s a difficult task. I think the number one thing we need to see is a national methane action plan that outlines how the UK is going to lead the way on reducing its methane emissions domestically, and sort of set the scene for the rest of the world to get really serious about methane. So, if every country that signed up to the global methane pledge, and China who’ve promised to act but haven’t actually signed that pledge, were to cut their methane emissions by an average of 42% from 2020 levels, we could reach the goal of the Global Methane Pledge, which is an overall cut of 30% by 2030 that’s because not every country has signed the pledge. We think the UK can get to at least 42% and so we think that should be our domestic target, and that needs, obviously to be backed up by concrete policy proposals. Unfortunately, I don’t think the government is ready to publish a methane action plan at this COP, but we know that other countries will be presenting theirs, and many already have, and so the UK does need to have something to say on methane. I really hope that the government could announce an intention to publish a methane action plan and a date as well, ideally quite early, next year, so that it can show the world that Britain is back at the table of global climate leadership, and that it takes its commitments to those global pledges seriously. 

Rosie Allen  08:30
Beyond those sector specific actions and the National methane action plan. Is there anything overarching that we want to see happen on COP regarding methane? 

Liam Hardy  08:39
Yeah, so the other things we need to look out for, and that I hope, again, I hope the UK can be at the forefront of, is there will be opportunities to raise the bar in terms of global finance for methane mitigation activities. There’ll be lots of countries that want to tackle their methane emissions, but need support, either through kind of technical and expertise, but also ultimately funding and finance. So I hope the UK will offer something new in that regard. The last methane finance sprint that the US held last year, the UK’s contribution to that fund was the smallest of four contributors. So that would be good. And then the other thing that we’re expecting to see more news on this COP is around the NDCs, the nationally determined contributions to the Paris agreement and the Paris goals. So that’s every country saying, “here’s what we think we’re going to do in terms of tackling greenhouse gas emissions and global warming”. And the UK, we understand, will be publishing their new NDC, which runs out to 2035 at this COP in Azerbaijan. So we’d love to see within that NDC a really specific methane goal or methane reduction target that’s really important, because if you just have an overall one like I was saying earlier, where all the greenhouse gasses are bundled up into a single carbon dioxide equivalent, then you can end up with a bit of sort of trading between different greenhouse gasses, where a little bit of methane action might actually allow that government a bit more breathing room on carbon dioxide, for example, when actually what we need to see is strong cuts across the board. And so if you have specific targets or goals for each greenhouse gas, or particularly methane versus the other gases, then you guard against that, really, and it shows that you’ve got more ambition. So it would be great to see methane featured explicitly in the UK’s new NDC. 

Rosie Allen  10:37
What are some international examples of countries that are making good progress on tackling methane emissions? 

Liam Hardy  10:43
For this, I think we should look to the founders of the global methane pledge, to be honest, the US and the EU, who’ve been the leaders and the champions of that pledge since it was launched in 2021. So, the US has been leading on the finance side. Particularly, they had the global methane finance sprint last year, and it also introduced a methane tax on fossil fuel producers. This was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and it was designed to be leveraged, really only on the worst offenders. So basically, if they have emissions over a certain threshold, they will have to pay in the EU, they’ve been working through their so called methane regulation, where they’ll be again incentivizing fossil fuel producers to reduce their methane emissions. Most of the fossil fuel consumption in the EU’s is via imported fossil fuels. So the regulations will start by banning routine flaring and venting and requiring operators to conduct leak detection and repair activities, things we’ve called for in the UK as well. Then there’ll also be a monitoring, reporting and verification program to measure and map out the emissions from different sources and imports will need to do this as well as domestic production. And then there’ll also be an intensity standard, so again, a kind of threshold, or a maximum emissions per unit of oil or gas produced. In a sense, there’s some similarity to the US. But what’s quite powerful about this in the EU is that it will also affect importers. So in that way, it’s going to help reduce emissions from lots of different countries around the world. And finally, it’s worth just mentioning what’s been going on in Denmark. They have the new green tripartite agreement between the government the environmental sector and the farming and food industry, and part of those plans include an intention to actually scale back the number of livestock overall and support farmers to use things like methane suppressants as well. So that’s a big step forward as well, and lots of lessons to be learned for other countries on how that agreement was reached. So lots of positive examples from other places leading the way on this. 

Rosie Allen  12:53
Thanks, Liam, that was a really powerful look at why we need to take methane more seriously and talk about it more directly. Thanks very much.  

Rosie Allen  13:03
After hearing from Liam, I wanted to get an international perspective on why methane is so important to prioritise on the global climate agenda. I spoke to Jenniffer Pedraza, research associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute at York University. Jennifer joined SEI York from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in Colombia, where she was engaged in work on formulating and implementing the air quality and short lived climate pollutants national strategies. This involved working with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. She has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and her specialism was carbon capture, storage and utilization in industry. She has further research experience in the energy transition and decarbonisation emissions control, life cycle analysis and carbon footprinting.  

Rosie Allen  13:49
Thanks so much for joining us, Jenniffer, and it’s great to meet you. Can I start by asking you, we know that the UK has an obligation as part of the global methane pledge to help reducing global methane emissions, but beyond this agreement, why is it important that we act quickly to reduce methane? 

Jenniffer Pedraza  14:03
I would like to emphasise that carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Methane has made the second largest contribution to global temperature increases, but causes that increase in a different way to carbon dioxide. Methane has a warming effect nearly 80 times more than CO2, and once it’s emitted, methane only spends 12-15, years in the atmosphere before it’s removed. And this is quite important, because it means that reducing methane emissions could address a reduction in warming quickly compared to carbon dioxide emissions, and as we are currently closely approaching the global temperature limits, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, the ability of increased methane mitigation will help us to achieve relatively quickly the temperature decrease, and as for the climate change conversation, this has become an important component of climate change mitigation strategies. So that is why, for example, the global methane pledge aims to reduce methane emissions by nearly 30% by 2030 and in the last COP the COP 28 the global Decision Group also called for a substantial reduction of  non CO two pollutant emissions that, of course, include methane, and also is addressing this methane mitigation relevance, we have an important opportunity window that the next NDCs that are also called NDCs 3.0 including methane in the next NDC will track the progress regarding the global methane pledge and addressing climate change and mobilizing necessary climate finance. 

Rosie Allen  15:52
Liam used the metaphor that methane is like the handbrake that you can put on to stop climate change. It’s one of those quick emergency measures that you need to pull when things are getting serious. You have expertise in how Latin American countries are working to tackle methane emissions. Would you mind saying, how fast is action on methane in this part of the world? 

Jenniffer Pedraza  16:11
Starting in 2023 the Climate and Clean Air Coalition launched a program to support a methane mitigation that is called Methane Road Map Action Program. And under this program, around 9-10 countries in Latin America are currently developing national methane road maps that basically we outlined the three key points. First is understanding what contribution a country will make to achieve the collective global methane plate target. Second, prioritise the emitting sectors, considering that each country will have different emissions and mitigation potential, for example, in agriculture, energy and waste, and all depends on their industrial activities and their current economic development. And three, highlighting the actions to reduce those emissions, most of the Latino American countries are in a planning stage and to accelerate action on methane through these road maps it’s required that action will be implemented and funding tracked and reimbursed. For example, Dominican Republic is also in the process of developing this long term strategies, and this provides a big opportunity to establish long term methane emissions reduction targets, for example, to 2050 and also this opportunity to demonstrate that methane emissions reduction won’t end when the Global methane pledge time frames expires in 2030 so we will keep assured that actions will continue in the future, in long term, strategies to achieve Net Zero targets, for example. Another example in the region is that in Colombia, in 2022 the Ministry of Energy has developed regulatory instruments to establish requirements to prevent and control fugitive emissions in oil and gas production. And same year, Brazil launched its national zero methane program, that which aims, of course, reduce methane through promoting carbon market for methane support a key sector, such agricultural livestock, as well as a reducing deforestation. And also small countries have done some contributions, like Costa Rica and Panama, they have recently published their methane road maps, who aim to increase a livestock efficiency, efficiency to reduce methane emissions. 

Rosie Allen  18:37
I know that we’re expecting next year’s COP to have a real focus on agricultural methane especially. But this year, we’re hearing there’s going to be some focus on waste methane emissions. And so it will be really interesting to see the kind of announcements on progress in this area, too. Would you mind giving a couple of examples of kind of waste methane emission reductions that are happening in Latin America at the moment? 

Jenniffer Pedraza  18:59
Yeah, for example, in Latin America, achievable action to  increase the quantity of the waste that are properly collected and management in landfills, also avoiding open burning, and increasing the percentage of organic waste that is derivate to composting, for example, also in Dominican Republic, they are currently developing a project to support schools to reduce food losses and food waste, increasing the knowledge in the pupils. Why is important avoid these food losses, and in this way, as less food is waste, less a methane emissions we will have in the landfills. 

Rosie Allen  19:47
That’s something that we’d like to see more work on in the UK as well. This kind of avoiding biodegradable waste going to landfill as much as possible. That’s really interesting to hear more about. Beyond this good progress, what gaps remain in methane action that we’re seeing in Latin America? 

Jenniffer Pedraza  20:02
As I mentioned, there are multiple actions that a actually Latin American countries have identified, and some of them are being included within the methane road maps, but also has been included into the previous climate change planning or strategies mostly focus on agriculture, waste management and fugitive emissions. However, the evaluation of these actions are currently limited. One of the reason of this limitation is that measures included in these plans are included without quantitative targets or timelines for their achievements. They usually are included within the CO2 target reduction and it’s not possible to evaluate what is not measurable, and it’s important to identify a how much the country contributes individually per pollutant, and how much the actions that have been included will contribute to reduce those emissions. So it’s not possible to quantify how much methane could be avoided with their implementation without including these quantitative targets. Another limitation of the inclusion is that as that action has been included in the climate change national plans or national strategies, they are not fully included or fully reflected within the sectoral strategies or sectoral plannings at sub national level. And this is important because it’s where the action finally is implemented. So it’s important to move forward in this vertical integration through the sectorial and sub national entities. And I will say that this next updated NDC will provide a new climate change mitigation target beyond 2030 and will present this opportunity to clarify the specific level of emission reduction ambition within a specific charges and with a specific sectorial level and even subnational level. And to fill this gap is required more quantitative assessment and a full and comprehensive mitigation assessment. So it’s important that in this NDC developing process, the countries will carry out a high level of disaggregation of the missions to identify those sectors that have the potential to achieve large scale reductions. 

Rosie Allen  22:28
We’re interested in a similar level of responsibility from the UK, and we’re really pushing for specific meeting target to be included in this round of NDCs. So that’s really great to hear that there’s a similar level of responsibility being asked for, and even the sub regional targets, which is even further ambition. I wanted to dwell, I know it’s not nice to think about, how serious are the consequences of not acting to reduce methane? 

 Jenniffer Pedraza  22:57
I would like to add that methane doesn’t just contribute to climate change, also indirectly contribute to air pollution. And air pollution is a problem that hasn’t been completed solved mainly on an urban and city scale. Methane is, for example, one of the precursors to a growing level of ozone. And ozone is an air pollutant. Also is a hard to manage pollutant. It is associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and also causes losses in a crop productivity. And as ozone is not directly emitted into the most into the atmosphere is a form through the different chemical reactions in the atmosphere from the other gasses that we emit, including methane, and increasing the action to reduce methane also is possible to reduce the production of a grown  level of ozone. So I will say that in addition to the climate benefits of taking action on methane mitigation, this mitigation could deliver significant benefits for humans, ecosystem, health, food security and obviously global economy. For example, if we achieve the goal stated in the global meeting pledge, it would avoid 0.3 Celsius, use of global temperature increases, and at the same time, avoiding a quarter of million premature deaths and around 26 million tons of crop losses per year only from a reduced ground-level of ozone production. 

Rosie Allen  24:29
Wow, that’s a really heavy hitting statistic. And I think that’s a really wonderful framing to end on – this idea that while the impact of not acting rapidly on methane can be disastrous, what it also offers us is this opportunity of something that we can act quickly on and will have quick impacts, not only to the climate, the Global South, our international food production, but also our health. That’s really powerful. Thank you so much, Jennifer for joining us. 

Rosie Allen  25:01
Thank you for listening to this Green Alliance podcast. Keep checking in as we’ll continue to bring you specialist interviews and highlights from our events here on your podcast feed. You can subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and you can follow us at Green Alliance UK on x and Green Alliance on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. We encourage you to use the hashtag, #greenalliancepodcast to join in on this conversation and share thoughts, questions and ideas. See you next time.