Methane emissions are significantly higher than governments have previously claimed, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
Methane emissions from coal, gas, and oil productions are 70% higher than reported by individual governments, according to the agency’s research, and there was a 5% increase in methane emissions from the energy sector compared to last year, according to the IEA’s global methane tracker.
“At today’s elevated natural gas prices, nearly all of the methane emissions from oil and gas operations worldwide could be avoided at no net cost,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a press release. “The International Energy Agency has been a long-standing champion of stronger action to cut methane emissions. A vital part of those efforts is transparency on the size and location of the emissions, which is why the massive underreporting revealed by our Global Methane Tracker is so alarming.”
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Methane has been responsible for almost a third of the temperature increase since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Cutting methane emissions has become a focal point in the fight against global warming.
The European Union and the United States created the Global Methane Pledge in November 2021 at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The pledge is an agreement to decrease methane production from human activities by 30% in the respective countries by 2030. More than 100 countries signed the pledge, but the U.S. was the only country in the top five methane producers to sign the pledge.
“The Global Methane Pledge must become a landmark moment in the world’s efforts to drive down emissions,” Birol said. “Cutting global methane emissions from human activities by 30% by the end of this decade would have the same effect on global warming by 2050 as shifting the entire transport sector to net-zero CO2 emissions.”
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China, Russia, India, and Iran are the other top global polluters.
