Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, trapping heat 80 times more effectively over a 20-year period.
The amount of methane in the atmosphere is two and a half times pre-industrial levels and increasing steadily. There is little hope of keeping below the 1.5C target unless methane emissions are drastically reduced in this decade.
Methane comes from many places, with less than half from natural sources such as wetlands and the rest from human activities: mainly agriculture, oil and gas production and landfill sites.
The easiest emissions to control are from the fossil fuel sector, which produces about a quarter of methane or natural gas emissions. Leaks from old oilwells or existing pipelines in the US and Russia are so large they can be detected from space.
The UK plans to bring emissions from the wasteful flaring and venting of methane during oil production to zero by 2030. After all with the higher cost of gas since the start of the Ukraine war in February, it makes sense to capture and sell every therm.
But how all this mitigation will work alongside the UK government’s plan to rapidly expand the oil and gas sectors – including introducing fracking – has not yet been disclosed.
