US president Joe Biden has announced new oil and gas industry regulations, which his administration claims will plunge emissions of the greenhouse gas methane 87% below 2005 levels. This is part of an update to the Global Methane Pledge, a US-EU initiative announced at COP26, last year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow.
Trumpeted as essential to meeting the 2015 Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise, the pledge aims to slow rising methane concentrations in the atmosphere. But in the 12 months since the global pledge was announced, war in Ukraine and fraying international relations have made achieving this goal more uncertain.
