Derek Ridgley, Nederland. Debates about climate change focus on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, and on reaching net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. But there is another culprit contributing to climate change: methane. Reducing methane emissions may be easier than eliminating some carbon dependencies, and doing so would have a much greater near-term impact on global warming. 

Carbon dioxide is far more abundant in the Earth’s atmosphere and can linger for hundreds of years, while methane typically breaks down after about a decade. But in the short term, methane is far more effective at trapping heat, roughly 80 times more potent than CO2. A new study published in Environmental Research Letters calculated that a full-scale push using existing technologies could cut methane emissions in half by 2030. Among the benefits of moving quickly to cut methane emissions: it could slow the warming rate prior to 2050 by as much as 30 percent. A methane-specific approach, the authors found, has the potential to prevent nearly a half-degree Fahrenheit of warming by mid-century.

Methane is a chemical compound with the atomic formula CH4, and it is the primary constituent of the natural gas we use to produce electricity and heat buildings.  The Earth’s atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750. Concentrations of methane in the atmosphere are rising quickly. In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that levels of methane showed a “significant jump” in 2020, marking “the largest annual increase recorded since systematic measurements began in 1983.”

A crash course to cut methane emissions would take several different forms. It would include regulating the “flaring” of natural gas. Flaring is the practice of burning natural gas at drilling well sites when capturing or transporting it is viewed as uneconomic. It would also include clamping down on leaks in gas transmission pipelines and distribution systems, cleaning up abandoned coal mines and requiring the capture of emissions from landfills. The technologies required for these approaches already exist; the primary resistance to their adoption is economic. In the near future the Senate is expected to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn rules completed in the waning days of an outgoing administration, to scrap Trump-era efforts to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to restrict methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

Agriculture also plays a large role in methane emissions. Methane-centric emissions management would mandate the use of feed supplements for cattle designed to reduce digestive methane, and promote accelerated consumer adoption of plant-based meat alternatives. A lactating dairy cow produces about 400 grams of methane each day, and those agricultural emissions add up. In one year, the amount of methane a dairy cow produces is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from a mid-sized car driven 20,000 kilometers. If they were a country, cows would rank as the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, ahead of Brazil, Japan, and Germany. A variety of methane-damping feed supplements are already involved in scientific trials in Canada and the U.S., though the E.U. and New Zealand have already voiced objections to using GMO- derived feed innovations. 

“If we really scale up methane reductions, we could have tangible benefits during our lifetime,” said Ilissa Ocko, senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and a lead author of the study published in Environmental Research Letters. “If you were to take these actions and cut as much methane as you could, you would see a clear benefit in the amount of warming we avoid.”

In vowing to cut U.S. emissions by 50 percent by the end of the decade, the Biden administration singled out methane as a key part of their strategy. “The United States will update standards and invest in plugging leaks from wells and mines and across the natural gas distribution infrastructure,” the government said in a submission to the United Nations. “In addition, it will offer programs and incentives to improve agricultural productivity through practices and technologies that also reduce agricultural methane and nitrous oxide emissions, such as improved manure management and improved cropland nutrient management.” 

Despite the promise of significant near-term benefits, methane mitigation initiatives still face plenty of political hurdles. There are over 2.1 million U.S. jobs in the oil, natural gas and petroleum derived chemicals industries, and another 767 thousand jobs tied to cattle and beef production. Democrats continue to pitch emissions reduction initiatives as job creating in an effort to mitigate economic resistance. In his opening remarks for the two-day virtual climate summit in April, President Biden said “I see workers capping hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be cleaned up, and abandoned coal mines that need to be reclaimed, putting a stop to the methane leaks and protecting the health of our communities.” 

(Originally published in the May 13, 2021, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)