Methane reduction hasn’t received as much focus as carbon emissions reduction; but cutting methane emissions is also essential to meeting climate targets. Aircraft and satellite instruments have detected rising methane from oil and gas facilities, permafrost melting, wastewater disposal facilities and animal agriculture operations – among others.
At least some sources of methane emission can be addressed through practical solutions: feed additives for cattle, new rice-farming techniques and improved sewage-treatment processes can all help reduce methane production.
Reducing Emissions from Industrial Processes
While much attention has been focused on carbon emissions reductions, cutting methane emissions from industrial processes will also help meet climate goals. According to a UN-backed report, eliminating human-caused methane emissions from oil and gas operations, landfills, rice farms, water treatment facilities, coal mines and other sources could prevent up to 0.3degC warming within 10 years – this represents an impressive share of cuts required by Paris Agreement goals of keeping global temperature increases below 1.5degC while improving public health by preventing premature deaths or hospital admissions.
At relatively low costs, reductions can be accomplished using existing technologies and techniques – for instance feed additives designed to limit methane production from livestock, new rice farming techniques, advanced oil and gas leak detection technology, or flooding abandoned coal mines can all help significantly decrease methane emissions.
Fossil fuels account for 35% of global methane emissions and this report suggests that much can be achieved at no or minimal cost through various measures such as improving detection and repair of oil and gas leaks; capturing methane at natural gas processing plants, coal mining sites and landfills; replacing coal power stations with methane power; or using methane instead to replace coal power stations in power stations. Waste sector emissions such as landfilling, biomass burning and land-use changes as well as sewerage systems also can be reduced effectively with minimal costs involved.
The report also offers opportunities to increase efficiency across heavy industry sectors by replacing outdated equipment, increasing material efficiency (reducing and recycling waste during production, as well as lengthening product lifespans), and transitioning to renewable energy sources. The authors assert that increasing monitoring, reporting and verification are also vital steps. This could require making concerted efforts to shift from estimates of methane emissions towards observed measurements through satellite, drone, and sensor technologies that have become available at lower costs. Furthermore, the report calls for improved data to support efforts at creating global tradable goods markets with values attached that place value on carbon intensity along a fully traceable supply chain.
Reducing Emissions from Agriculture
Agriculture emissions, particularly from ruminant livestock and rice farming, make up the bulk of anthropogenic methane emissions. These can be mitigated through improved farm management as well as new technologies that mitigate these emissions – for instance feed additives for cows, carbon sequestration in soils and techniques to limit nitrogen fertilizer losses.
The most effective ways of reducing emissions from agriculture include decreasing fertiliser use, cutting methane leaks from manure and using straw more extensively for crop rotations, as well as capturing methane at landfill sites. These measures should also be supplemented by better land management that keeps stored carbon from returning back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
While much attention has been focused on carbon dioxide emission reductions, methane emission cuts may be even more crucial for meeting global temperature targets and stabilizing our climate system. Methane has far stronger short-term warming properties than carbon dioxide and has contributed more quickly to rising tropospheric temperatures than CO2.
Reducing emissions from landfills and open dumps where organic material produces methane through anaerobic breakdown can be done through methane markets, which allow authorities to capture this gas as renewable natural gas. A large source of methane captured through methane markets comes from rice straw rotting in fields and emitting methane; biocharizing this rice straw before returning it can prevent its release as well as promote oxidisation processes that help further decrease emissions.
Methane emission-reduction technologies include digesters, which convert methane gas into energy for cooking and heating on farms that lack electricity or grid connections. Digesters come in high-tech forms used in developed nations while simpler household versions are commonly seen throughout Asia. Unfortunately, their adoption can be limited by high upfront costs, low efficiency rates, or leakage rates – however to overcome these hurdles governments should set targets for new facilities’ efficiency before gradually expanding coverage to smaller farms.
Better management of manure can significantly lower emissions of methane, ammonia and nitrous oxide. Storing heaps on an impermeable base with sheeting covering them as well as not overapplying nitrogen fertiliser all contribute to reductions. Planting cover crops helps retain nutrients in the soil without runoff into waterways.
Reducing Emissions from Transport
Occupants who wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have often focused on CO2, but methane emissions also deserve attention. With its short lifetime and potential climate benefits if quickly eliminated, methane should also be addressed quickly by devising and implementing cost-effective techniques for reducing methane emissions or, where this cannot be accomplished entirely, catalytic oxidation (removal from air with elevated levels of methane).
Although oil and gas activities account for most global methane emissions, there is plenty of opportunity to cut them with relatively minimal costs. One key reason is that unlike carbon dioxide emissions, methane has commercial value; extra methane captured can often be sold back into the natural gas industry at prices well below their costs of capture and processing.
Oil and gas sites tend to be better at mitigating methane emissions than coal and bioenergy facilities, particularly deliberate flaring and venting operations. Tyner and Johnson (2018) used Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate that reducing methane emissions by 45 percent through flaring and venting would cost between CAN $2.5 and CAN $3 per ton of greenhouse warming (i.e. a profit). Furthermore, providing small government tax incentives for mitigation as well as substantial penalties against leakage would likely assist further in mitigating these emissions.
Waste emissions also play a significant role. Landfills and open dumps contain organic material which produces methane as it decomposes, contributing significantly to emissions. But much of these emissions can be reduced using existing technology for waste capture and processing to renewable natural gas or soil fertilizer production or by creating biogas markets.
Methane emission reduction efforts may lag behind those focused on CO2, but it remains essential that they increase in order to limit global warming to within the 1.5degC target. Most nations have committed to cutting their net national greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 – and many include plans to cut methane alongside CO2. Over the coming years we will learn if such mitigation measures will suffice or require us to extend transition away from fossil fuels further.
Reducing Emissions from Waste
Waste from homes, businesses and institutions contributes almost one third of human-caused methane emissions. While in developed nations with well-managed landfills such as Canada these emissions may be mitigated through landfill gas capture and oxidation processes, tropical and subtropical regions with poorer regulations often resort to open burning of solid waste in daily practice as a major source of methane emissions as well as ground level ozone production, contributing significantly to respiratory ailments as well as premature deaths.
Technology and engineering advancements have enabled us to reduce emissions without incurring significant costs to either economy or environment. To do this, incentives and policies that encourage best practices in waste management — with composting or anaerobic digestion replacing landfilling — as well as cutting waste production directly must be in place in order to create long-term sustainability. It is also vitally important that people produce less food waste, paper trash or organic matter altogether in the first place.
Due to climate change’s imminence, all sectors must quickly reduce emissions from methane-producing activities – particularly waste disposal companies who have the power to make an important contribution toward meeting Global Methane Pledge and Paris Agreement targets. Waste industry participants play an essential part in meeting this obligation.
Methane emissions reduction hinges upon increasing monitoring, reporting and verification activities. To do this effectively requires upgrading data collection methods from estimates to actual observed measurements – such as new satellite, drone and sensor technologies. Furthermore, it must differentiate between CO2 and methane observations so they are recorded separately as data sets.
Methane mitigation technologies must also expand, from traditional on-site techniques to those that can be deployed at scale with economic benefits derived from business models that offer increased availability. Such innovations include technologies for methane capture from ambient air (such as cavity ringdown spectrometry) as well as those deployed on vehicles and ships ( such as catalytic oxidation).
Cut methane emissions to improve climate security while simultaneously improving public health. Studies suggest that even just cutting one million metric tons annually of methane would prevent an estimated 1,430 premature deaths, 90 hospital visits and 145,000 tonnes of crop losses due to ground-level ozone pollution.
