UN chief: Targeting methane is a climate battle ‘we can win’
“The climate crisis is accelerating, and we are now on course to overshoot the 1.5°C limit in the coming years,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told delegates at the super-pollutants reception during London Climate Action Week, which runs from 20 to 28 June.“Reducing methane is a fight we can win and benefit from in our own time,” he said. “Our task is to keep that overshoot as small, short and safe as possible and to bring temperatures back down. That can’t happen without drastically reducing emissions, starting now, and accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels, starting now.”To do so demands that the world move fast on super-pollutants, which are potent greenhouse gases behind nearly half the global warming to date.Existing tech can eliminate ‘super super-pollutant’ methaneInvisible, odourless and driving nearly a third of current global warming, methane is the key ingredient in natural gas and “is the super super-pollutant”, the UN chief said, adding that, unlike carbon dioxide, it breaks down in a decade or two.“Cutting methane is the single fastest brake we can pull on a warming planet,” he said, pointing to the newly launched global Call to Action on Methane,The International Energy Agency finds that around 70 per cent of methane from oil and gas can be eliminated with existing technologies at low or no net cost, and thanks to satellites, “we can track methane pollution where it happens as it happens,” he said.‘Age of voluntary action is over’The UN chief set out three steps governments and industry can take towards tackling methane’s negative effects:Detect and fix every leak and eliminate routine flaring and cold ventingMake emissions measurable, reportable and verifiableAdopt a science-based global methane standard and build a market for near-zero-methane energy“Countries like Norway have already shown the way,” he said. “If every producer matched its standards, methane from oil and gas would fall by 90 per cent.” The world acted to heal the ozone layer and phase out leaded petrol and now, it must act on methane pollution, the UN chief said, emphasising that “the age of voluntary action is over.”Indeed, more than 70 per cent of the reduction potential lies within the G20 and much of it within the fossil fuel sector, and “that is where we must zero in to zero out methane.”
