Energy Agency: ‘There is no excuse’ for methane emissions

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — The International Energy Agency on Tuesday accused fossil fuel industries of not doing enough to reduce methane emissions and undermining climate targets to limit global warming.

Economic uncertainty, high energy prices and security of supply issues, which would have led to lower emissions in 2022, were ineffective as methane emissions remained “stubbornly high”, report says .

“Methane reductions are among the cheapest options for limiting near-term global warming,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “There is simply no excuse.”

The agency’s annual report on the state of methane emissions found that 75% of those produced by the oil and gas sector can be reduced with much cheaper and more readily available technologies.

Methane, a component of natural gas, can leak into the air from oil and gas infrastructure. Fossil fuel companies can burn excess gas, which can release methane into the atmosphere.

The report criticized the refusal of major oil and gas companies to shell out the roughly $100 billion needed for technologies to increase emissions reductions, less than 3% of the industry’s record profits last year.

The energy sector is responsible for nearly 40% of total average methane emissions from human activity, behind agriculture alone, and around 135 million tonnes of methane released into the atmosphere last year .

“The uncontrolled release of methane in fossil fuel production is an issue that sometimes goes unnoticed in public debate,” Birol said. “Fossil fuel producers need to step up and policymakers need to step in, and both need to step in quickly.”

Another option considered in the report is to limit emissions from coal mines, another source of methane, by reducing consumption of the ore. The agency has produced a toolkit and roadmap on this for policy makers and industry.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term and is responsible for about a fifth of global warming. In 2021, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions of this gas generated by human activity by 30% by the end of the decade.

New advanced technologies and satellites provide clearer images of these emissions, increasing global knowledge of the sources of emissions.

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