A report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) published on Tuesday shows despite its pledges to uncover and fix leaking infrastructure, the fossil fuel industry is failing to tackle methane emissions.
About 135 million tonnes of methane that is a potent greenhouse gas responsible for roughly a third of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution was released into the atmosphere in 2022 by the global energy industry.
The report said despite high energy prices and surging demand for natural gas that provided extra incentives to capture methane which is the main component of natural gas, last year’s emissions rose above 2020 and 2021 levels, and were only slightly below the record amount released in 2019.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a statement acknowledged some progress that has been made but maintained that emissions are still far too high and not falling fast enough especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming. “There is just no excuse,” he said.
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The energy sector accounts for about 40% of all methane emissions from human activity, second to agriculture and the IEA said methane emissions from oil and gas alone could be reduced by three-quarters with existing technologies and modest investment of less than 3% of the $4 trillion windfall income gained by oil and gas companies worldwide last year.
“The economic incentives to make those reductions were huge last year,” IEA’s Chief Energy Economist Tim Gould said. “We had record natural gas prices in many markets around the world. There was an extremely strong economic incentive to bring methane to market.”
But despite this, “2022 was a disappointing year,” he said.
Globally, more than 150 countries, besides China and Russia that are major emitters, have pledged to cut global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade and dozens of oil companies have also voluntarily committed to reduce emissions through the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership, and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.
The IEA report said there were more than 500 super-emitting events from oil and gas operations detected by satellites in 2022. Another 100 were spotted at coal mines, with China’s coal emissions equivalent to total CO2 emissions from the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Altogether, the coal industry was responsible for about 40 million tonnes of methane emissions in 2022.
Story adapted from Reuters
