In the past 20 years, global methane emissions have risen by 25 percent. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon budget requires a 2 percent annual decline in methane emissions to meet the Paris objectives of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

This report summarises the sources of methane emissions, analyses future scenarios, and details potential abatement measures in five industries that now account for 98 percent of human emissions: agriculture, oil and gas, coal mining, waste management, and wastewater.

Barriers to Addressing Methane Emissions

• First, methane emissions are difficult to measure. The sources of methane emit sporadically and are dispersed geographically, making it challenging to build a business case for methane abatement and track the impact of mitigation measures.
• Second, shortfalls in measuring hinder companies’ ability to accurately monitor emissions or publish product-level data on methane intensity. This limits public awareness, supply chain transparency, and the ability of business leaders and policymakers to act.
• Third, abatement costs and feasibility vary significantly from one asset to another.
• Finally, most solutions require trade-offs, either between costs and benefits or in terms of environmental impact.

Methane Abatement Solutions and Costs

• Agriculture industry: methane emissions result from ruminant animals’ digestion, farming practices such as biomass burning, and rice production involving flooding. A large proportion of the emissions from agriculture could be addressed with existing technologies. For example, several companies are already commercializing feed additives for cattle.
• Oil and gas industry: fugitive methane emissions through venting, leaks, and incomplete combustion in flaring. Technologies and infrastructure can capture these emissions to use methane as natural gas. Moreover, there are numerous options to prevent losses in upstream production, including leak detection and repair (LDAR).
• Coal mining industry: coal mine methane (CMM) emissions emanate from either working or abandoned deep mines. Despite the challenges involved, established technologies can capture CMM and use it to generate power.
• Solid waste: the majority of methane emissions from waste originate in landfills and open dumps, where anaerobic organic material generates methane. Authorities could capture these emissions and either sell the methane as renewable natural gas or use it in the production of fertilizer. However, revenues may not be sufficient to offset the costs.
• Wastewater: modern sanitation infrastructure can be built primarily to reduce methane emission from the breakdown of organic material. However, capital costs and policy requirements would be significant. With funding and technology, alternative abatement approaches could include the application of microalgae to prevent gas formation.

Three Key Enablers

• Monitoring, reporting, and verification of methane emissions to enable transparent target setting and benchmarking.
• Developing mechanisms to score products based on their methane footprints to allow retailers and consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions and investors could better understand portfolio risk.
• Unlocking innovation throughout the value chains of methane-emitting industries. Innovative solutions supported by at-scale investment will be needed for tools, processes, and market mechanisms that reduce methane emissions.

1. The remaining carbon budget from the IPCC indicates that the world would need a 37 percent reduction in methane emissions by 2030 and a 55 percent reduction by 2050 to align with a 1.5°C warming pathway. However, lack of financial incentives for transformation leads to insufficient investment funding. Most financial institutions are more focused on CO₂ carbon credits.
2. The rapid adoption of technical solutions and shifts in consumption patterns would be required to meet the methane reduction goal by 2030. Fossil fuel demand and beef/dairy demand would need to decrease by 43 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
3. Deploying technical solutions to reduce methane (at the scale required to meet the 1.5°C pathway) would cost US$3.3 trillion to US$5.1 trillion in total by 2050. These estimates include capital investments, operational costs and savings, and potential revenues from recovered methane.
4. Many abatement measures could be achieved using existing technologies. On a 30-year timeline, more than 90 percent of the emissions reduction potential could be achieved at a cost of less than US$25 per metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e).
5. Roughly 30 percent of the methane reduction potential would come from levers that save costs or create a revenue opportunity greater than the total cost. These measures are mostly from the oil and gas industry and rice production. An additional 50 percent would be possible at low costs, between US$0 and US$10 per tCO₂e; such means include landfill gas collection and improved downstream process to reduce fugitive leaks in pipelines, seals, and other equipment.
6. Implementation of full agricultural technical solutions would require US$250 billion in capital but could lead to savings of US$20 billion to US$40 billion in annual operating costs.
7. Agriculture supports 65 percent of low-income working adults globally. Thus, the risk of failure or lower yields in the short term is a potential barrier to the adoption of levers. Considering the distributed nature of agriculture production and the long value chain, the best means to reduce methane would be to target concentrated segments: upstream suppliers and midstream processors.
8. Levers in the oil and gas sector could generate operating-expenditure savings by reducing energy or maintenance costs and creating revenues from capturing fugitive gases. Moreover, the cost of methane abatement for conventional gas assets is minor compared with the production cost of gas.
9. China, which accounts for nearly 50 percent of global production and 70 percent of CMM, has the scale and infrastructure from coal gasification to make methane capture more economically attractive. The supply chain could be expanded to connect recovered methane from coal mines to industrial customers, including chemical and metal producers.
10. More than 70 percent of waste services are overseen directly by local public organizations. However, there is insufficient regulation requiring methane abatement in waste management.