The Global Methane Assessment 2030: Baseline Report was published by the UN Environment (UNEP) and and Clean Air Coalition (2022).
Key highlight
- The amount of methane in the atmosphere is increasing at record rates. 2021 saw the largest annual increase recorded since global monitoring began four decades ago.
- Current concentrations are now 260 per cent of pre-industrial levels.
- These increases are overwhelmingly caused by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment shows that human-driven methane emissions are responsible for nearly 45 per cent of current net warming.
- Achieving methane emissions reductions in the next decade will keep the planet significantly cooler than attempts to cut carbon dioxide emissions alone, largely because CO2 emission reductions also remove cooling aerosols.
- The 2021 Global Methane Assessment found that least-cost scenarios for limiting warming to 1.5°C require methane emissions reductions of about 60% from fossil fuels, 30-35% from waste, and 20-25% from agriculture by 2030, relative to 2020 emissions.
- Today, methane emissions from human activity total between 350-390 million tonnes annually. Emissions from the agriculture and fossil fuel energy sectors are comparable, at around 120-140 million tonnes per year, roughly twice the emissions of the waste sector.
Global Methane Pledge (GMP)
- The Global Methane Pledge (GMP) was launched at the November 2021 Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.
- India didn’t sign the pledge.
- The Global Methane Pledge targets at least a 30 per cent reduction in humancaused methane emissions below 2020 levels by 2030.
- Achieving the GMP target would require a decrease in annual emissions from approximately 380 million tonnes in 2020 to less than 270 million tonnes in 2030—a drop of at least 110 million tonnes.
