US, EU will announce global pledge to reduce planet-warming methane emissions

The United States and European Union will announce on Friday a global pledge to reduce emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — according to a senior Biden administration official.

The announcement would come on the same day that President Joe Biden and other world leaders hold a virtual, closed-door meeting on climate, ahead of a pivotal UN climate conference in Glasgow in November. That meeting is meant to raise climate ambition ahead of the Glasgow summit, the senior administration official told reporters on a Wednesday briefing call.
“We are grateful to be working with the European Union and partner countries towards a collective global goal, and I’d like to underscore that is a collective global goal to significantly reduce methane emissions,” the official told .
    The US and EU are expected to announce they plan to cut methane emissions by nearly a third by 2030, based on 2020 levels, according to a Washington Post report which cited an EU official.
      Reuters first reported that the US and EU were pursuing a methane reduction deal.

      Scientists say this invisible gas could seal our fate on climate change
      With Earth rapidly warming, scientists say methane emissions need to be reduced fast. Charles Koven, a lead author of the UN climate change report published in August, told this is due to methane’s incredible warming power. Even though carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere longer, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas, trapping 25 times as much heat.
      Methane’s short lifespan is why countries are targeting it to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their impact.
      “Rapidly reducing methane emissions may be the single most effective strategy to keep the 1.5-degree limit in reach, in terms of near-term actions one can take,” the senior administration official told , adding that methane currently accounts for about half a degree of warming.
      If the world stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, Koven said, global temperatures wouldn’t begin to cool for many years because of how long the gas stays in the atmosphere. Reducing methane is the easiest knob to turn to change the path of global temperature in the next 10 years, he said.

      Climate measures in budget bill could cut nearly 1 billion tons of emissions per year by 2030, analysis finds
      Methane is the main component of natural gas, which powers close to 40% of the US electricity sector. It can enter the atmosphere through leaks from oil and natural gas wells, natural gas pipelines and the processing equipment itself.
      According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, the US has thousands of active wells for natural gas, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells, about two million miles of natural gas pipelines, and several refineries that process the gas.
        One in three Americans lives in a county with oil and gas operations, posing climate and public health risks, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund.
        Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release new methane regulations later this year, and Democrats in Congress are attempting to pass a new methane fee as part of their $3.5 trillion budget bill.