Final week, China printed its long-awaited motion plan for controlling nationwide methane emissions. After carbon dioxide (CO2), methane is the second-largest contributor to human-caused world warming.
Methane just isn’t focused by China’s 2030 carbon-peaking agenda, which solely offers with CO2. But it surely does function within the nation’s efforts to realize net-zero emissions for all greenhouse gases earlier than 2060, in keeping with Beijing’s local weather envoy, Xie Zhenhua.
Specialists inform China Dialogue that the brand new methane plan is critical in two regards. One is its sheer significance to curbing world warming, by tackling a potent greenhouse fuel. The opposite is its geopolitical weight, as a logo of China–US local weather cooperation.
Because the plan was printed, China and the US issued a brand new joint assertion on addressing local weather change, which reiterated the 2 nations’ dedication to tackling methane. A gathering between the 2 nations’ leaders additionally pledged to reinforce local weather cooperation.
High-level methane plan
“China is the world’s largest emitter of methane and in some sectors, like coal, it’s near-impossible to chop world emissions right down to dimension with out its cooperation,” says Ryan Driskell Tate, director of the coal programme on the US-based NGO World Vitality Monitor (GEM). Tate tells China Dialogue: “The motion plan is nothing to sneeze at,” regardless that it doesn’t set methane-reduction targets or timelines.
Tate’s evaluation from final yr discovered that Shanxi, China’s coal heartland, emits roughly the identical quantity of coal mine methane (13.1 megatonnes) as that of the remainder of the world mixed (13.8).
In line with the Ministry of Ecology and Surroundings (MEE), which led the publication of the motion plan, it’s Beijing’s top-level doc for managing and controlling methane emissions.
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China is the world’s largest emitter of methane and in some sectors, like coal, it’s near-impossible to chop world emissions right down to dimension with out its cooperation.
Ryan Driskell Tate, coal programme director, World Vitality Monitor
China emitted 55.3 million tonnes of methane in 2014, with the biggest sources being vitality (44.8 per cent), agriculture (40.2 per cent) and waste (11.9 per cent), in keeping with the most recent obtainable information reported by China. The warming potential of those emissions is equal to 1.16 billion tonnes of CO2, in keeping with a 2022 research.
Estimates by the Worldwide Vitality Company (IEA) put the nation’s energy-related methane emissions throughout 2022 at 55.7 million tonnes, or 15.6 per cent of the worldwide whole; China’s vitality, agriculture and waste sectors represented 45.5 per cent, 33.2 per cent and 18.7 per cent.
A potent greenhouse fuel
Curbing methane emissions is essential to addressing local weather change as a result of it has far extra warming potential than CO2: 80 occasions better over a 20-year interval and about 30 occasions extra throughout 100 years.
However, methane’s atmospheric lifetime is between seven and 12 years, whereas CO2 can keep within the environment for 300-1,000 years. This implies slicing methane emissions has a extra quick impression on slowing world warming.
“Chopping methane emissions considerably within the near-term provides a double win,” Piers Forster, a professor on the UK’s College of Leeds, tells China Dialogue. Forster says slashing world methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 may “halve the speed of warming and save many lives via decreasing air air pollution”.
Forster is the founding director of the Priestley Worldwide Centre for Climate on the College of Leeds. He was additionally a coordinating lead creator of the chapter that coated methane in relation to local weather change within the Sixth Evaluation Report (AR6) of the UN’s local weather science physique, the IPCC.
Forster says the absence of numerical discount targets in China’s new methane plan just isn’t a shock, as a result of the nation didn’t signal the World Methane Pledge at COP26 in 2021. That framework – led by the USA and European Union and signed by round 100 nations thus far – carries a goal: to collectively scale back methane emissions by at the least 30 per cent from 2020 ranges by 2030.
“China and the west have completely different approaches to local weather targets,” Forster says. The UK, EU and North America are inclined to set themselves “stretching” targets they’re “unlikely to fulfill”, whereas China tends to solely decide to targets it is going to “seemingly over-deliver on”, he notes.
However “ultimately it’s the supply of change that issues,” Forster provides. “We’ll solely understand how properly China is doing as we observe its progress.”
Implementation is essential
Though China’s plan lacks discount targets, it does carry a number of particular targets, particularly on methane utilisation for the vitality, agricultural and waste-treatment sectors.
For instance, the plan requires 6 billion cubic metres of coal mine fuel, which incorporates methane, to be collected yearly by 2025. It additionally stipulates the “complete utilisation fee” of livestock manure, one other supply of methane, ought to attain 80 per cent by 2025 and exceed 85 per cent by 2030.
China Dialogue spoke to Hu Min, the principal of the Institute for World Decarbonization Progress (iGDP), a Chinese language assume tank. Hu regards the plan as a “very complete” coverage framework. “Even earlier than the discharge of the plan, many insurance policies already had methane-reduction results. With the general framework in place, the impression of these methane-reduction measures can be boosted enormously,” Hu says.
In line with projections by Hu’s organisation, the measures within the plan can collectively assist China minimize its methane emissions by 246 million tonnes of CO2 equal in 2035, in comparison with 2022 ranges.
A Xinhua report from final yr listed a number of current Chinese language insurance policies to deal with methane. They included a trial coverage for emission requirements of coal mine methane, issued in 2008; a scheme to mandate the recycling of home waste, issued in 2017; and the institution of the China Oil and Gasoline Methane Alliance of main Chinese language vitality corporations in 2021.
GEM’s coal director Tate cautions that the success of China’s new methane plan “hinges on implementation”. The 2008 coal mine methane coverage required current coal operations to flare or use all drained methane fuel (if protected to take action) by 2010, however a 2019 research recommended methane emissions had nonetheless risen in China and coal was the first supply.
“This new motion plan appears to recognise how weak these rules could have been in follow,” Tate provides. “However we’ll have to attend and see how these insurance policies will perform on the bottom.”
Forster of the College of Leeds additionally factors out the difficulties in tackling methane emissions in agriculture, particularly from rice paddies.
“Most Western nations don’t embody substantial agricultural emission reductions of their plans. So, progress right here [by China] can be a bonus,” he says.
Some methods that use much less water, produce extra rice and emit much less methane have been gaining traction in China, China Dialogue has reported beforehand.
Knowledge challenges
Tate says {that a} “vibrant spot” within the plan is its efforts to strengthen China’s reporting techniques and information administration for methane emissions.
The plan stipulates that China ought to “successfully enhance” its means to observe, report and confirm methane emissions from now till 2025 and “considerably enhance” such means between 2026 and 2030. The plan additionally seeks to ascertain frameworks for methane-related insurance policies, applied sciences and requirements on this decade.
“Now we have such a low bar for methane emissions reporting all over the world,” Tate says. “Because the previous saying goes: ‘you may’t handle what you may’t measure.’”
“China may actually change the sport,” he provides.
Different consultants consider {that a} weak information basis for methane might be a part of the rationale China didn’t set discount targets on this plan.
“The absence of particular targets within the plan exhibits that China’s progress in managing methane and different non-CO2 greenhouse gases remains to be in early levels,” notes Li Shuo, who directs the China Local weather Hub on the Asia Society Coverage Institute. He says the plan is an “vital step ahead” however he’s “barely dissatisfied” by the absence of discount targets.
As early as November 2022, China’s local weather envoy Xie Zhenhua implied that information points had – to a point – hampered the nation’s goal-setting progress for methane.
On the sidelines of COP27, Xie mentioned China had been in a position to set preliminary targets just for its vitality, agriculture and waste sectors, as a result of its statistical basis was “weak” and the baseline information was “unclear”.
Xie set out then what turned the 2 priorities of the nationwide methane plan: that China ought to set up a monitoring, reporting and verification system for methane and prioritise methods to utilise methane emissions.
Beijing’s latest drive to reinforce vitality safety may need affected the plan, too. “The policymakers’ latest precedence has been to spice up home coal, oil and fuel output and scale back gasoline prices, so not introducing extra binding measures is probably going associated to this,” Lauri Myllyvirta tells China Dialogue. Myllyvirta is the lead analyst on the Centre for Analysis on Vitality and Clear Air.
China–US local weather cooperation
Some consultants say that the plan’s geopolitical weight is equally – if no more – vital than its environmental values, attributable to its shut reference to China–US local weather cooperation.
“The timing of the plan’s launch, simply forward of COP28, is a strategic transfer signalling China’s intention to contribute to world methane emission management efforts,” Dorothy Mei tells China Dialogue. Mei is the mission supervisor for GEM’s World Coal Mine Tracker.
Beijing first pledged to develop a “complete and bold nationwide motion plan on methane” at COP26 in 2021, as a part of a joint local weather declaration with Washington. In line with the declaration, the plan was meant to be launched earlier than COP27, however local weather talks between the 2 nations have been suspended final yr amid geopolitical tensions.
As an alternative, the plan’s launch coincided with the final day of a four-day assembly in California between the local weather envoys of China and the USA. The talks led to the discharge of the US-China Sunnylands Assertion on Enhancing Cooperation to Handle the Local weather Disaster, on November 14.
Within the assertion, the 2 events pledged to implement their respective methane motion plans and to develop methane discount actions or targets to be included of their nationally decided contributions (NDCs) for 2035. International locations are anticipated to submit their 2035 NDCs in 2025.
In addition they introduced they’d collectively host a “Methane and Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases Summit” at COP28 within the United Arab Emirates.
Li, of the Asia Society Coverage Institute, says that the brand new China-US local weather assertion “units broad boundaries for the anticipated debates at COP28”.
He provides that the leaders’ summit at the start of COP28 (December 1-2), the lately scheduled EU-China summit (December 7-8), and the outcomes of COP28 are “subsequent alternatives to evaluate China’s political will on local weather change in addition to the US-China local weather dynamic”.
This text was initially printed on China Dialogue below a Inventive Commons licence.
