COP28|This newspaper focuses on China's progress and future opportunities for methane emission control

In recent years, a consensus has been reached at home and abroad on the importance of controlling methane emissions to address climate change, and a series of practical actions have been taken. The EU's first methane emission limit has recently entered the final legislative stage, and the Sunshine Land Statement on Strengthening Cooperation to Tackle the Climate Crisis issued by China and the United States also mentioned that practical and practical cooperation plans and projects will be carried out in the field of methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. also unveiled new rules at COP28 aimed at cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, according to David Vance Wagner, vice president of strategic partnerships for China at Energy Foundation China.

In November this year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Development and Reform Commission and 11 other departments announced the "Methane Emission Control Action Plan" (hereinafter referred to as the "Methane Plan"), which is China's first comprehensive and dedicated methane emission control policy document, and is also the top-level design and system deployment of methane emission control work in the coming period. According to the Methane Plan, China will take a series of measures to improve the basic capacity of methane emission control, regulate methane emissions in key industries, strengthen technological innovation and application, strengthen international cooperation in the field of methane emission control, and integrate a number of measures to actively respond to climate change.

In this context, at 16 o'clock local time in Dubai on December 6, the International Symposium on Strengthening China's Methane Emission Reduction was held in the China Corner of COP28. The event was co-hosted by the Global Methane Center, Environmental Defense Fund, World Resources Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Natural Resources Defense Council. The experts at the meeting exchanged views on methane emission reduction actions from multiple perspectives, and shared thoughts and suggestions on how to better carry out methane emission control.

Over the past two decades, China has implemented a number of policies to manage and reduce methane emissions from different sectors

Methane emission reductions not only address climate change, but also benefit energy security, food security, and human health. According to research by Tomás Bredariol, energy and environmental policy analyst at the International Energy Agency, methane reduction actions in fossil fuels alone could avert 10 million premature deaths, reduce millions of heatwave losses and reduce direct economic losses by $26 billion to $260 billion between now and 2050. At the same time, the loss of 9.3 billion tons to 95 billion tons of crop yield can also be avoided.

China's methane emissions come from the energy sector, with coal accounting for 90% of methane emissions, compared to oil and gas for only 2%, 40% of methane emissions from agriculture, including rice cultivation and livestock, and 10% from waste disposal, including solid waste and wastewater treatment.

The Methane Plan was released in early November, but this is not the first time China has implemented policies to reduce methane emissions. In 2007, China formulated the "National Plan for Addressing Climate Change", which put forward relevant requirements for the control of methane emissions, the "12th Five-Year Plan" and the "13th Five-Year Plan" for the control of greenhouse gas emissions, and the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Completely, Accurately, and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept and Doing a Good Job in Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality" and other documents all set requirements for methane control.

Teng Fei, a professor at Tsinghua University's Institute of Energy, Environment and Economics, said that over the past two decades, China has implemented many policies to manage and reduce methane emissions from different industries in various fields such as coal, oil and gas, agriculture and municipal waste disposal. For example, before 2015, methane was controlled as a harmful gas in the coal industry, mainly as a means of safe production, and later coalbed methane was seen as an important energy resource, and the main focus was on the recycling of coalbed methane. China has put forward quantitative methane emission reduction targets in different industries, and strives to do a good job step by step.

Driven by the Methane Plan, we will carry out more in-depth methane emission reduction work

The Methane Plan is a comprehensive and dedicated policy document for the control of methane emissions, covering all sources of methane emissions. At the seminar, Xu Huaqing, director of the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, interpreted the "Methane Plan" from the aspects of positioning, guiding ideology, goals, and system construction. At the same time, the eight key tasks mentioned in it are summarized into five sentences and shared with you. First, lay the foundation stone and comprehensively consolidate the basic capacity for emission control; second, focus on key areas, including energy, agriculture, and waste disposal, and pragmatically promote emission control; third, emphasize incentives and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the main body of emission control; fourth, strictly supervise and effectively give full play to the binding and leading role of standards; fifth, strengthen awareness and widely mobilize the participation of the whole society.

At the seminar, several experts from different industries combined their respective research fields to put forward challenges and countermeasures for methane emission reduction.

"If we can control methane leaks from the oil and gas industry, that means we can harvest that energy, which saves money. Therefore, taking aggressive and rapid action to reduce methane emissions can be said to have a dual effect on China's response to climate change and improving air quality. Zhang Qiang, a professor at the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University, said.

Agriculture accounts for about 40% of methane emissions from human activities, and it is important to accelerate methane emissions reductions in agriculture. Professor Chen Minpeng of the College of Agriculture and Rural Development of Chinese University believes that methane emission reduction in the agricultural sector is facing several challenges, such as the uncertainty of methane emission data from agricultural sources, the lack of synergy between the low-carbon development policy goals of agricultural methane prevention and control and general agricultural policies, and the increase in the cost of methane prevention and control by land fragmentation. Li Yu'e, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, proposed solutions to reduce methane emissions in agriculture: "The first point is to improve and establish incentives and policies, including integrating agricultural policies into our voluntary carbon markets, and to develop technical corresponding parameters; ”

Gao Qingxian, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, believes that the shift in China's waste treatment methods is very conducive to methane emission reduction. "Since 2019, the amount of waste incinerated is much greater than the amount of landfill, and the incineration of waste has greatly reduced the amount of waste going to landfills, thereby reducing methane emissions. However, it is also worth noting that China is a country with a large population and a vast territory, and with the development of urbanization and the construction of new rural areas, domestic waste and domestic sewage at the county and town levels have also begun to be treated centrally, which is a potential source of methane emissions and cannot be ignored. Gao Qingxian suggested that the construction of data statistics systems should be strengthened, especially at the township level, and that research on the current situation of regional waste treatment should be carried out to obtain emission factors and related parameters that are more in line with China's actual conditions. It is also important to monitor abnormal emissions from landfill facilities with the help of sky-ground integrated remote sensing technology.

Teng Fei gave several suggestions on how to better promote methane emission reduction in the future. For example, we need to improve the quality of data and inventories to help us make better and more in-depth policymaking, to strengthen the analysis of more local, sectoral and sectoral areas to support the implementation of methane reductions at the local level, to focus on and take proactive action on the majority of future methane emissions from agriculture, and to synergistically control methane and other pollutants such as volatile organic compounds. At the same time, different strategies should be formulated according to different industries, such as achieving lower-cost emission control through regulatory policies, and stimulating the enthusiasm of emission control subjects through market mechanisms.