What is the significance of China's first top-level document on methane emission control?

On the evening of November 7, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Development and Reform Commission, released China's first "Methane Emission Control Action Plan" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan").

The international community has been looking forward to the introduction of China's Plan for a long time.

Methane is the second largest greenhouse gas in the world, and actively and prudently controlling methane emissions has the climate benefits of slowing down global temperature rise, the economic benefits of energy resource utilization, and the environmental benefits of coordinated control of pollutants.

In November 2021, at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, China pledged in the China-U.S. Glasgow Joint Declaration that China would develop a comprehensive and ambitious national methane emission control action plan before COP27 the following year.

A year later than promised, the Chinese government handed over the answer sheet on the eve of COP28, the last day of the latest US-China climate change talks.

According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Plan is a top-level design document for China to carry out methane emission control.

"The plan is a 'systematic and comprehensive' review of the next step of methane emission reduction. Fu Sha, director of strategic planning at Energy Foundation China (Beijing), told Jiemian News.

Li Shuo, director-designate of the China Climate Center at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Jiemian News that China's release of the plan may have greater political significance than environmental significance.

Why is it launching at this time?

"The Plan is a very preliminary step from an environmental or emissions reduction perspective, but from a political perspective, it's an important document that responds to previous commitments to the United States. Li Shuo told Jiemian News. Li Shuo has been following global climate negotiations for many years and has served as an observer at the COP as a representative of professional institutions.

Ahead of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, the United States and the European Union jointly launched the Global Methane Pledge, which requires countries to voluntarily take action to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions by more than 30% by 2030. More than 100 countries joined the initiative during COP26.

China did not join the initiative, but issued the U.S.-China Glasgow Joint Declaration with the United States during COP26, which gave China a commitment to reduce methane emissions and set a timetable for the release of the action plan before COP27 at the end of 2022.

After being "late" for a year, why did China release the "Plan" recently? According to Li Shuo's analysis, the reason is that there have been many signs of stability in Sino-US relations recently.

According to the White House's recent disclosure, China and the United States have agreed in principle to hold a meeting between the heads of state of China and the United States at the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Summit. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not confirm it positively, but said that both China and the United States agreed to work together towards the San Francisco summit. The summit will be held in San Francisco, USA, from November 11 to 17.

From October 26 to 28, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited the United States for talks with U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In the field of climate, on October 26, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu met with California Governor Gavin Newsom in Beijing. From November 4 to 7, China's special envoy for climate change, Xie Zhenhua, and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry held talks in the United States.

Li Shuo said the release of the plan cleared the way for a possible new joint climate statement between China and the United States. A successful meeting between the Chinese and U.S. presidents in San Francisco is likely to lead to a new joint climate statement.

"Without China's methane plan, China and the United States may not be able to reach a new climate joint statement. If the U.S. government issues a new joint statement with China without the "plan" being issued by China, it will be criticized by domestic political voices in the United States. Li Shuo said.

Li Shuo told Jiemian News that it is expected that based on the recent communication between China and the United States, China and the United States may form a new climate statement in the next few weeks.

Why is methane reduction important?

Due to the strong warming power and short life span of methane, curbing methane emissions in the short term has become one of the main measures promoted in international climate negotiations in recent years.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more than 25% of global temperature rise is attributable to methane emissions. The International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental agency, believes that methane emissions contribute about 30% to global warming.

Methane has a lifetime of about 12 years in the atmosphere, which is much shorter than carbon dioxide, but its ability to contribute to global temperature rise is much higher.

A 2013 study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group showed that methane has 84-86 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year time scale.

Therefore, methane emission control can play a significant role in mitigating global climate change. Li Shuo said that because the United States has more political space to control methane emissions at home than carbon dioxide, the United States has pushed for international commitments to control methane emissions since at least the mid-to-late 10s of this century.

The latest official data on China's methane emissions is from 2018 and was released by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. According to the data, as of 2014, methane emissions accounted for 10.4% of China's total greenhouse gas emissions, with energy activities producing the largest methane emissions of about 520 million tons, followed by agricultural activities with about 467 million tons.

Fu Sha, director of strategic planning at Energy Foundation China (Beijing), told Jiemian News that it is very difficult to launch the methane plan due to the large number of ministries and commissions involved in emission control.

"The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has been able to unite with ten ministries and commissions to launch an action plan, which is the first time in the history of national policy to systematically and comprehensively sort out the next step of methane emission control, which is of great positive significance. Fu Sha said.

She pointed out that the goals and tasks set forth in the Plan involve many fields such as energy, agriculture and waste disposal, which involve the Energy Bureau, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

According to the plan, China's main goals during the 14th Five-Year Plan period include: gradually establishing a system of methane emission control policies, technologies and standards, effectively improving basic capabilities such as methane emission statistics, monitoring and supervision, stabilizing and decreasing the methane emission intensity of agricultural products in the planting and aquaculture industries, and continuously improving the resource utilization rate of municipal solid waste and the harmless disposal rate of municipal sludge.

During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the "Plan" requires to improve the level of coal mine gas utilization, further reduce the methane emission intensity of agricultural products per unit of planting and aquaculture, and strive to achieve zero conventional flare in onshore oil and gas exploitation in the oil and gas extraction industry.

Reuters quoted Qin Yan, chief carbon analyst at Refinitiv on the London Stock Exchange, as saying that the targets proposed in the plan are too vague and there are no specific quantitative targets.

Fu Sha analyzed the interface news, and the direction and goals of the next step proposed in the "Plan" are "more in line with reality".

She said that the targets proposed in the plan are relatively general for three reasons: first, it is difficult to coordinate methane emission reductions, and second, the current Chinese research and policymaking community has a "very weak" grasp of the basic data of domestic methane emissions, and the estimation of emission reduction potential is very different, and the uncertainty of some research conclusions is as high as more than 50%.

In addition, methane abatement involves energy and food production. "Agriculture itself is very unprofitable, and if there are mandatory targets to increase the cost of reducing emissions, it may have an impact on the supply of food, and farmers will have limited capacity to bear it. Fu Sha told Jiemian News.

Therefore, the "Plan" is currently mostly from the perspective of coordination and incentives to formulate goals and measures. Fu Sha concluded. For example, coal enterprises are encouraged to increase the utilization rate of coal mine gas extraction. "On the one hand, it solves the problem of methane leakage and emission reduction, and on the other hand, it is also a positive benefit for enterprises."

The plan focuses on strengthening the construction of methane emission monitoring, accounting, reporting and verification systems in the near future, and Fu Sha believes that "this is a good direction of work". But she also argues that methane-related data needs to be accelerated so that China can come up with more ambitious and quantifiable targets sooner.

Fu Sha predicted to Jiemian News that in early 2025, China may submit a new version of its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations by 2035. In this document or the 15th Five-Year Plan, it is likely that China will consider further quantifying its methane emission targets.

Jiemian contacted a staff member in charge of the plan from the Strategy Division of the Department of Climate Change of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, but did not receive a response from the other party before press time.