How can Guangdong, which contributes 11% of the country's GDP, achieve only 2% of methane emissions?
As the second largest greenhouse gas in the world, methane has high warming potential and short lifespan, mainly from coal, oil and gas production, agriculture and waste treatment. According to the assessment report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), methane has a global warming potential 84 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year scale. In the past two years, the international community has paid more attention to methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases, and methane emission control has become one of the core issues in climate negotiations.
In November, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and 11 other ministries announced their Methane Emission Control Action Plan (MEP), and there has been a growing interest in tracking China's methane mitigation initiatives at the climate conference.
The Methane Plan is China's first comprehensive and dedicated methane emission control policy document, and it is also the top-level design and system deployment for methane emission control 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.
"Before the plan was introduced, although China did not have an overall implementation plan, it had already taken many active measures in various fields such as coal, oil and gas, agriculture, and municipal waste disposal. We don't treat it [methane] as waste, we reuse it as a resource." Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy for climate change, said recently.
"It's not that there is no emission control plan, or that there is no work. Xie Zhenhua stressed that China has actually done a lot of work.
In 2021, China proposed to strengthen cooperation on methane emission control in the Glasgow Joint Declaration on Strengthening Climate Action in the 2020s, and issued the Action Plan for Methane Emission Control this year.
In recent years, China has been actively deploying efforts to reduce methane emissions. Take, for example, Guangdong, China. In response to the national work requirements, Guangdong commissioned scientific research institutions as early as 2021 to launch a special research on the current situation of methane in Guangdong Province, scenario prediction and emission reduction pathways.
"Since the start of the construction of Guangdong's low-carbon pilot province in 2021, our team has carried out research on the important policy needs of Guangdong Province to address climate change, from early carbon emission accounting, carbon trading design and management, to methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emission reduction pathways and climate change adaptation research in the last two years. During COP28, Zeng Xuelan, a professor at the Institute of Environmental and Ecological Engineering of Guangdong University of Technology, was interviewed by reporters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
"The scale of Guangdong's economic development is familiar to many people – Guangdong Province supports 11% of the country's GDP with 7% of the country's energy consumption and 5% of carbon dioxide, which is a staggering figure. But there's another figure that's not simple – Guangdong province accounts for about 2% of the country's methane emissions. Zeng Xuelan said that according to estimates, methane emissions in Guangdong Province peaked in 2018 and declined rapidly. This shows that the Guangdong provincial government has not only been effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but also made great efforts in terms of methane emission policies and measures, and the results are also very obvious.
The reporter learned from Zeng Xuelan's team that the current methane emissions in Guangdong have significant regional characteristics. "Solid waste landfills and rice cultivation are the largest sources of methane emissions, accounting for 34% and 30%, respectively (2020). Since the beginning of the 12th Five-Year Plan, the Guangdong Provincial Government has strengthened the treatment and comprehensive utilization of municipal waste, and the province's domestic waste incineration treatment capacity has increased rapidly, reaching 87,000 tons/day in 2020, far exceeding the landfill treatment capacity of 43,000 tons/day, directly reversing the growth trend of methane emissions. In addition, the degree of refined agricultural management is also increasing, and methane emissions are further effectively controlled. Zeng Xuelan said.
The 14th Five-Year Plan period is a critical period for many provinces and cities, including Guangdong, to rapidly promote methane emission reduction, and Guangdong has also made arrangements in advance.
"We are further improving our methane emissions monitoring capacity and establishing a local methane emission factor bank. In Zeng's view, Guangdong Province will continue to be at the forefront of methane emission reduction in the future. By promoting "zero landfill" of domestic waste, carrying out the treatment of existing waste, promoting green and efficient planting and breeding models such as water-saving irrigation, strengthening methane recycling and resource utilization, and exploring the inclusion of methane in the Guangdong carbon market or market mechanisms such as carbon inclusion, more methane emission reduction China's experience will benefit more regions in the country and even in developing countries.
