What does China’s new methane plan mean for the climate?

Last week, China published its long-awaited action plan for controlling national methane emissions. After carbon dioxide (CO2), methane is the second-largest contributor to human-caused global warming.

Methane is not targeted by China’s 2030 carbon-peaking agenda, which only deals with CO2. But it does feature in the country’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions for all greenhouse gases before 2060, according to Beijing’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua.

Experts tell China Dialogue that the new methane plan is significant in two regards. One is its sheer importance to curbing global warming, by tackling a potent greenhouse gas. The other is its geopolitical weight, as a symbol of China–US climate cooperation.

Since the plan was published, China and the US issued a new joint statement on addressing climate change, which reiterated the two countries’ commitment to tackling methane. A meeting between the two countries’ leaders also pledged to enhance climate cooperation.

Top-level methane plan

“China is the world’s largest emitter of methane and in some sectors, like coal, it is near-impossible to cut global emissions down to size without its cooperation,” says Ryan Driskell Tate, director of the coal programme at the US-based NGO Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Tate tells China Dialogue: “The action plan is nothing to sneeze at,” even though it does not set methane-reduction targets or timelines.

Tate’s analysis from last year found that Shanxi, China’s coal heartland, emits roughly the same amount of coal mine methane (13.1 megatonnes) as that of the rest of the world combined (13.8).

According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), which led the publication of the action plan, it is Beijing’s top-level document for managing and controlling methane emissions.

China emitted 55.3 million tonnes of methane in 2014, with the largest sources being energy (44.8%), agriculture (40.2%) and waste (11.9%), according to the latest available data reported by China. The warming potential of these emissions is equivalent to 1.16 billion tonnes of CO2, according to a 2022 study.

Estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA) put the country’s energy-related methane emissions during 2022 at 55.7 million tonnes, or 15.6% of the global total; China’s energy, agriculture and waste sectors represented 45.5%, 33.2% and 18.7%.

A potent greenhouse gas

Curbing methane emissions is key to addressing climate change because it has far more warming potential than CO2: 80 times greater over a 20-year period and about 30 times more across 100 years.

On the other hand, methane’s atmospheric lifetime is between seven and 12 years, whereas CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for 300-1,000 years. This means cutting methane emissions has a more immediate impact on slowing global warming.

“Cutting methane emissions substantially in the near-term gives a double win,” Piers Forster, a professor at the UK’s University of Leeds, tells China Dialogue. Forster says slashing global methane emissions by 30% by 2030 could “halve the rate of warming and save many lives through reducing air pollution”. 

Forster is the founding director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds. He was also a coordinating lead author of the chapter that covered methane in relation to climate change in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the UN’s climate science body, the IPCC.

Forster says the absence of numerical reduction targets in China’s new methane plan is not a surprise, because the country did not sign the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 in 2021. That framework – led by the United States and European Union and signed by around 100 countries so far – carries a target: to collectively reduce methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.

“China and the west have different approaches to climate targets,” Forster says. The UK, EU and North America tend to set themselves “stretching” targets they are “unlikely to meet”, whereas China tends to only commit to objectives it will “likely over-deliver on”, he notes.

But “in the end it’s the delivery of change that matters,” Forster adds. “We’ll only know how well China is doing as we track its progress.”

Implementation is key

Although China’s plan lacks reduction targets, it does carry several specific objectives, especially on methane utilisation for the energy, agricultural and waste-treatment sectors.

For example, the plan requires 6 billion cubic metres of coal mine gas, which contains methane, to be collected annually by 2025. It also stipulates the “comprehensive utilisation rate” of livestock…