UN finds 1,200 methane emission events, but little action: COP29

(Baku/Portland) — Over the past two years, a methane monitoring programme sponsored by the United Nations has issued over 1,200 notifications to governments and companies responsible for major sources of methane pollution, but only 1 percent of those cases received a response, UN experts told COP29 attendees.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) uses data from an array of methane satellites, which can detect plumes of methane around the globe. Through its so-called Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), the programme identifies sources of pollution and then notifies the host government or company involved.

In the past two years, 1,200 major emission events were detected, but there were only 15 cases in which the government or company involved responded and took action.

“This underscores that data alone is not enough,” Dechen Tsering, director of the climate change division at the United Nations Environment Programme, said in the fourth edition of the agency’s An Eye on Methane report, which was launched at COP29 in Baku on Friday.

Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, more than 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period. It is often characterised as the “low-hanging fruit” of climate action because cuts to methane emissions can yield relatively quick progress in avoiding the worst effects of the climate crisis.

Governments have pledged to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 as part of the Global Methane Pledge, but worryingly, emissions trends are heading in the opposite direction. In fact, the latest science finds that methane emissions are increasing at their fastest rate on record.

Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the UN and Executive Director of the UNEP, told a COP29 press briefing at the IMEO’s launch that the next round of climate pledges under the Paris Agreement must “dramatically and very quickly slash greenhouse gas emissions.”

“This EMEO report shows that now that data-driven tools are ready, governments and companies must engage at scale to translate their pledges and insight from IMEO into climate action,” she stressed.

“We now have a proven system to identify major leaks so they can be quickly stopped – often with simple repairs. We are quite literally talking about screwing bolts tighter in some cases,” Andersen added in the IMEO report.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UNEP (left), at a COP29 briefing to launch the IMEO report (Photo: Gas Outlook/Sophie Davies)

IMEO noted that were some significant successes stemming from the MARS system. They were able to verify significant reductions in methane emissions from pollution sources in Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and Algeria. For instance, Algeria’s largest oil field was responsible for methane leaking for several years. The fix there is equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the road. And in Nigeria, faulty equipment resulted in a six-month leak that equated to 400,000 cars being driven for a year. That too was fixed because of the MARS notification.   

IMEO also launched the Eye on Methane map and data platform that is publicly available.

However, despite the progress, the overwhelming number of emissions events have not received responses.

“Governments and oil and gas companies must stop paying lip-service to this challenge when answers are staring them in the face,” UNEP’s Andersen said.

(Reporting by Nick Cunningham in Portland; quotes from Sophie Davies in Baku).

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