Global methane emissions from energy are around 80% higher than what governments are reporting
RECORD FOSSIL FUEL production kept planet-heating methane emissions near historic highs last year, the International Energy Agency has said, warning of a surge in massive leaks from oil and gas facilities.
Slashing emissions of methane — second only to carbon dioxide for its contribution to global warming — is essential to meeting international targets on climate change and one of the fastest ways to curb temperature rise.
But the IEA warned that countries are considerably underestimating their energy sector methane pollution, estimating that emissions are around 80% higher than the total reported by governments to the United Nations.
The energy sector is responsible for around a third of the methane emitted as a result of human activities.
It leaks from gas pipelines and other energy infrastructure, and is also deliberately released during equipment maintenance.
Tackling this is considered one of the easiest ways to lower emissions because plugging leaks can often be done at little or no cost.
'However, the latest data indicates that implementation on methane has continued to fall short of ambitions,' said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
The IEA's Global Methane Tracker report said over 120 million tonnes was released from the fossil fuel sector in 2024, close to the record high in 2019.
China has the largest energy methane emissions globally, mainly from its coal sector. The United States follows in second, driven by its oil and gas sector, with Russia third.
The IEA said its figures are based on measured data where possible, compared to emissions reported by governments, which can be outdated or estimated using information from the energy sector.
Global methane emissions are becoming easier to monitor from space, with more than 25 satellites tracking gas plumes from fossil fuel facilities and other sources.
Advertisement
The IEA said that Europe's Sentinel 5 satellite, which just sees the very largest leaks, showed that 'super-emitting methane events' at oil and gas facilities rose to a record high in 2024.
These huge leaks were observed all over the world, but particularly in the United States, Turkmenistan and Russia.
Abandoned oil and gas wells and coal mines are also significant sources of methane leaking into the atmosphere, the IEA said in new analysis for this year's report.
When taken together they would be the 'world's fourth-largest emitter of fossil fuel methane', accounting for eight million tonnes last year.
Some 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources, mainly wetlands. The rest are from human-driven activities, particularly agriculture and the energy sector.
The IEA estimated that cutting methane released by the fossil fuel sector would significantly slow global warming, preventing a roughly 0.1 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures by 2050.
'This would have a tremendous impact -– comparable to eliminating all CO2 emissions from the world's heavy industry in one stroke,' the report said.
Around 70% of annual methane emissions from the energy sector could be avoided with existing technologies.
But only five percent of global oil and gas meets 'near-zero' emissions standards, the IEA said.
Energy think tank Ember said the fossil fuel industry needs to reduce methane emissions by 75% by 2030 if the world is to meet the target of reducing overall emissions to net zero by the middle of this century.
In particular, methane from coal was 'still being ignored,' said Ember analyst Sabina Assan.
'There are cost-effective technologies available today, so this is a low-hanging fruit of tackling methane. We can't let coal mines off the hook any longer.'
© AFP 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
4 days ago
- RTÉ News
Climate indicators 'moving in wrong direction'
From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tonnes per year - that is 100,000 tonnes per minute - of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update. Earth's surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term - our 1.5C "carbon budget" - will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated. Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80% of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand. Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world. The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was "well below" two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C. "We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing. "The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen," he added. 'The wrong direction' No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data. Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record", and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN's most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021. The new findings - led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods - are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy. They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested. "I tend to be an optimistic person," said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leeds Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. "But if you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction," he added. The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said. After creeping up, on average, well under two millimetres per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3mm annually since 2019. What happens next An increase in the ocean watermark of 23cm - the width of a letter-sized sheet of paper - over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide. An additional 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would cause one trillion dollars in flood damage annually in the world's 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown. Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth's so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it. So far, 91% of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land an unlivable hell-scape. But the planet's energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat. Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two. But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear. "We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made," said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte. The Paris Agreement's 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century's end. Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. US President Donald Trump's dismantling of domestic climate policies means the US is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
The Journal
11-06-2025
- The Journal
Last month was the second-warmest May on record
LAST MONTH WAS the second-warmest May on record on land and in the oceans, according to the European Union's climate monitoring service. According to the Copernicus Climate Change service, the planet's average surface temperature dipped below the threshold of 1.5 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels, just shy of the record for May set last year. Some parts of Europe 'experienced their lowest levels of precipitation and soil moisture since at least 1979,' Copernicus noted. For the world's oceans, the average sea surface temperature last month was 20.79C. This was second only to May last year, with some unprecedented warmth regionally. 'Large areas in the northeast North Atlantic, which experienced a marine heatwave, had record surface temperatures for the month,' Copernicus reported. 'Most of the Mediterranean Sea was much warmer than average.' Earth's surface was 1.4C above the preindustrial benchmark, defined as the average temperature from 1850 to 1900, before the massive use of fossil fuels caused the climate to dramatically warm. Advertisement 'May 2025 interrupts an unprecedentedly long sequence of months above 1.5C,' noted Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. All but one of the previous 22 months crossed this critical threshold, which marks the 2015 Paris Agreement's most ambitious target for capping global warming. 'This may offer a brief respite for the planet, but we expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,' he added. Over the 12-month period June 2024 to May 2025, warming averaged 1.57C compared to the 1850-1900 benchmark. However, the Paris treaty target is pegged to a 20-year average in order to account for the influence of natural variability. The UN's climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, has said there's a 50% chance of breaching the 1.5C barrier in line with these criteria between 2030 and 2035. Using this method of calculation, the world today has warmed by at least 1.3C. Meanwhile, the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said there's a 70% chance the five-year period 2025-2029, on average, will exceed the 1.5C limit. Scientists stress the importance of limiting global warming as soon and as much as possible because every fraction of a degree increases the risks of more deadly and destructive impacts, on land and in the sea. Related Reads Ireland's excessive emissions mean climate goals 'are increasingly out of reach' Climate target failure: Ireland faces up to 11 National Children's Hospitals worth of fines UN says 70% chance average global warming will exceed 1.5C benchmark in next five years Limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C would significantly reduce the most catastrophic consequences, the IPCC concluded in a major report in 2018. Ice sheet Separately, a report from the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) Greenland's ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the past average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland. 'The melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17… means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heat wave,' one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, associate professor in climate science at the Imperial College London, told reporters. 'Without climate change this would have been impossible,' she said. In Iceland, the temperature exceeded 26 degrees Celsius on 15 May, unprecedented for that time of year on the subarctic island. In May, 94% of Iceland's weather stations registered record temperatures, according to the country's meteorological institute. With reporting from © AFP 2025 Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
RTÉ News
11-06-2025
- RTÉ News
May 2025 second warmest on record
Global heating continued as the new norm, with last month the second warmest May on record on land and in the oceans, according to the European Union's climate monitoring service. The planet's average surface temperature dipped below the threshold of 1.5 degree Celsius above pre industrial levels, just shy of the record for May set last year, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The same holds for the world's oceans. With a surface temperature of 20.79C, last month was second only to May 2024, with some unprecedented warmth regionally. "Large areas in the northeast North Atlantic, which experienced a marine heatwave, had record surface temperatures for the month," Copernicus reported. "Most of the Mediterranean Sea was much warmer than average." The increasingly dire state of the oceans is front-and-centre at the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC), which kicked off Monday in Nice, France. Ocean heat waves are driving marine species to migrate, damaging ecosystems, and reducing the ability of ocean layers to mix, thus hindering the distribution of nutrients. Covering 70% of the globe's surface, oceans redistribute heat and play a crucial role in regulating Earth's climate. Surface water warmed by climate change drives increasingly powerful storms, causing new levels of destruction and flooding in their wake. Some parts of Europe, meanwhile, "experienced their lowest levels of precipitation and soil moisture since at least 1979," Copernicus noted. The UK has been in the grips of its most intense drought in decades, with Denmark and the Netherlands also suffering from a lack of rain. 'Brief respite' Earth's surface last month was 1.4C above the pre industrial benchmark, defined as the average temperature from 1850 to 1900, before the massive use of fossil fuels caused the climate to dramatically warm. "May 2025 interrupts an unprecedentedly long sequence of months above 1.5C," noted Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. All but one of the previous 22 months crossed this critical threshold, which marks the 2015 Paris Agreement's most ambitious target for capping global warming. "This may offer a brief respite for the planet, but we expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system," he added. Over the 12-month period June 2024 to May 2025, warming averaged 1.57C compared to the 1850-1900 benchmark. The Paris treaty target, however, is pegged to a 20-year average, in order to account for the influence of natural variability. The UN's climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, has said there is a 50% chance of breaching the 1.5C barrier in line with these criteria between 2030 and 2035. Using this method of calculation, the world today has warmed by at least 1.3C. The UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), meanwhile, has said there's a 70% chance the five-year period 2025-2029, on average, will exceed the 1.5C limit. Scientists stress the importance of limiting global warming as soon and as much as possible because every fraction of a degree increases the risks of more deadly and destructive impacts, on land and in the sea. Limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C would significantly reduce the most catastrophic consequences, the IPCC concluded in a major report in 2018.
