Is the UK’s new Methane Action Plan a step change or a misstep? – Inside track

The call for a national action plan to tackle methane emissions has long been a central ask of Green Alliance and other campaigners, NGOs and researchers across the UK. This week, our calls were answered. Alongside its Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan, the government published the UK’s first ever Methane Action Plan.

Methane is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over 20 years. But in breaking down far more quickly than carbon dioxide, cutting methane emissions is the ‘climate emergency brake’, needed while cuts to emissions across other sectors take effect.

In the past, methane policy has been piecemeal, never brought together in one place and with no coherent cross departmental strategy to ensure progress. So, the new national plan is welcome news.

Over the past few decades, the UK has had a positive story to tell. Between 1990 and 2020, it cut methane emissions by 62 per cent, largely due to closing fossil fuel plants.

But progress has stalled since, and our analysis shows earlier plans would have only resulted in a 19 per cent reduction in UK methane emissions by 2030. That’s despite signing up to the Global Methane Pledge’s target of a 30 per cent reduction, at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021. The fact that it has taken four years for the UK to produce an action plan, a central ask of the pledge, has been a major source of frustration.

So what does the new action plan offer?

Higher ambition?
According to our latest interpretation of this plan, methane emissions should now see a 22 per cent reduction by 2030. While it’s showing higher ambition, it’s still well below the Global Methane Pledge target and the 37 per cent cuts our research has shown are possible and readily available at relatively low cost and political risk.

In a global context, the EU, Canada and Nigeria are all planning higher proportional cuts in methane emissions over the same time period.

New policy?
The most significant new intervention in the action plan is its commitment to “understand and address methane emissions associated with imported fossil fuels”. These can vary widely. The International Energy Agency, for example, points to Turkmenistan as producing oil and gas with the highest methane intensity per unit of energy produced. But Norway took steps to end routine venting and flaring of methane and other gases in the North Sea as far back as 1971, officially producing zero methane emissions per unit of fossil fuel energy. By moving towards a system of monitoring and reporting, the UK can cut its emissions from imports in a similar way to the EU’s Methane Regulation.

Across waste and agriculture, the plan is defined more by continuity than change. There are warm words for landfill gas capture, a Circular Economy Strategy and methane suppressant food additives for livestock, but little extra policy to what was expected or in place already. And some thorny political issues, such as reducing UK meat consumption, are conveniently ignored, despite the benefits it could bring to health and food security

Targets?
We, and others, have long argued that methane should be taken out of the carbon budget process and dealt with separately to ensure that its climate change potency and short-lived impacts are fully appreciated. But the Methane Action Plan doesn’t include a quantifiable target, needed to measure progress, so its pledges will be difficult to scrutinise. There is, however, a ray of hope in the Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan which suggests the government will consider an agriculture emissions target for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Considering agriculture is now the sector most responsible for methane emissions, this could be a step in the right direction.

Marks out of ten?
We give this plan six out of ten. It rightly underscores the importance of urgent action and the UK’s part in meeting the Global Methane Pledge. And there is a welcome and positive step forward on international fossil fuel standards. But there are some important elements missing.

When the government takes the plan to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next week, it will need to demonstrate its intention to go further and faster at home, as well as offering concrete support to other countries to take more action, including getting more nations to sign up to the global pledge.