Methane emissions are to be slashed in the US in a long-awaited rule that will be announced today at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
President Biden will make the announcement as he wraps up a two-day appearance at the conference.
Yesterday the Queen urged world leaders at the event to work together in “common cause” to tackle climate change and “solve the most insurmountable problems”.
Biden has pledged during the conference to work with the European Union and other nations to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent worldwide by 2030.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will, for the first time, tighten methane regulations for the oil and gas sector, as laid out in one of Biden’s first executive orders, to limit the methane spewing from about one million oil and gas rigs across the US, according to The New York Times.
Advertisement
This includes plugging methane leaks from the nation’s three million miles of pipelines, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage on farms, and capturing 70 per cent of methane emissions from US landfills.
The announcement comes more than a year after the administration of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, rolled back regulations aimed at reducing emissions of methane from oil and gas operations.
Michael Regan, EPA administrator, said that the new rule, established under the Clean Air Act, would lead to significant reductions of pollutants and would be stricter than an Obama-era standard set in 2016.
��It is now abundantly clear that America is back and leading by example in confronting the climate crisis with bold ambition,” Regan said, referring to the summit.
What is Cop26 and why is the climate change summit so important?
Advertisement
Drew Shindell, professor of earth science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, wrote on The Conversation website that the bid to chop methane emissions by at least 30 per cent this decade, to meet the Paris climate agreement goal of keeping global warming under 1.5C, “would dramatically change the world’s methane trajectory . . . to slow climate change”.
Methane causes ground-level ozone, “which contributes to a lot of respiratory problems, including asthma in children, respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders. There’s pretty robust evidence that it can also exacerbate cardiovascular disease.
“Reducing methane improves the quality of the air we breathe at the same time that it reduces climate change, and the results are almost immediate,” he said.
