Deep cuts in methane emissions, including from the fossil fuel industry, are urgently needed to slow the rate of global warming and keep it beneath a threshold agreed by world leaders, according to a U.N. report due to be released next week.
Governments are increasingly looking at methane emissions as they seek solutions to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the target nearly 200 countries agreed to under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Methane has a much higher heat-trapping potential compared with carbon dioxide and it breaks down in the atmosphere much more quickly than that greenhouse gas, meaning cutting methane emissions can have a climate impact sooner.