U.S.- EU Launch Pledge to Cut Super Climate Pollutant Methane

Washington, DC, September 17, 2021 — Today the United States and the European Union launched a global pledge to reduce methane emissions by nearly a third by 2030, as part of a broader effort to increase ambition to address the climate crisis.

The launch was announced at the heads of State meeting known as the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate hosted today by President Biden. This is the first time heads of State have pledged fast action to cut super climate pollutants to meet the 1.5°C temperature target of the Paris Agreement.

The Global Methane Pledge has a goal of at least a 30% reduction below 2020 levels by 2030. Achieving this target would avoid over 0.2°C of warming by the 2040s and keep the planet on a pathway consistent with staying within 1.5°C, according to the Global Methane Assessment, released in May of this year by UNEP and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

According to the Chair’s Summary of today’s meeting,

“many MEF [Major Economies Forum] members, including the European Union, Argentina, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States, declared their intention to join. It was reported that non-MEF countries, including Ghana and Iraq, have also signaled intent to join the Global Methane Pledge. These early supporters of the Pledge include six of the top 15 methane emitters globally and together account for over one-fifth of global methane emissions and nearly half of the global economy.”

The 30% pledge builds on efforts by President Biden and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, starting at the Major Economies Forum climate summit in April, to encourage heads of State to mitigate methane emissions, and is consistent with President Biden’s goal of making the 2020s the decade of climate action. As President Macron of France said at the April Summit, “2030 is the new 2050.”

“Prior to President Biden’s Climate summit in April, the focus of climate policy was on the distant goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). “With time running out, the Biden team has refocused climate policy on 2030, calling for immediate cuts to methane emissions as the best way to slow near-term warming over the next critical 10 to 20-year period. This is essential for slowing self-reinforcing feedbacks and avoiding dangerous climate tipping points, on the way to net-zero by 2050.”

Aggressively cutting methane emissions is the only way to keep the global average temperature from breaching the 1.5°C guardrail above preindustrial levels for the next two to three decades, according to the Global Methane Assessment. More recently, the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report further confirmed the need for immediate and drastic reduction of methane emissions, calling for “strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CH4 [methane] emissions.”

Decarbonizing the energy system also is essential but doesn’t start to reduce warming until 2050. This is because when we stop burning fossil fuels, like coal and diesel, we reduce not only carbon dioxide, but also co-emitted cooling aerosols. These cooling aerosols fall out of the atmosphere in days to months, and this offsets reductions in warming from decarbonization until around 2050.

Zaelke stated that “methane mitigation is needed on top of efforts to decarbonize, and both strategies must be accelerated to the maximum extent possible to slow dangerous, irreversible climate changes.”

“In 2021, climate disruption has been kicking down our door,” said Dr. Gabrielle Dreyfus, Senior Scientist at IGSD. “The frequency and intensity of these extremes are frightening, and if we don’t want to face an even more punishing future, we need to make this the moment for methane. The methane strategy is the best and fastest arrow in our quiver to bend the temperature curve and give us time to decarbonize by 2050.”

The Global Methane Pledge will be formally launched at COP26, the high-profile United Nations climate summit in Glasgow scheduled for the first two weeks of November. Over the coming weeks, many other countries are expected to join the pledge.

For further details, see Joint US-EU Press Release on the Global Methane Pledge, White House (18 September 2021).

(Updated 18 September 2021)

Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of our Time

Washington, DC – The Future of Life Institute today announced that IGSD’s Director of Research Dr. Stephen O. Andersen has been selected for the Future of Life Award, alongside Dr. Susan Solomon and late Joseph Farman, for their dedicated efforts to protect the stratospheric ozone layer. Their efforts are recognized for helping make the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, signed in 1987, the most successful international treaty in history.

The Future of Life Award recognizes individuals who have taken exceptional measures to protect the common future of humanity. Those who, without having received much recognition at the time, have helped make today dramatically better than it may otherwise have been.

Dr. Andersen earned this honor for lifetime achievement while working for the IGSD, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Law Institute, the Consumer Energy Council, the University of Hawaii, and the College of the Atlantic. His tireless efforts brought together leaders from industry, government, and the scientific community to work together to make the Montreal Protocol a success. He is founding co-chair and 27-year member of the Montreal Protocol’s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel and is architect and implementer of the essential use exemptions. His contributions to the Protocol span technical, economic, policy, and societal aspects.

Dr. Susan Solomon led an Antarctic ozone research expedition in 1986-87. Her work confirmed that CFCs were causing ozone depletion and determined that sunlit cloud tops were catalyzing additional ozone-destroying reactions, thereby speeding up the rate of depletion. In the years that followed, both Farman and Solomon became effective public advocates for the development of the Montreal Protocol that their scientific work inspired.

“For those of us lucky enough to know Steve, we discover that he stays with us as a colleague and friend for the rest of our life,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of IGSD. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Steve for more than 40 years, first at the Environmental Law Institute where we both worked on energy efficiency during the first oil embargo, then when he served as an expert witness in lawsuits I was prosecuting in Alaska to protect the state’s natural and cultural resources and then again when Steve was at EPA. He joined IGSD over a decade ago after his distinguished career at the agency, and we’re were able to successfully organize the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the single biggest piece of mandatory climate mitigation ever undertaken.”

“It is astonishing what Dr. Andersen has accomplished,” said Marco González, Former Executive Secretariat of the UN Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and Montreal Protocol. “His contributions range from ozone to climate protection, from team-building of specialists in science, economics, and technology to working with global industries, from forging multinational voluntary agreements to persuading industry’s donation of patented technologies, and from working with governments to authoring game-changing papers and books. His innermost motivation is what’s best for the Planet, his work to protect the Ozone Layer is wide and profound.”

“I am honored to join the ranks of previous winners of the Future of Life Award. This affirmation of my work is a reminder of how incredibly grateful I am for the amazing people I work with protecting the stratospheric ozone layer and climate,” said Dr. Stephen O. Andersen.

“Winning this award reminds me of how much I appreciate the power of ambitious and fearless teams. It is simply the case that protection of the stratospheric ozone layer required governments, corporations, and citizens to work relentlessly for the global good. We did it for ozone, and we can do it for climate!”

The 2017 Future of Life award went to Vasily Arkhipov for solely preventing a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States in 1962, and the 2018 award went to Stanislav Petrov for his help in preventing an accidental nuclear war in 1983. The 2019 award honored Dr. Matthew Meselson for his outstanding contributions to banning biological weapons and focusing biology on cure, and the 2020 award honored Dr. William Feiji and Dr. Victor Zhdanov for their successes in eradicating smallpox and banning biological weapons. The award is funded by Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and presented by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes the positive use of technology.

The Future of Life Institute’s release on the 2021 Future of Life Award is available here.

The Montreal Protocol is the world’s best climate treaty and a model for a global methane agreement 

As the world enters a crucial phase in the battle to combat climate change, International Ozone Day reminds us that the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is not only saving the stratospheric ozone layer and keeping us safe from harmful ultraviolet radiation but is also doing more than any other agreement to slow catastrophic global warming.

Without the Montreal Protocol, climate change would already be extensive and irreversible, and we should once again thank this brilliant agreement for all that it has done. By end of the century, the Protocol’s steady progress over its 33 years of operation will avoid 2.5°C of warming that otherwise would have already pushed the planet past irreversible tipping points. And this is in addition to achieving its original objective of putting the stratospheric ozone layer on the road to recovery.

About 1.7°C of this avoided warming comes from the Protocol’s mandatory reduction of super polluting chemicals—CFCs, HCFCs, and now HFCs—used primarily as refrigerants in cooling equipment.

An additional 0.8°C of warming will be avoided by protecting our planet’s forests and other carbon “sinks” from damaging ultraviolet radiation that reduced their ability to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it safely.

As we celebrate the achievements of this planet-saving treaty, we also need to realize how much remains to be done. The climate crisis needs solutions that can move at lightning speed, including further strengthening the Montreal Protocol to address nitrous oxide, the last unregulated ozone-depleting chemical, and a powerful climate pollutant.

We also should look to the Montreal Protocol for inspiration for other sectoral agreements, starting with methane, the most powerful climate pollutant after carbon dioxide. Tackling methane is the single biggest and fastest strategy for slowing warming in the critical next decade to 2030 and beyond, capable of avoiding nearly 0.3°C of warming by the 2040s.

With a Montreal Protocol-inspired methane agreement, we can speed up climate protection, strengthen the Paris Agreement, and give the world a fighting chance to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

There is no time left to slow-walk climate solutions. Following in the footsteps of the Montreal Protocol to speed up climate action is our best strategy for avoiding disaster.

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Avoids nearly 0.3°C by 2040, more by end of century

Aggressively cutting methane emissions is the fastest and most effective way to reduce the rate of warming and keep the global average temperature from breaching the 1.5°C barrier above preindustrial levels, according to the Global Methane Assessment released today by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC).

The Assessment calculates that available mitigation measures can cut emissions from human activities by 45 percent and avoid nearly 0.3 °C of warming by the 2040s, as well as avoid 255,000 premature deaths and 26 million tonnes of crop losses worldwide every year.

The Global Methane Assessment supports fast climate action to win the 10-year climate sprint to 2030 and limit warming to 1.5 °C. President Biden and his climate team made this a central part of the Climate Summit on Earth Day two weeks ago. At the Summit several heads of State including, President Macron of France, President Putin of Russia, President Phuc of Vietnam, and President Fernández of Argentina, called for fast methane mitigation.

“Cutting methane is the fastest way we know to slow warming,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “This makes methane mitigation the best strategy for slowing self-reinforcing feedbacks and avoiding dangerous climate tipping points, including the loss of the reflective sea ice in the Arctic.”

Zaelke added, “without fast methane mitigation, we’ll crash through the 1.5 °C barrier in a decade or less and likely lose the rest of the reflective Arctic sea ice. If that happens, we’ll lose control of the climate system and it won’t be pretty.”

The Assessment’s findings are supported by a parallel peer-reviewed paper published last month that further calculates that the climate benefits of deploying technically feasible methane mitigation measures would be comparable in magnitude to the avoided warming from phasing down HFC refrigerants, up to 0.5 °C by 2100:

“In the long-term, the large potential in avoided warming from technically feasible measures is similar in magnitude to the upper end of projections of avoided global-mean warming [0.5°C] from phasing out another important short-lived climate pollutant, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs; Xu et al. 2013). The potential avoided warming from HFC phase-out sparked an international agreement to curb future emissions growth – the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol– which entered into force in January 2019. Methane mitigation has even larger potential benefits than HFC mitigation because its future impact is projected to be double that of HFCs…”

Human activities are responsible for more than half of methane emissions, primarily from three sectors: waste, agriculture, and oil and gas. Methane is second only to carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere, and molecule for molecule is more than 80 times more powerful in doing so in the critical 20 years ahead.

Today, methane levels in the atmosphere are rising faster than at any time since the 1980s and surged in 2020, a disturbing development scientists have called ‘heart breaking’.

The Assessment calculates that methane mitigation measures would quickly pay for themselves. More than 80 percent have low mitigation costs, and roughly half have negative costs. Every tonne of methane emissions reduced would produce benefits worth U.S. $4,300, as well as contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

President Biden and his climate team have declared the current decade to 2030 to be the decade for fast climate action, and stronger controls on methane emissions must be a central part.

The 2021 Global Methane Assessment is available here.

Washington, DC, 26 April 2021 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took an important step for climate protection today by finalizing Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program rule 23 (SNAP 23). This rule approves several low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants for split system air conditioners and heat pumps, including R-32.

R-32 is a single-component, lower GWP refrigerant that is used in the most energy-efficient heat pumps and air conditioners sold in Europe and Japan. It is globally accepted and already used in the United States in window air conditioners. Manufacturers worldwide have selected this refrigerant as the next-generation solution for most residential, light commercial, and applied products. Many other lower-GWP refrigerant choices are at various stages of commercialization.

“The Biden Administration is proving that government can be a force for good in approving superior technology to replace dangerous climate super pollutants,” said Dr. Stephen O. Andersen, IGSD Director of Research. “We are encouraged to see the EPA clear the logjam from the previous administration and act at the speed of business to protect the climate.”

The Office of Management and Budget waived Executive Order 12866 review on the SNAP 23 final rule, which sped up publication of the rule by the Office of the Federal Register.

“Finally, US consumers and businesses will have access to more energy-efficient air conditioners and heat pumps using climate-friendly refrigerants like R-32,” Said Kristen Taddonio, IGSD Senior Climate and Energy Advisor. “IGSD  looks forward to listing the most efficient new models soon at our climatefriendlycooling.com, where consumers can easily find energy-efficient products that use the most climate-friendly refrigerants.”

Finalization of SNAP 23 comes less than three months after President Biden’s January executive order package which directed the State Department to prepare a transmittal package for submission to the Senate for advice and consent to ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase down HFCs (Sec.102. j.); and the inclusion of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 in the Consolidated Appropriations Act that was signed into law on 27 December 2020, which provided federal authority to phase down HFC refrigerant production and consumption in line with the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.

“We’re happy to see the President’s climate team is on a roll with their actions to cut HFCs!” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.

See the Signed SNAP Listing Rule 23 here.