President Joe Biden unveiled new regulations at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday designed to slash methane emissions from oil and natural gas companies.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The rules would require what the EPA calls “a comprehensive monitoring program to require companies to find and fix leaks” applying across operations, including wells, pipes and storage tanks. It includes provisions to encourage the use of new technology such as drones for more effective monitoring.
It would prohibit venting off gas at oil wells, which producers sometimes do when oil is much more valuable than gas. The agency would require producers to put that gas in a pipeline to be sold when possible to keep natural gas from being wasted. In 2030 alone, that would save $690 million worth of gas that might otherwise be wasted, the EPA said.
NBC News adds, “The EPA rules will be stricter than regulations on methane emissions that were set in 2016 during the Obama administration. Those rules were relaxed by the Trump administration, but methane standards were reinstated shortly after President Joe Biden took office.”
Roughly 75 percent of the U.S’s methane emissions will be covered by the new EPA rules, according to senior administration officials.
The American Petroleum Institute, a powerful oil and natural gas lobbyist, signaled support for Biden’s new rules, saying in a statement that they are committed to “building on the progress we have achieved in reducing methane emissions.”
Reuters explains:
Methane is the second-biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide. Its high heat-trapping potential and relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere means cutting its emissions can have an outsized impact on the trajectory of the world’s climate.
According to the U.N. Environment Program, methane emissions have been responsible for approximately 30 percent of global warming since preindustrial times.
Biden wants to drastically reduce America’s methane emissions by 2030. By the end of the decade, according to Biden’s latest goal, the country will emit about half as much methane as it did in 2005, when carbon emissions peaked.
Biden is also trying to convince other nations to follow America’s lead. The New York Times reports:
At the United Nations climate summit this week, Mr. Biden is trying to persuade other countries to reduce emissions from fossil fuels that are heating the planet to dangerous levels.
The White House said that more than 90 countries had signed the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment to reducing methane emissions 30 percent by 2030, including half of the world’s top 30 methane emitters. The United States, European Union, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria are among those that have signed on. Some major polluters, like China, India and Russia, have not joined.
Biden called the pledge a “game changing” development, adding, “This isn’t just something we have to do to protect the environment and future. It’s an enormous opportunity for all of us, all of our nations, to create jobs and make many climate goals a core part of recovery as well.”
Meanwhile, the U.K. has led an effort to stop deforestation. The Associated Press explains:
The U.K. government said it has received pledges from leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Among them are several countries with massive forests, including Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia, Russia and the United States.
More than $19 billion in public and private funds have been pledged toward the plan.