In my 50 years in the environmental movement, the decision I most regret is one I made in 2005. As the executive director of the Sierra Club, I decided the organization should largely ignore methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and focus on carbon dioxide, the most prevalent heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere and a byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
My colleagues and I understood that methane, which comes from man-made and natural sources, would eventually have to be curbed to slow climate change. But the data suggested that it was a relatively minor contributor to global warming and could wait. And so I neglected methane for decades, as did many climate regulators, activists and negotiators.
It wasn’t until three years ago that I came to see the gravity of my mistake: that methane is an urgent problem and that one source of it is a relatively low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change. Methane traps about 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide over 20 years. And methane emissions, which are driving estimated 45 percent of human-caused warming, are rising rapidly.
I now believe that cleaning up methane leaks from the production and shipping of oil and gas — one of the most significant sources of these emissions — is the best hope we have to avoid triggering some of the most consequential climate tipping points in the next decade. I think realistically it is our only hope.
The reason the next decade is so crucial is that several natural systems may be on the brink of irreversible change. For example, if warming causes an acceleration in permafrost melt, large swaths of Alaska and Canada could be rendered uninhabitable. If warming forces a large Antarctic ice shelf to break loose, then much of Florida and many other coastal regions could be flooded. We need to slow global warming in time to prevent such catastrophes, and cutting methane emissions is the best, quickest way to do so.
Oil and gas wells leak methane at the wellhead and in the processing and transport of these fossil fuels. But the gas is relatively easy and cheap to recover. When we seal leaks, the atmospheric concentration of methane declines, and we limit warming, making it one of the best bangs for our buck.
The oil and gas industry can afford to clean up its leaks, and by the end of 2023, companies producing nearly half the world’s oil signed a pledge to reach near-zero methane emissions by 2030. But they are moving much too slowly; the only way to incentivize them to move faster and to get every single company on board is for governments to pay for their cleanup costs and for buyers to purchase only certified low-leakage gas.
Governments worldwide and U.S. states committed to climate action will need to sway the oil industry to protect the world from climate chaos. In exchange for sealing leaks, companies should get preferential access to markets.
It’s not fair to pay rich oil companies to clean up their pollution, but it’s essential to get the job done fast. To date, efforts have relied primarily on diplomacy and common sense, but they have proved too slow. Payoffs work faster.
Methane emissions come from surprising places. Researchers estimate that roughly half of those in U.S. oil fields come from wells that don’t produce significant amounts of oil or gas. Their owners often rely on equipment that is in disrepair or are just trying to avoid the costs of properly sealing them and shutting them down. We need to make it worth their while to act quickly.
A big source of methane emissions is the venting and flaring of gas at oil wells that don’t have pipeline connections to capture it.
But there are tools that can help. Installing an electric actuator on a pipeline can prevent leaks and costs only about $3,500. This can save enough methane a year to equal up to 33 barrels of oil. The recovered methane can be sold as natural gas.
In the Trump era, the U.S. government almost certainly won’t be helpful in this cleanup effort. The key players are methane consumers and importers: states such as New York, Illinois, Colorado and California and countries such as Japan, South Korea and those in the European Union. They should subsidize the oil industry to start aggressive cleanup of methane leaks in 2026 and 2027 and ensure that gas coming into their economies is certified to have next to no methane emissions.
Gas and oil produced with emissions need to be subject to fees, which can pay for loans for cleanup. That gives the oil industry both the funds to plug the leaks and the market incentives to keep their pipelines and ships that transport liquefied natural gas clean.
With each passing year, extreme weather does more damage to human communities. We are in an emergency now, and we must implement the reforms that climate leaders like me should have prioritized years ago.
Carl Pope is a clean energy policy adviser to several foundations and an author. His books include “Climate of Hope,” which he wrote with Michael Bloomberg.
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