Methane (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Grand Committee

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[Baroness Sheehan]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee Methane: keep up the momentum (HL Paper 45).

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, it is indeed a pleasure, as chair, to debate the findings of the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report, Methane: Keep Up the Momentum, about a devastating greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide and one that is responsible for about 30% of global warming to date. Yet the evidence we gathered shows that the story is one that offers hope because methane, although very powerful in its warming impact, is short-lived and, therefore, if we can reduce emissions, we can substantially slow down global warming within decades, and with greater ambition we could start to cool the planet. Professor Piers Forster, interim chair of the Government’s advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, stressed that rapidly reducing methane emissions alongside addressing carbon dioxide could reduce the current trajectory of global warming from 0.25 degrees Celsius per decade to 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade, and that is a goal worth achieving.

The good news is that we already know how to capture, bottle and sell the emissions from two of the highest emitting sectors globally: oil and gas, and waste management. Emissions from agriculture are more challenging to capture, but there is light on the horizon to reduce them, as highlighted in the report. The key thing about methane, otherwise known as natural gas, is that it has value. We use it to heat our homes, cook our food and produce electricity. It is the transition fuel that will bridge our move to renewable energy, so why vent and flare it when we could harness and use it? This is what makes this report so important and one that the Government must not leave to gather dust, which is the fate of so many excellent Select Committee reports, but instead to use it to lend momentum to the already excellent, but currently stalled, record of reducing methane emissions in the UK and, importantly—and this is the crux of the report—to use our know-how, experience and ambition to leverage action internationally, as we have undertaken to do in the Global Methane Pledge.

We heard evidence that there is potential to scale up cutting-edge products of UK companies as they deploy innovative tools to measure, monitor and verify emissions. In short, with the right policy and regulatory framework we can support growth in our economy and generate jobs, while reducing methane emissions and keeping warming within the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. I hope that the Minister will agree to meet me so that I can introduce him to one such company in the space sector, where huge strides are being made to measure the intensity of methane emissions and locate them with pinpoint accuracy. This will be a game-changer.

The purpose of the report was to evaluate progress made on the domestic side to tackle the sources of anthropogenic methane emissions that are within the scope of the Global Methane Pledge and to get to grips with the potential for the UK to do more both at home and internationally where there is so much low-hanging fruit. Will the Minister state whether he has fully bought into the commitment of the Government led by Boris Johnson, when, at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow, they wholeheartedly supported the launch of the Global Methane Pledge to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 from a 2020 baseline? If the Minister is fully signed up to support the Global Methane Pledge, on what basis can he justify the Government’s refusal to publish their own methane action plan to provide clarity on priority actions for each sector? I hope he will not point to an as yet non-existent carbon budget delivery plan because that will not suffice. We ask for a clear, stand-alone document to encourage other countries to produce the same. Such an important intervention to combat the climate emergency cannot be buried in a wide-ranging document such as the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, where one has to dig hard to discern the Government’s intent. The Minister may also point to these country’s co-chairship with Brazil of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the UN-affiliated organisation that provides a secretariat for the Global Methane Pledge. I am truly delighted that Minister Kerry McCarthy has taken up this role discarded by the US in January.

As my committee’s methane report makes clear, domestically we have made good progress in reducing methane emissions from the waste management and oil and gas sectors, but less so in agriculture. Residual emissions may be more stubborn and therefore more costly. However, it is the Government’s role to balance the cost of action with the cost of inaction over the long term. That point is made throughout the report.

I turn to the waste sector. The UK’s success in reducing methane from the waste sector was driven in large part by the landfill tax. Together with incentives from the renewables obligation scheme, which improved landfill gas capture, the UK saw a 76% decrease in emissions between 1990 and 2022. Colleagues speaking after me may wish to say more on the important issues of waste crime, the renewable obligation scheme, anaerobic digesters and other matters. I hope the Minister, however, will take this opportunity to reiterate his Government’s determination to bear down on upstream measures such as reducing food and packaging waste, given the greater stress that this Government are placing on moving faster towards a more circular economy. Our technical ability to tackle emissions from landfill sites is world-beating. There is much that we can share internationally. Later this year, COP 30 is taking place in Brazil, where there is opportunity to leverage our knowledge and expertise to work with Latin American countries as they consider their policy options for landfill gas capture. I hope we will lean into this with gusto and lend our expertise.

Moving to agriculture, almost half the UK’s methane emissions can be attributed to agriculture, all of it from livestock. The 15% reduction in emissions since 1990 can be attributed largely to reduced consumption of red meat. However, the committee heard that there are other viable methods for further meaningful cuts in emissions, such as improved animal welfare, selective breeding, methane-suppressing feed additives and better slurry management. Can the Minister assure me that Defra takes the issue of methane emissions seriously? Defra is not the responsible government department for greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, methane reduction just does not seem to be high on its list of priorities. In their response to recommendation 10—that low-cost, long-term solutions must be prioritised, with supermarkets playing their part in reducing emissions from the food sector—the Government said:

“Alongside the upcoming food strategy and farming roadmap we will deliver a credible plan to decarbonise food and farming”.


Will the Minister say when can we expect to see the food strategy and farming road map?

Similarly, the Government are reviewing the regulatory framework that they inherited—thank goodness, because our report highlighted grave shortcomings in the existing framework. For example, I hope that the review will address the fact that there is no regulatory oversight of agricultural methane, apart from in some aspects of agricultural waste.

I move on to energy. In my view, one of the most important recommendations in the report is to,

“demand greater transparency and accountability of industry commitments to end the routine venting and flaring of methane”

by

“a publicly accessible roadmap and transparent data”.

This is something that the industry has committed to do, as was restated by the NSTA when it gave evidence to the committee. However, the Government’s response did not address the points about transparent data or a road map for the industry; perhaps the Minister could take this opportunity to do so now.

I say this because international emissions from the oil and gas sector continue to grow, yet the gas that is routinely vented and flared could be captured and sold. Professor Steven Hamburg of Environmental Defense Fund told the committee that oil and gas have “enormous potential” for methane reduction globally. He also said:

“That is not low-hanging fruit; that is fruit lying on the ground”.


Can the Minister provide an update on progress in how methane from the upstream oil and gas sector could be included in the ETS scheme? I hope that progress is being made on that.

In concluding, I stress that the report would have been challenging to get over the line in the best of circumstances. However, during it, we lost our policy analyst, Flo Bullough, midway; we then lost our clerk, Emily Bailey Page, towards the end of the report’s finalisation. Such talented people will always be in demand. I would like to put on the record my gratitude to them for their sterling input. I must thank wholeheartedly all those who stepped into the breach, including Tom Wilson, the principal clerk of Select Committees, the incoming clerk, Andrea Ninomiya, and our policy analyst, Lily Paulson. They were magnificent in picking up the baton and ushering the report over the finish line, and I thank them all once again.

This report holds the dubious record of being the longest-debated report to be produced by any House of Lords committee, which will give your Lordships a flavour of the divergent views of the committee. I wholeheartedly commend my colleagues on the committee for the unfailing courtesy with which all discussions were undertaken. There is real value in bringing together the threads of different viewpoints in a report that all members felt able to sign up to and one of which I, for one, am very proud. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I thank all contributors for their valuable and well-thought-out responses to this report; they are very much appreciated. I expected no less from my esteemed colleagues on the committee because their participation in the discussions, as well as the engaged way in which their contributions were made during our deliberations, left me in no doubt that we would have a very good debate today.

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for his contribution in the gap. His point—and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jay—about the disturbing international scenario in which we now find ourselves will prove a challenge in terms of tackling not just methane emissions but carbon dioxide emissions. I was a bit heartened by China’s recent announcement that it will not ease up on its efforts to tackle climate change. Indeed, at a UN summit as a precursor to the COP 30 meeting, it announced that its NDC, which will be due some time before COP 30, will encompass sector-wide emissions across the economy; that was heartening to hear. Not only will they cover the whole economy: they will cover all greenhouse gases, including methane. We will wait with interest to see the detail.

I will not detain noble Lords too long—I am sure that we all need to move on—but I stress the need for better communication to farmers, which the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, mentioned. There was consensus on this from the NFU, the Nature Friendly Farming Network, and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. Without farmers on board, we will not get to grips with methane either at home or abroad.

I am not going to go into detail on the other contributions, save to say that I was heartened by what I heard. Let me just leave noble Lords with the thought that carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing in the atmosphere. The Mauna Loa Observatory—I hope that NOAA does not get to erase all this data—has been monitoring carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. It has not been monitoring it for the past 800,000 years, but we have data from ice cores in Antarctica that shows that from a steady baseline of 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide before the Industrial Revolution, we have seen, in terms of ecological time, a straight-line increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide to today’s average of 426 parts per million.

We are in uncharted territory, so tackling the short-term but powerful greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are our route to avoiding some of the disastrous tipping points that we are otherwise hurtling towards. We have an opportunity to buy time, and we should take it. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.