Global Methane Pledge

In news- Recently, the Global Methane Pledge was launched at the ongoing UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

About Global Methane Pledge-

It is an effort led jointly by the United States and the European Union.
It is essentially an agreement to reduce global methane emissions.
One of the central aims of this agreement is to cut down methane emissions by up to 30 per cent from 2020 levels by the year 2030.
The pledge covers countries which emit nearly half of all methane, and make up 70% of global GDP.
Over 90 countries have signed this pledge so far.

About Methane & its sources-

Methane is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, after carbon dioxide.
It is also a component of natural gas.
Around 40% of CH4 comes from natural sources such as wetlands but the bigger share now comes from a range of human activities, ranging from agriculture such as cattle and rice production to rubbish dumps.
Human sources of methane include landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, wastewater treatment, and certain industrial processes, the US Environmental Protection Agency notes.
The oil and gas sectors are among the largest contributors to human sources of methane.
Human sources of methane are responsible for 60 per cent of global methane emissions.
These emissions come primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, decomposition in landfills and the agriculture sector.

Its impact on the environment-

As per International Energy Agency (IEA), methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime (12 years as compared to centuries for CO2).
It is a much more potent greenhouse gas simply because it absorbs more energy while it is in the atmosphere.
As per UN, methane is a powerful pollutant and has a global warming potential that is 80 times greater than carbon dioxide, about 20 years after it has been released into the atmosphere.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, methane accounts for about half of the 1.0 degrees Celsius net rise in global average temperature since the pre-industrial era.
According to the UN, 25 percent of the warming that the world is experiencing today is because of methane.

Coalbed methane-

CBM, like shale gas, is extracted from what are known as unconventional gas reservoirs — where gas is extracted directly from the rock that is the source of the gas (shale in case of shale gas and coal in case of CBM).
The methane is held underground within the coal and is extracted by drilling into the coal seam and removing the groundwater.
The resulting drop in pressure causes the methane to be released from the coal.
In India, for instance, in 2019, the Ministry of Coal asked state-run coal miner Coal India Limited (CIL) to produce 2 MMSCB (million metric standard cubic metres) per day of coalbed methane (CBM) gas in the next 2 to 3 years.