Why methane needs to take centre stage in the climate debate
22 April 2022 - CISL Prince of Wales Fellow, Pablo Salas and CISL Fellow, Paul Gilding, reflect on the urgent need to reduce methane emissions in the next decade to avoid runaway climate change.
As Western powers scramble to rework their energy mix and suppliers to form a buffer against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, EU agriculture ministers have been meeting to thrash out food security. According to the International Energy Agency and World Food Programme, the devastating war in Ukraine is creating a crisis of global proportions in both energy and food sectors. The arrival of this double-headed beast is no surprise.
The interconnectedness of the food and energy sectors is now well understood thanks to the growing body of research on the food-energy-water nexus and its links with climate change. As global mean temperature increases, water availability and land degradation are going to affect the food and energy sectors simultaneously. This is what Sir John Beddington, when acting as UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor, described as the upcoming ‘perfect storm’. But what Sir John didn’t realise is that an equally relevant additional challenge exists in the short term for these two sectors: the urgent need to reduce methane emissions.
Agri-food and energy are the two sectors with the highest amount of methane production, approximately 40% and 35% of the total anthropogenic emissions, respectively (waste represents roughly 20%). And given the high warming potential of methane in the short term (around 90 times higher than carbon dioxide in a ten-year timeframe), abating methane in both sectors is the most realistic option we have to keep alive the 1.5C target agreed in Paris and ratified in Glasgow last year.
Methane has long been ignored for exactly the same reason it now needs to be centre stage: it does nearly all its warming in the first 10 years after release. So, for the last 40 years of climate debate methane has been kept in the wings while we’ve focused on long-term solutions, with an eye to 2100. But with “off the scale” weather events and climate extremes now occurring at much lower temperatures than climate models predicted, we’ve had to sharpen our focus– our challenge is now getting past 2040. That means our priority task is not just cutting CO2 emissions, which determines long term warming, but slowing the rate of warming so we don’t trigger runaway climate change. For this task we have only one option: cut methane. Fast.
Most studies dealing with methane abatement focus on the energy and waste sector. Changes to the fossil fuel industry and to waste processes are essential but take time as they involve infrastructure change. Our recent working paper shows much faster methane reductions can be achieved by accelerating the ongoing trend for alternative proteins and immediately implementable changes in menu options for both humans and livestock.
Plant-based meat is moving fast into mainstream distribution channels, way beyond the original vegan/vegetarian niche. We now even see MacPlants and Plant Based Whoppers now widely available in many countries, while supermarkets are providing a growing number of plant-based meat and dishes at comparable prices and palatability. But the key shift is expected to be triggered within the ‘business-to-business’ sector, as the production costs of alternative proteins decline and challenge animal sourced ingredients such as ground beef and milk powder. This means that many people will eat less meat without even noticing it, in the same way they may use renewable electricity also without knowing it.
The investment going into this sector is growing exponentially, while production costs are decreasing sharply, which are clear signs of an upcoming disruption – in the same way we’ve seen with renewable energy, batteries and electric vehicles. Market shares for alternative proteins are expected to reach double figures within the next few years and reach up to 62% by mid-century. If this current market trend continues, there could be a reduction of emissions from traditional agriculture (predominantly methane) of around 50% by the 2030s.
Because emissions in the agri-food sectors are not produced by long-lived assets, change can be much faster than in the energy and waste sectors. For instance, by eating less meat and dairy or by feeding cows differently, methane emissions can be reduced very rapidly. And it’s not all about going plant based. Transitioning from beef to chicken can already produce large emission reductions (for a comparison of the carbon footprint of different protein sources, please refer to the article that Poore and Nemecek published in Science in 2018).
As is the nature of complex systems, there are many variables that can impact the agri-food sector – water shortages, soil degradation, overuse of fertilisers, inequality, reliance on monocultures, concentration of market power. But one certainty is the changing climate. Our agri-food system is a key cause of climate change but climate change is also the single biggest risk to our agri-food system. When things are unsustainable, they stop.
Entrepreneurs and scientists are now hard at work growing meat and milk without the animal, they are brewing palm oil, fermenting essential nutrients like omega-3 oil and producing protein flour using just electricity, bacteria and air. We are entering a period of global disruptive transformation of the agri-food system.
There are now two races to watch. The first is between humanity and runaway climate change. It is possible for us to win this race if we focus on methane in the short term and CO2 in the long term. The second race is between the world’s agri-food companies and their disruptive competitors. Here, the market winner will be she who cuts methane fastest. Game on.