In the lead up to COP 28, China and the EU have announced major methane policies.

Meanwhile, Australia has not yet made real progress on methane action, despite signing the Global Methane Pledge over a year ago.

The Climate Change Authority is due to announce the recommendations from its review of Australia's climate pollution measurement methods. We know that Australia is under-reporting our methane emissions by 60-90% - the least Minister Bowen should do in the lead up to Global Methane meetings at COP28, is commit to fixing Australia's methane measurement problem.

Minister Chris Bowen asked the CCA to look at updating methane measurement, verification and reporting and implementing changes by 1 July 2024. It's time to get the job done and make the changes.

Methane is a climate super-pollutant 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide and responsible for about half of global temperature rise to date. Methane is turbo-charging the climate disasters impacting communities all over the world right now.

Keeping coal in the ground is the number one way to tackle Australia's contribution to the global climate crisis. In the meantime cutting coal methane is one of the urgent changes we need to reduce Australia’s emissions to zero. 

We won’t be able to hide from the huge scale of our methane emissions for much longer. Satellite monitoring of methane emissions is here and more and more evidence shows our methane emissions are much larger than we report. Australia, in the very least, must require accurate methane emissions measurement, reporting and verification.

On 28 Nov 2023, Ember released a new Coal Mine Methane Reporting Data Tracker, to improve visibility on global coal mine methane (CMM) emissions data, and revealed that "Australia’s coal mines are leaking increasing rates of potent methane, without proper measurement or mitigation measures."

Methane makes up ⅓ of Australia’s total climate pollution but we have no plan to reduce this climate super-pollutant. 

The IEA’s 2023 Roadmap to Net Zero outlines methane reduction in the fossil fuel sector as one of the top four actions needed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, modelling the need for a 75% cut in methane by 2030.

Coal and gas companies in Australia are allowed to leak millions of tonnes of super-polluting methane without consequence. Minister Bowen must rein in Australia’s methane problem by committing to fix methane measurement and making a national methane action plan.

If Minister Bowen does not commit to fixing Australia’s methane measurement problem, Australia will remain in the dark on methane pollution.

What's happening

We have the opportunity to push Climate Minister Chris Bowen to commit to fix methane measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) in Australia.

Let’s put methane on the agenda, to push hard for a commitment to MRV implementation, and then to a National Methane Action Plan.

How to take action

Use the key messages above and tiles/hashtags below on your social media channels

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Example post: 

Coal and gas companies in Australia are allowed to leak millions of tonnes of super-polluting methane without consequence. Minister Bowen must rein in Australia’s methane problem by committing to fix methane measurement and making a national methane action plan.

#COP28 #methane #GlobalMethanePledge #1.5degrees
@ChrisBowenMP @TheSuperpowerInstitute