For whom the bell tolls

摘要

Oil and gas frms will fnd little solace in the new report from the UN Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres says, calling for immediate action on energy with deep carbon cuts. But the IPCC’s new focus on methane ofers a more positive role for the sector in the energy transition. Methane is 85 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, over 20 years, and accounted for almost half of human-related warming in 2010-19 relative to pre-industrial times, the IPCC says. But methane is also a short-lived climate pollutant with an atmospheric lifetime of about a decade, compared with centuries for CO2. Halving anthropogenic methane emissions by 2030 could cut global warming by 0.3°C in the 2040s, according to the UN Environment Pro- gramme (Unep) Global Methane Assessment report.