The rule’s 3 a.m. rollout was timed to coincide with the ongoing U.N. climate talks in Dubai.
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled sweeping new regulations targeting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector on Saturday, a significant milestone for President Joe Biden’s strategy for curbing the pollution driving up the Earth’s temperatures.
The rule’s 3 a.m. rollout was timed to coincide with the ongoing U.N. climate talks in Dubai, where the U.S. has sought to play a leading role in global efforts to reduce emissions of the powerful planet-heating gas. But its biggest test will be in the legal arena at home, where conservatives on the Supreme Court have slapped down regulations the justices viewed as White House overreach.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement called the rule a “strong action” that “significantly” curbs methane pollution.
“We’ve crafted these technology standards to advance American innovation and account for the industry’s leadership in accelerating methane technology,” he said.
The U.S. is also hosting a separate methane summit Saturday in Dubai alongside China and the United Arab Emirates. China, the world’s top source of methane pollution, agreed in a deal with the U.S. last month to address methane in its next 10-year climate plan, which is due in 2025.
Should it survive the expected court challenges, the rule would join the landmark climate legislation that Biden and congressional Democrats enacted last year, which is unleashing billions of dollars to eliminate greenhouse gas leaks from oil and gas wells, processing plants and pipelines. The aim is to help slow the warming that has made 2023 the hottest year on record.
Nations are on track to miss the goals they set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which called for limiting the global rise in temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution levels. (It also set a stretch goal of 1.5 degrees.) So at the COP28 talks in the United Arab Emirates, they have homed in on an effort to slash methane pollution as one of the fastest, surest ways to slow the problem.
Methane is the second-biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. It is the main component of natural gas and traps heat 86 times more effectively over 20-year timescales than CO2. Climate scientists have said quickly curbing methane would blunt some of the worst effects of climate change in the coming years.
So far, regulatory efforts have largely centered on controlling methane from the oil and gas sector, where technological progress and new monitoring capabilities have made reducing emissions more feasible.
Those advancements have already been incorporated into state regulations in New Mexico and Colorado, and were used to help guide the federal regulations, said Carrie Jenks, executive director of Harvard University’s Environmental & Energy Law Program.
Bringing the EPA regulations into the spotlight in Dubai is “an opportunity to lead and show how to do it” on an international stage, Jenks said. “The Biden administration is trying to show leadership, showing we’re using advanced technology and doing all that’s possible to reduce methane emission from the oil and natural gas industry.
