Methane emissions were center stage at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, which saw the launch of the Global Methane Pledge. This year’s event, the COP28, showed that this was no mere gesture, but the start of a concerted global effort to tackle a gas with 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide, with more emphasis on the waste sector.
Industry Commitments at COP28
COP28 serves as a pivotal moment in the collective commitment to addressing the profound impact of methane emissions on climate change. Notably, in amongst new initiatives looking to reduce methane from fossil fuels including 50 of the world’s leading oil and gas companies committing to reach near-zero methane emissions by 2030̶. However, it’s not just fossil fuels under scrutiny emissions from waste sector were also highlighted.
This is something GHGSat has long been campaigning for. It is estimated that up to 18% of global methane emissions come from landfills and waste dumps. Since COP27, 26% of the methane emissions detected by our satellites have originated in the waste sector, with the average site emission rate five times greater than the average observed from oil and gas facilities.
Transparency and Collaboration at COP28
Our data shows that landfill emissions are not just large, they are persistent too. They are also diffuse, which can make them more difficult to abate. The first-ever “Waste and Resources Pavilion’ at COP28 this year represented an important step forward in developing a better understanding of mitigation solutions for these types of pollution.
As ever, more data is needed however, and to address this, GHGSat is working with The Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and the Global Methane Hub to study, characterise and monitor landfills worldwide. This collaboration saw two new projects announced at COP28 – TWOS and WasteMAP.
Targeting Waste emissions Observed from Space (TWOS)
This initiative builds on a pilot programme launched at last year’s climate change conference COP27 to study four landfills across the globe – Delhi & Mumbai (India), Lahore (Pakistan), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). The pilot demonstrated it was possible to accurately monitor emissions over time using our satellites and pinpoint the largest sources on a landfill. Now the second phase of TWOS will see SRON, GHGSat and the Global Methane Hub support local governments and landfill operators in taking steps to reduce methane emissions from ten waste sites in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. TWOS will identify the facilities with largest mitigation potential and monitor it once a month for three years to spot and track the largest leaks.
WasteMAP – Waste Methane Assessment Platform
The Waste Methane Assessment Platform is a joint initiative from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and the Clean Air Task Force, supported by Google.org. WasteMAP is a new open online platform that combines waste methane emissions data with decision support tools for local authorities to use to support mitigation actions. SRON is supplying the satellite emissions data including GHGSat targeted emission measurements of the ten landfills from the TWOS project to the WasteMAP Both TWOS and WasteMAP are funded by the Global Methane Hub.
In many ways we are at the start of a journey with waste site emissions. For example, we don’t even know how many waste sites there are worldwide. However, COP28 marked a significant ramping up of both awareness and ambition in tackling these challenges head-on.
GHGSat will continue to share our observations with operators and regulators, and we look forward to seeing our accurate emissions data support swift action on the ground. Because this is how we fight climate change: step by step, challenge by challenge, working together to find and fix human-driven sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
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