The overwhelming majority of Canadians want new standards to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas and support better monitoring to keep producers accountable, according to survey results released last week by the Pembina Institute.
The opinion research was conducted not long after the federal government concluded a 60-day consultation period for the its plan to reduce methane pollution from oil and gas 75% by 2030. Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault announced that pledge during COP28 climate negotiations in Dubai in early December, making Canada the first country in the world to do so.
At the time, his department said the new rule would eliminate the equivalent of 217 million tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution between 2027 and 2040 and deliver C$12.4 billion in “avoided global damages”.
In its landmark Sixth Assessment Report last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified methane reductions in oil and gas, along with energy efficiency, solar, and wind, as the quickest, most affordable ways to deliver the deepest emission cuts by 2030.
Now, Pembina says, an online poll by the Global Methane Hub indicates that 86% of Canadians want to see better data-gathering on methane emissions, while 89% “supported implementing standards that require the oil and gas industry to find and fix methane leaks”.
The poll reached 12,976 people in 17 countries, including 754 in Canada.
“Reducing methane emissions from Canada’s oil and gas production has been shown to be both achievable and cost-effective using existing technologies,” and “there is public appetite across the world for strong methane policy,” Pembina Institute Senior Analyst Amanda Bryant said in a release. “To remain in step with international policy, Canada’s federal and provincial governments must rapidly implement proposed federal methane regulations and equivalent provincial regulations, and make measurement-based reporting a regulatory requirement.”
“Given its potency and lifetime in the atmosphere, addressing methane is the fastest way to drive down global temperatures, which can buy time to address other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide,” added Global Methane Hub CEO Marcelo Mena. “This international poll shows there is great opportunity for progress and a strong appetite for action to catalyze rapid reductions in methane emissions.”
Concurrent with Guilbeault’s announcement in Dubai, Anna Kanduth, director of the Canadian Climate Institute’s 440 Megatonnes project, declared methane reductions “an absolute no-brainer in Canada’s fight against climate change. Tough regulations to limit potent methane pollution are widely considered to be the cheapest and easiest way to slash Canada’s oil and gas emissions.”
Kanduth’s language, in turn, precisely echoed a 2019 opinion piece by then-Environmental Defence climate program manager Dale Marshall, who argued that methane reductions would often cost oil and gas companies less than $10 per tonne and deliver $9 billion in economic benefits. “This should be a no-brainer,” he wrote. “Methane is a potent climate disruptor, 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. So reductions make a big difference, especially in the short term.”
Guilbeault’s announcement also came just days after 50 of the world’s biggest fossil producers, including 29 national oil and gas companies, signed on to a voluntary Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter that had them promising to essentially phase out methane emissions and end routine gas flaring by 2030.
“We have it within our power to drastically slow the rate of warming in our lifetime by the relatively simple acts of finding and fixing methane leaks and ending routine flaring of gas, which is wasteful of an energy resource as well as a powerful climate pollutant,” Fred Krupp, president of the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund, said at the time. And with the advent of satellite monitoring of methane releases, “no longer do we have to settle for taking anyone’s word for it.”
