Methane (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

We heard evidence that there is potential to scale up cutting-edge products of UK companies as they deploy innovative tools to measure, monitor and verify emissions. In short, with the right policy and regulatory framework we can support growth in our economy and generate jobs, while reducing methane emissions and keeping warming within the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. I hope that the Minister will agree to meet me so that I can introduce him to one such company in the space sector, where huge strides are being made to measure the intensity of methane emissions and locate them with pinpoint accuracy. This will be a game-changer.

The purpose of the report was to evaluate progress made on the domestic side to tackle the sources of anthropogenic methane emissions that are within the scope of the Global Methane Pledge and to get to grips with the potential for the UK to do more both at home and internationally where there is so much low-hanging fruit. Will the Minister state whether he has fully bought into the commitment of the Government led by Boris Johnson, when, at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow, they wholeheartedly supported the launch of the Global Methane Pledge to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 from a 2020 baseline? If the Minister is fully signed up to support the Global Methane Pledge, on what basis can he justify the Government’s refusal to publish their own methane action plan to provide clarity on priority actions for each sector? I hope he will not point to an as yet non-existent carbon budget delivery plan because that will not suffice. We ask for a clear, stand-alone document to encourage other countries to produce the same. Such an important intervention to combat the climate emergency cannot be buried in a wide-ranging document such as the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, where one has to dig hard to discern the Government’s intent. The Minister may also point to these country’s co-chairship with Brazil of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, the UN-affiliated organisation that provides a secretariat for the Global Methane Pledge. I am truly delighted that Minister Kerry McCarthy has taken up this role discarded by the US in January.

As my committee’s methane report makes clear, domestically we have made good progress in reducing methane emissions from the waste management and oil and gas sectors, but less so in agriculture. Residual emissions may be more stubborn and therefore more costly. However, it is the Government’s role to balance the cost of action with the cost of inaction over the long term. That point is made throughout the report.

I turn to the waste sector. The UK’s success in reducing methane from the waste sector was driven in large part by the landfill tax. Together with incentives from the renewables obligation scheme, which improved landfill gas capture, the UK saw a 76% decrease in emissions between 1990 and 2022. Colleagues speaking after me may wish to say more on the important issues of waste crime, the renewable obligation scheme, anaerobic digesters and other matters. I hope the Minister, however, will take this opportunity to reiterate his Government’s determination to bear down on upstream measures such as reducing food and packaging waste, given the greater stress that this Government are placing on moving faster towards a more circular economy. Our technical ability to tackle emissions from landfill sites is world-beating. There is much that we can share internationally. Later this year, COP 30 is taking place in Brazil, where there is opportunity to leverage our knowledge and expertise to work with Latin American countries as they consider their policy options for landfill gas capture. I hope we will lean into this with gusto and lend our expertise.

Moving to agriculture, almost half the UK’s methane emissions can be attributed to agriculture, all of it from livestock. The 15% reduction in emissions since 1990 can be attributed largely to reduced consumption of red meat. However, the committee heard that there are other viable methods for further meaningful cuts in emissions, such as improved animal welfare, selective breeding, methane-suppressing feed additives and better slurry management. Can the Minister assure me that Defra takes the issue of methane emissions seriously? Defra is not the responsible government department for greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, methane reduction just does not seem to be high on its list of priorities. In their response to recommendation 10—that low-cost, long-term solutions must be prioritised, with supermarkets playing their part in reducing emissions from the food sector—the Government said:

“Alongside the upcoming food strategy and farming roadmap we will deliver a credible plan to decarbonise food and farming”.

Will the Minister say when can we expect to see the food strategy and farming road map?

Similarly, the Government are reviewing the regulatory framework that they inherited—thank goodness, because our report highlighted grave shortcomings in the existing framework. For example, I hope that the review will address the fact that there is no regulatory oversight of agricultural methane, apart from in some aspects of agricultural waste.

I move on to energy. In my view, one of the most important recommendations in the report is to,

“demand greater transparency and accountability of industry commitments to end the routine venting and flaring of methane”

by

“a publicly accessible roadmap and transparent data”.

This is something that the industry has committed to do, as was restated by the NSTA when it gave evidence to the committee. However, the Government’s response did not address the points about transparent data or a road map for the industry; perhaps the Minister could take this opportunity to do so now.

I say this because international emissions from the oil and gas sector continue to grow, yet the gas that is routinely vented and flared could be captured and sold. Professor Steven Hamburg of Environmental Defense Fund told the committee that oil and gas have “enormous potential” for methane reduction globally. He also said:

“That is not low-hanging fruit; that is fruit lying on the ground”.

Can the Minister provide an update on progress in how methane from the upstream oil and gas sector could be included in the ETS scheme? I hope that progress is being made on that.

In concluding, I stress that the report would have been challenging to get over the line in the best of circumstances. However, during it, we lost our policy analyst, Flo Bullough, midway; we then lost our clerk, Emily Bailey Page, towards the end of the report’s finalisation. Such talented people will always be in demand. I would like to put on the record my gratitude to them for their sterling input. I must thank wholeheartedly all those who stepped into the breach, including Tom Wilson, the principal clerk of Select Committees, the incoming clerk, Andrea Ninomiya, and our policy analyst, Lily Paulson. They were magnificent in picking up the baton and ushering the report over the finish line, and I thank them all once again.

This report holds the dubious record of being the longest-debated report to be produced by any House of Lords committee, which will give your Lordships a flavour of the divergent views of the committee. I wholeheartedly commend my colleagues on the committee for the unfailing courtesy with which all discussions were undertaken. There is real value in bringing together the threads of different viewpoints in a report that all members felt able to sign up to and one of which I, for one, am very proud. I beg to move.

Part of this focus that such an action plan could embrace would be the improvement in monitoring and verification, both nationally and internationally. The Government’s action here is welcomed, in their response to the committee’s recommendation 3 on the establishment of an international body to assess and report the methane action plans of the pledge’s participants. Nationally, a more concerted structure proposal for sector monitoring is beginning to take shape, especially in the agricultural sector. That agriculture is beginning to look exposed, as the sector finds it most difficult to make meaningful reductions and progress, became a large part of the committee’s investigations for solutions.

While the committee examined other sectors in the report, I will concentrate my remarks on the agricultural sector. The Minister will be aware of the important work being done by his department on emissions measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification improvements. Within agriculture, the levy-funded pilot project to showcase the importance of an on-farm environmental baseline is being undertaken by AHDB—the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. The aim is to create a nationwide standardised dataset across the various sectors within agriculture to enable more accurate reporting of emissions from the bottom up—that is, at farm level—in the environmental impact of agriculture. This is important to reveal the true net carbon position on the balance of emissions and carbon removals through farm coppices, woodlands and other features, which would also include carbon sequestration potential.

The outcome could be instructive as a dataset to show the range and variety of results from individual farms to allow the industry to move away from relying on national and international averages. Does the Minister agree that, in targeting agriculture as being most in need of methane reductions, providing a more accurate reflection of its position and progress towards net zero is an important part of his department’s greenhouse gas emissions monitoring and verification programme? Can he confirm that agriculture’s progress is part of the GEMMA—Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measurement and Modelling Advancement—programme?

Farming’s impact on the environment is amplified by the lack of accurate farm-level data. The evidence to the committee from Professor Dave Frame, professor of physics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, that all farmers should “know their numbers”—namely, have data on their farm’s impact—was very revealing. Here, I draw attention to the go-to guide produced by the Innovation for Agriculture on behalf of WWF and Tesco. Valuable information could be provided through farmer data collected as part of the NFU’s Red Tractor assurance scheme. I request that the Minister feeds this to his Defra colleagues in their review of the sustainable farming incentive, which is relevant to our recommendation 15. For example, Tesco was also involved in the research of the feed additive, Bovaer, and runs important carbon footprint monitoring of farms.

ForFarmers also undertook research on Lintec made from a Pacific variety of linseed to enhance bovine health, fertility and sustainability. Costs are prohibitive for livestock producers at the moment. Can the Minister update your Lordships’ House on the dairy demonstrator project, which is in our recommendation 12? I am also aware of the UK Dairy Carbon Network project, which is also funded by Defra and being undertaken by AHDB and AgriSearch. How do these complement each other?

I am grateful for the evidence about the selective breeding improvement programmes provided by Drew Sloan of Semex. Costs and risks are already being shared appropriately across government and industry. It is now imperative that the Government look to improve communication, through the proposed land use framework, to integrate the rural dimension with wider challenges on the demands for infrastructure, housing and growth. The report also embraces methane in its wider applications, with waste management and emissions extending into the offshore oil and gas industries. It underlines the importance of not only reducing emissions but capturing them for beneficial use.

This is a very important report to which the Grand Committee will need to return as progress continues towards 2030 and beyond.

To address these limitations, scientists, in particular at the University of Oxford, have developed GWP*, which better accounts for the short-lived nature of methane in the atmosphere. Experts differ on the pros and cons of GWP100 and GWP*, but comparisons emphasise how significantly the way in which data are analysed and presented can influence policy and priorities. For example, the emissions warming potential of a unit of beef estimated using GWP100 is three and a half times greater than when utilising GWP*. For this reason, our report recommends that

“the Government should … consider how additional metrics can be robustly employed at the sectoral and the business level to improve understanding of the UK’s emissions”

and

“move towards unilaterally implementing an auxiliary metric to better reflect the warming impact of methane”.

However, in their response to our report, the Government remained unconvinced on fully supporting the use of GWP* to assess agricultural emissions, which I regret; I think that it has a role to play in understanding the problem we have.

A second metric of importance is methane intensity—that is, the amount of methane or its CO₂ equivalent per unit of productivity. Data based on FAO figures show that, for example, a kilogram of protein can be produced from cattle in the UK at a quarter of the CO₂ equivalent emissions of the global average. In general, although our beef and dairy industries are significant emitters of methane, they are lesser emitters compared with other countries from which we may import beef and dairy products. The issue of importation is particularly relevant in relation to the recent US-UK trade agreement, for example, and other agreements to be negotiated; our Select Committee report makes these important points very clearly.

I turn to mitigation, where there is good news. There is a lot more that we can do in the UK to further reduce methane emissions from our ruminants. We have some of the world’s best experts in methane monitoring and abatement, as we have heard, and we have highly innovative and progressive farmers. However, as our report highlights, the Government have a role in setting this as a priority for agricultural support. It is regrettable that the sustainable farming incentive has been paused, especially since the Agriculture Act 2020 explicitly provided that, in the transition from the CAP, the Secretary of State could support climate change mitigation measures.

This is not just about finance, although that is important. Much could be achieved by the Government setting clearer goals, providing consistent advice and technical support, and encouraging peer-to-peer knowledge transfer to address methane emissions and to ensure that all of our farmers are adequately equipped with both knowledge and a desire to something about it. In their response, the Government acknowledged that there may be benefits to a targeted approach for agriculture to better incentivise methane reductions; we look forward to seeing evidence for this. Most measures to increase productivity will reduce emissions per unit of production. Improved health and disease control, smarter management such as reducing calving intervals, nutritional measures and breeding for reduced methane emissions—methane output is a heritable trait—are all achievable means that increase profitability and productivity, as well as reducing methane emissions per unit of production.

With reference to breeding, new genetic technologies, as provided for in the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, could rapidly advance progress. As was referred to earlier, feed additives such as Bovaer show promise. This product has recently been approved for use in the UK by the Food Standards Agency, and I note that some governments in Europe already subsidise farmer application of this product.

The Dairy Demonstrator project—now branded as the UK Dairy Carbon Network and launched in February by the current Government—will include support for participating farms to investigate and trial various emission mitigation methods. It is to be welcomed; I congratulate the Government on that.

Substantial improvements in endemic disease control —for example, better application of current vaccines—are technically possible now that we have the necessary products to improve emission intensity. The introduction by the previous Government of the animal health and welfare pathway is to be welcomed; it can make a positive difference.

Impacts on slurry and manure cannot be ignored as they are responsible for about 7% of the total anthropogenic methane emissions and affect all livestock species. A number of abatement technologies are applicable, including covering slurry tanks and anaerobic digestion of the waste. Given that farms are often small or medium enterprises, major capital improvements require co-operation among farmers—and, probably, some financial support—but those investments could yield significant benefits in reducing methane release.

In conclusion, in the UK, ruminants fed mainly on grass in one form or another produce healthy and nutritious food but also about half of all of the UK’s anthropogenic methane emissions. However, the estimate of the warming potential of these emissions varies by more than threefold depending on which metric is used. Moreover, current data show that greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production for both beef and dairy are substantially lower in the UK than most other countries. However, there is much that we could and should still do to reduce our methane emission intensity. In many cases, the technology exists but there needs to be consideration of cost-benefit ratios to achieve full implementation.

The bottom line is that we must guard against destroying our own livestock industry, which is relatively environmentally efficient, and the inevitable consequence: importing more meat and dairy produced with poorer environmental efficiency and greater emissions elsewhere.

I was very grateful to the clerks and the chair, who supported my suggested witnesses, often from the private sector, agriculture and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, particularly Professor John Gilliland, who is an innovative farmer in Northern Ireland. I state my interests, as set out in the register, as a regenerative farmer and landowner in north Norfolk, with a large herd of suckler beef cattle and the ownership and management of the largest, and arguably most important, national nature reserve in the country, Holkham NNR. I shall return to that at the end.

As agriculture is the largest source of domestic methane emissions in the UK, at 49%—and is the sector I understand most—I shall limit my comments to this area. Some 85% of these emissions come from the enteric fermentation process within a cow’s stomach. For the sake of clarity, the vast majority of methane is emitted from the front, not the back, end of a cow, and then a further 15% is emitted from slurry manure. As our chair has mentioned, it is also important to note that we are harnessing methane very successfully in agriculture through the increasing number of anaerobic digesters in the UK, which mimic a cow’s stomach on a much larger scale, capturing the methane and pumping it into the national grid. Crucially, given what happened in Spain recently, this provides a baseload form of energy supply.

It is important to note that globally between 1990 and 2020 it is believed that agricultural methane emissions increased by approximately 12%. Most of this came from less developed countries where populations have increased rapidly and where a gradually improving economic situation has increased the demand for meat in people’s diet. The inquiry looked at various solutions for reducing emissions. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, mentioned diet, feed additives, such as Bovaer, and cattle health, which are very important. Two weeks ago, on a field trip to the Netherlands for our nitrogen inquiry, we saw some really good manure and slurry management which reduces methane emissions.

I have difficulty with the recommendation to reduce the number of large ruminants—by that, obviously, I mean cows. It is true that in the West and the emerging East we all eat too much meat, but we get into very dangerous territory when we start telling people how much meat they can eat. We should, of course, try to educate people on these matters. We must also question the figures emanating from the UN on the standard UN cow used in all methane calculations. A feedlot Hereford bullock eating a diet of maize is very different from an extensively grazed Galloway heifer eating grass all its life, which itself is very different from a Brahman cow in India. There are huge differences in diet, size, length of life and doubtless many other factors. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, made very important points regarding the differences between GWP100 and GWP*.

It is also true that Henry Dimbleby, in his national food strategy, showed that the total biomass of farmed animals has increased by a huge factor since 10,000 BC, when only 2.5 million humans were a tiny proportion of the total biomass of wild animals. That was at the start of the Holocene epoch, when global temperatures entered an unprecedented period of stability and agriculture became possible. Today, the combined weight of all livestock bred for human consumption dwarfs that of the combined weight of all wild mammals and birds, and even adding the combined weight of the now 7.8 billion human population and our domesticated animals, such as pets and horses, it is still much smaller than that of the livestock that we are producing for human consumption.

We clearly have a number of problems: a burgeoning population, leading to a problem of how to feed the world, which we are pretty good at—although we are doing it in perhaps too intensive a way that is not helping biodiversity, et cetera; some of the food is grown in the wrong place; and we have plenty of inequality. Some 50% of the world’s habitable land is put down to agriculture, but of that, 77% is down to either livestock or, pertinently, the production of crops to feed said livestock. In the UK, that figure rises to an astonishing 85%, according to Dimbleby’s food strategy report, although that is partly down to our hilly topography, high rainfall in the west and our temperate climate, which promotes exceptional grass growth. Let us not forget that well-managed, diverse grasslands are very effective carbon sinks, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequestering free nitrogen in the ground. Grassland is an important tool in the fight against climate change, and we should be careful when we recommend excessive tree-planting schemes— I apologise for the slight diversion.

With regard to methane emissions from cattle, we heard from some eminent academics who favoured beef cattle reared in huge feedlots in the USA and Australia, suggesting that because they were being reared on protein-rich diets and thereby putting weight on quicker, and thence being taken to slaughter quicker, over their shortened lifespan they emitted less methane. That is true, but only in isolation. Where did all that food come from? I have just mentioned the percentages of land use—vast acres growing cereals and maize in the USA, and vast quantities of soya being imported from South America. All those feedstuffs are grown with huge tonnages of nitrogen artificially produced using the Haber-Bosch process, which is heavy on energy consumption, with resultant carbon dioxide emissions leading to excess nitrogen pollution, the subject of our current inquiry. Some 50% of nitrogen applied to fields is lost through leaching into watercourses and into the atmosphere. Further, all are cultivated with large machinery emitting another pollutant, nitrous oxide.

In Britain, where we rear beef cattle for human consumption, the vast majority of animals are extensively reared outdoors for six to eight months when the grass is growing, which is all they eat during that time. Hardier breeds such as Belted Galloway, Blue Grey and Highland cattle spend all year outside. They are an essential component in the carbon cycle and the facilitation of healthy biodiversity.

I return to the nature reserve and the cattle. At home, we have to manage the NNR within strict parameters given to us by Natural England. Yes, the cattle are emitting methane while they chew the cud, but they are also chomping the grass to the correct sward lengths—through careful management as to how long they stay on a particular freshwater marsh, how much grass they eat and how low they eat it to—by which these differing heights and conditions of grassland allow a rich assemblage of differing visiting breeding birds, such as waders, waterfowl and raptors, including marsh harriers, to breed. Of course, their muck returns natural nitrogen to the ground, among other organic matter, and provides essential habitat for dung beetles and all manner of insects at the bottom of the food chain to breed, thereby starting the whole cycle over again and supporting all life.

As we are learning in our current inquiry into nitrogen, reducing emissions is a complicated job. If one concentrates too hard on one reduction, then the law of unintended consequences often leads to an increase in another area.

I shall now focus on a slightly broader point. The overall context for countering climate change has become quite a bit bleaker since we wrote our report. Wars proliferate. The United States has, as I said, left the field. But the challenges are as difficult and important as ever. The Climate Change Committee’s recent assessment that the UK’s preparations for climate change are inadequate gives us all at least pause for thought. I hope that the Minister will give us his views on that assessment as he winds up. In a democracy, it is never easy to take tough decisions now to benefit future generations, but that is the responsible thing to do. Future generations will not look kindly on us if we fail. Can the Minister confirm that the Government remain utterly committed to reaching net zero by 2050 and to meeting the new target in this year’s nationally determined contribution?

I have one final point to make. This morning, a friend asked me what I was going to do today. I said that I would be speaking in a debate here in the House of Lords on methane. “Oh God, how boring”, she said. I disabused her, of course, but she hit on a rather crucial point. There is a huge gap between the readily understandable goal—cooling the planet over the next 50 years or so, saving millions of lives—and what are for many people the numbingly boring details needed to achieve that goal, including aerobic digesters and changes in cattle feed, important though they are. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will do all they can to close that gap and, in their communications, to link the measures with the goal?

“expressing methane emissions as a carbon dioxide equivalent using GWP100 overstates the warming impact of a constant source of methane by a factor of three to four and understates the impact of any new methane source by a factor of four to five”.

That illustrates that having a more nuanced view of the impact of methane emissions than GWP100 is critical for policy-making. Factors of three to five are not small discrepancies.

How the UK responds to climate change depends on a balanced assessment across emissions sources, so having a true understanding of the actual warming impact of emissions is vital. It is for that reason that the Select Committee recommended, in its recommendation 7, that the UK should unilaterally implement an auxiliary metric to better reflect the warming impact of methane and help shape effective policy in the UK. In my view, this is the key recommendation of the report, on how we view that data and how we look at those metrics. I hope that the Minister and his team can look again at the recommendation for an auxiliary metric, which would help us respond to the challenges around methane and other gases by ensuring that they are balanced effectively.

My second point is about regulation. We heard witnesses describe the complex picture around methane regulation, with overlaps between four separate regulators—the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, the North Sea Transition Authority and the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning—which cover agriculture, waste management and oil and gas. That is a complex regulatory picture, and in our questioning of the regulators we uncovered overlap and areas that are falling in the gaps between the regulators.

A good example of that is the Environment Agency. Witnesses from the EA stated:

“To be absolutely clear, we have no statutory duty around methane”.

It was clear from their evidence that this is a significant gap and affects how the sector is regulated. Looking more widely, this also chimes with the excellent Corry review recently commissioned by the Defra Secretary of State, which recommended that the statutory duties, principles and codes of Defra regulators should be consolidated to a core set, reflecting the Government’s priorities. If the EA and other regulators had a clear net-zero duty, this would provide important clarity and close gaps in the regulation of methane. It would also have wider benefits across the sector; for example, by streamlining the build-out of clean energy infrastructure. Can the Minister say what consideration the Government are giving to the important area of consolidating the regulators’ duties? This builds on the work that was done on Ofgem under the previous Government and through the Energy Act 2023.

The noble Earl, Lord Leicester, talked about complexity. My final point is about the importance of bringing in a systems approach to net zero to ensure that all departments and regulators are fully joined up in pursuit of this goal. Some important steps forward have been taken in this area, particularly in energy, but a 2020 report by the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, Achieving Net Zero Carbon Emissions Through a Whole Systems Approach, remains as relevant as ever. As well as recommendations on duties for regulators, as I have touched on, it includes proposals for an operational group to drive delivery across government and departments and, on the data side, for the establishment of an analytical hub. The methane issue, touching as it does many sectors and areas of the economy, is an excellent illustration of why a systems approach is required. I urge the Government to return to some of the points in the 2020 report to ensure joined-up delivery in this space and to build on the great progress being made.

“Swathes of scientific data deletions are sweeping across US government websites—with decades of health, climate change and extreme weather research at risk. Now, scientists are racing to save their work before it’s lost”.

This is a tremendously important point. I can give the Committee further examples. Apparently, somebody researching the history of the Greenland ice sheet is afraid that all the data related to it will be deleted by the American authorities one way or another. It may be that the data shows a different pattern of Greenland’s ice sheets in the past that would affect our calculation of the future.

My time is almost up, so my plea to my noble friend the Minister is that, when he takes part in discussions with other countries on behalf of the British Government—I believe there is a UNFCCC conference in June 2027 on the horizon—he will do everything he can to ensure that we continue to collect the data without which debates like this are not possible and without which we cannot measure and make the progress we need to make on climate change.

Professor Forster, in his evidence to the committee, said that such actions

“could lower the trajectory of global warming from 0.25 degrees celsius per decade to 0.1 degrees celsius”.

Cutting methane emissions rapidly does not just limit future warming; it slows rates of warming over the coming decades to buy time to implement the deeper and far more complex decarbonisation actions that we must take. Methane cuts are essential in reducing the immediate, devastating and costly real-world impacts of extreme weather and crop loss that we face now and will experience much more going into the 2040s. We have no other policy options to buy time—this is the only one.

The noble Earl, Lord Leicester, said that we should rightly be proud of what the UK has achieved to date. We achieved a 62% drop between 1990 and 2020, a larger percentage than any other OECD country. The UK rightly played a pivotal role in the Global Methane Pledge at COP 26, where 150 countries signed up to reduce their methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

I welcome the Government’s engagement with our recommendations—that is beneficial. The Government point to the existing delivery plan for carbon budgets and the framework for tackling methane. They highlight ongoing work across sectors and are leveraging the UK’s expertise internationally. However, our report argues that the Government must go further if the UK is truly to solidify its role as a global leader and champion the methane reductions required. The Select Committee recommends publishing a dedicated UK methane action plan providing clarity and focus for all sectors, including sector-specific targets and plans. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, it is disappointing that the Government have disagreed with this recommendation, saying instead that they are covered in existing budgets. While methane is indeed part of the broader net-zero strategy, the unique nature of methane and the opportunities it presents warrant a specific, transparent and dedicated plan outlining priority actions, costs and benefits.

I will just say a quick word specifically about the sector. Farming is now the key sector: it is the largest UK source, contributing half of all our methane, 85% of which comes from cattle. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, farming is perhaps more exposed than any other sector in the UK. Indeed, as we move forward, we have very difficult choices ahead. It is important that we have a balance in these things, but there are certain quick wins that we can do. We need slurry management, selective breeding and the farming and food road map. As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, farmers have the knowledge but need the power to do something about this.

In our energy sector, we are wasting enough energy from venting and flaring to power 700,000 homes. Venting and flaring need to end. I point out the recommendation for urgent transparency and accountability in these sectors.

Turning to waste, we need to do more and make sure that we have food collection across the country and enough anaerobic digesters to make that target a reality. We need to do more on landfill and about the fact that waste crime is out of control in this country, with 18% of our waste ending up in the hands of criminals.

The Government mention the UK Emissions Trading Scheme Authority and are considering including methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas sector. This is welcome, but it is not the commitment needed to align with our international partners, who are developing robust standards, including for imports. Robust MMRV is critical for both domestic progress and international accountability. I hope that we will see a UK-EU ETS alignment soon and that the UK will meet EU standards in this area.

The report called for the UK to use its expertise to encourage the establishment of an international body to verify the methane pledge participants’ action plans. The Government’s response points to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition as being a well-placed body. We recognise that it is valuable, but we call specifically for a body focused on verification to ensure accountability and the transparency of data. Data from the UN’s alert system, highlighted at COP 29, showed a stark gap: more than 1,200 alerts about large oil and gas plumes were issued, but only 1% of those resulted in mitigation steps. Data is helpful but if nothing is done with it, it is no better than having no data at all.

The UK, having co-launched this, has a real opportunity. We should go beyond domestic action and do more in the international sphere. We should not be content with just keeping our work at home. We now have 25 satellites orbiting the world; super emitters have nowhere to hide. Abating leaks needs to be done on an international scale. As somebody in the UN said:

“It’s plumbing. It’s not rocket science”.

Abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure now emits more methane than Iran and is fourth-largest global source. The International Energy Agency’s Global Methane Tracker 2025 report, just issued, shows that global methane emissions are stubbornly high. There were nearly 120 million tonnes of methane emissions in 2023, and the global energy sector may have emissions that are 70% higher than officially reported.

I call on the Government to do more with our international oil and gas expertise, particularly in leak detection and repair, and to do more to help countries that are struggling to repair their leaks. This is one way in which the UK Government could demonstrate their leadership in this area and provide a very useful source of help to the globe.

To conclude, a dedicated methane action plan is necessary for clarity and focus, particularly for harder to abate areas. I call on the UK to go further and really be the true champion this treaty requires. Deploying our technical expertise to help identify and fix large leaks internationally is a powerful example of how we can drive action, slow the immediate pace of global warming and keep up the vital momentum on this crucial climate issue.