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Leveraging capital markets to drive methane emissions reductions
With the planet poised to exhaust its carbon budget within the next few years, it’s imperative to reduce methane emissions, as it’s a highly potent greenhouse gas. One of the reasons methane abatement has lagged in the oil and gas sector is the lack of appropriate financial instruments to provide access to capital for this purpose. The Guidance produced by the Methane Finance Working Group (MFWG) aims to address this challenge by proposing labeled bonds and loans with activities, projects, and KPIs targeting methane to support the creation of an ecosystem where issuers, investors, and structuring agents can confidently engage in transactions.
The Center on Global Energy Policy, represented by Luisa Palacios, Gautam Jain, and Preetha Jenarthan, helped in the creation of this guidance and a working paper as members of the Methane Finance Working Group’s steering committee, which, besides CGEP, consisted of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), and the Atlantic Council, along with McKinsey as a knowledge partner.
Human-caused methane emissions have contributed to at least one quarter of global warming since the preindustrial era. Since methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) in trapping heat over the first two decades after its release, abating methane is considered a critical near-term strategy for reducing emissions.[