 "Industry pollutant")
It would be tempting to dismiss the low priority accorded to action against a toxic air pollutant like methane to the fact that it is odourless and colourless. Unlike its close cousin carbon dioxide (CO2), it’s out of sight, which makes it easier to shove out of mind. But it’s not that: the truth is a political inconvenience.
This inconspicuous gas contributes to the catastrophic pollutants populating the country’s northern plains, according to climate experts and UN data.
Methane, a byproduct of farming, cow burps (and farts), energy and waste, is a dangerous air pollutant and the biggest contributor to human-induced warming after carbon dioxide. But what really sets it apart is its potent short-term warming effect. This in turn is a precursor to the accumulation of ground-level ozone, which harms human health, agriculture and ecosystems.
Climate shocks
India is the world’s third-biggest emitter of methane. A rise in temperatures should ring alarm bells in New Delhi — 60 per cent of India’s population lives in places that already experience prolonged heat stress each year. It will require India to commit $210 billion (in 2020 value) annually over 2020 to 2050 towards protecting the population and economy from climate shocks, Mekala Krishnan and Olivia White, partners at global consultant McKinsey, said in a note earlier this month.
“Studies have shown that methane emissions are more potent at trapping heat than carbon emissions even though they have a shorter duration,’’ said Purva Jain, energy specialist at the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Therefore lowering methane emissions is critical for India.”
Methane is also an indirect contributor to particulate pollution. But three decades after the UN launched its annual climate summits to keep track of all greenhouse gas emissions, India lacks the mechanisms to track methane, let alone mitigate it. (Methane concentrations are tracked separately from particulate matter, which is measured using the Air Quality Index.)
The 50 most polluted districts in India are concentrated in Delhi, Assam, Haryana and Bihar, said Finnish climate researcher CREA in a November 25 study.
But, according to Banguru-based climate NGO Janaagraha, 85.5 per cent of assessed cities are not on track to meet their PM10 reduction targets for 2024 to 2025. It published its conclusion after a year-long study on air quality.
Methane is a gas, unlike CREA and Janaagraha’s focus — dust particles, organic compounds and liquid droplets, derived from vehicle exhausts, construction or combustion.
The world’s first Global Methane Status Report (GMSR), released last month by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says global methane emissions, caused by human activity, could come down by 8 per cent by 2030 below 2020 levels if countries implement their national climate plans (NDCs) and methane action plans (MAPS). This would be the largest and most sustained decline of methane in history. More ambitious plans could lead to a 32 per cent reduction in methane emission and a 0.2 degree centigrade reduction in temperature by 2050.
But India remains the only major polluter yet to submit a new NDC to 2035; nor has it produced a MAP, according to UN records. Even India’s current NDC to 2030 is shorn of details on how it plans to tackle methane.
“India is the world’s third-largest emitter of methane in absolute terms but does not identify action to reduce emissions from its largest source, agriculture, within its NDC,” UNEP said.
Agriculture is too sensitive a subject to touch, a senior biofuel industry official said. But substituting “Jersey cows with desi gai (indigenous breeds)” can limit emissions because of changes in their digestive system, said Gaurav Kedia, chairman, Indian Biogas Association. Local breeds are said to emit less methane.
Wastewater from agriculture and households and industries is another problem. “People don’t talk about it but wastewater has got very high organic content, which creates a lot of methane,” he added. But programmes to capture methane from waste are on the slow lane because of the high costs of biogas, biofuel industry officials said.
On the other hand, state-run explorer ONGC is helping India tackle methane leaks in the energy sector. “ONGC was an early player in identifying methane leaks,” said Deepak Tandon, executive director of ONGC's carbon management division. The company has invested heavily in procuring special cameras and interpreting satellite data to plug emission leaks.
India’s emissions
“Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential,” Kedia said.
A Global Methane Pledge (GMP) was launched in 2021 at United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) by the European Union and the US as the first global policy initiative to reduce human-made methane emissions by 2030. As of April 2025, 159 countries had joined the GMP, covering 57 per cent of global emissions, UN data shows. But India has stayed away.
India accounted for 9 per cent of global methane emissions in 2020 at 31 million tonnes, after China and the US, according to UN documents. And these emissions are on the rise, pushed by rice cultivation.
Rice cultivation accounted for a fifth of global agricultural emissions in 2020. A slight decline is expected in China, but India will witness an increase of 8 per cent between 2020 and 2030, according to GMSR.
While agriculture makes up nearly 40 per cent of India’s methane emissions, waste is shaping up as the fastest growing emitter, in addition to emissions from coal mines and oil and gas production.
India is planning a significant expansion in domestic coal mining, which may lead to more than a doubling of methane leaks in the decade to 2029, climate consultant Ember said. Capturing and utilising emissions from coal mines could save nearly $1 billion worth of gas imports in the five years to 2030, Ember said.
But there is no mechanism in place at present to monitor and regulate methane emissions, Kishan Reddy, Union minister of state for coal, told Parliament last July.
The GMSR report expects a sharp increase in methane emissions from waste by 13 per cent by 2030 and 56 per cent by 2050, relative to 2020, driven by population and economic growth.
“Large amounts of waste are currently scattered or openly burned, about 40 per cent or more in Africa, India and South-East Asia,” UNEP said. But effective policies targeting rice cultivation and the burning of rice paddy straw and other crop residues are absent in selected regions, particularly in China and India.
“While open-field burning has declined globally, it is increasing in densely populated agricultural areas in China and India,” according to GMSR.
Kedia said the government has encouraged modern methods of paddy cultivation and growing less water guzzling millet varieties to mitigate methane emissions.
Expensive gas
Methane abatement does not come cheap. Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) analysis shows an 18 per cent increase to an annual average of $13.7 billion in 2021 and 2022. This, however, remains far below the estimated $127 billion net annual cost by 2030 to implement abatement measures consistent with the GMP target, the UNEP report said.
Development finance institutions (DFIs) currently provide about $3 billion annually for methane mitigation — small compared with the $2.5 trillion they expend in investments every year.
Methane is thrice as destructive as carbon dioxide and contributes more to immediate warming of the earth than CO2. It accounts for 11 per cent of global emissions but is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, UN records show.
Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities; it is also a key contributor to ground-level ozone pollution, a major component of smog.
Globally, 42 per cent of methane emissions come from agriculture, 38 per cent from the energy sector and 20 per cent from waste. The major methane emission sources for large emitters vary greatly. For example, a key source of methane emissions in China is coal production, whereas Russia emits most of its methane from natural gas and oil systems. India owes its emissions to agriculture.
While agriculture remains a sensitive subject, India would do better working on curbing fugitive emissions from the energy and waste sector to curtail emissions in the short term.
