Reward pitch for farmers to help plug methane menace

Farmers who cut methane pollution should be rewarded as production of the dangerous gas hits unprecedented levels, a report says. Immediate action on methane reduction targets and a rethink by farmers and miners on how they tackle the greenhouse gas has been called for in a Climate Council report. “Methane is increasing at a rapid rate and it has now reached a level unseen in the last 800,000 years,” report author Lesley Hughes told AAP. The report highlights a series of practical steps Australia can take to tackle methane in the agriculture, fossil fuels and waste industries. “Australia produces an outsized share of global methane pollution, due to our large fossil fuel mining and agriculture industries,” it found. Part of the solution is to incentivise farmers to adopt new technologies such as feeding animals methane-busting supplements, Professor Hughes says. “It has to be an approved methodology, then the farmers can claim carbon credits by using that methodology,” she said. “Farmers will need financial incentives to deploy the technologies that we have, but we also need more research to scale those technologies up.” The report takes aim at inaction by the Australian government for signing the Global Methane Pledge in 2022 to slash global methane pollution by almost a third by 2030, without following up with any targets. “We’ve got no target and no plan for any sector to meet the commitment,” Prof Hughes said. The Climate Council repeated its calls for an end to the approval of new and expanded coal mines and said cutting methane pollution should be a condition of continuing approval for the highest emitters. Australia and other countries might be significantly under-counting methane pollution, the report says. The International Energy Agency estimates Australia could be under-reporting methane emissions from coal and gas by as much as 60 per cent.