*EPF311 11/17/2004
United States, 13 Countries Launch Methane-to-Markets Partnership
(Global partners plan to recover and use methane as clean energy source) (910)

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The United States joined 13 other countries in November 16 agreements that formally created a partnership to advance international cooperation in recovering and using methane as a profitable source of clean energy.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Mike Leavitt joined representatives from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Columbia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom in the signing ceremony that launched the global Methane-to-Markets Partnership.

"The Bush administration welcomes this global partnership, a partnership that we believe will deliver significant economic, environmental, and energy benefits," Leavitt said. "Together we will harness the power of collaboration, technology and markets to achieve real, near-term reductions of global methane emissions."

Methane is a clean-burning fuel that is the main component of natural gas. It accounts for 16 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human sources and is the second most prevalent after carbon dioxide.

According to the EPA, significantly reducing methane emissions is one of the most cost-effective ways to realize immediate environmental benefits because of methane's potency as a greenhouse gas and its short atmospheric lifetime. The Methane-to-Markets Partnership is part of the U.S. strategy to address climate-change issues, the agency said.

The signing took place during a November 15-17 Methane-to-Markets Ministerial Meeting in Washington. At the meeting, participants negotiated and signed the Terms of Reference document that outlines the partnership's purpose, organization and functions. Participants also attended technical and organizational sessions.

EPA will lead the partnership, working closely with the Department of State, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In a briefing before the signing ceremony, James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said partner countries "are expected to undertake activities aimed at capturing and using methane emitted from landfills, coal mines, and oil and gas systems.

"Developed countries will work with developing countries in undertaking these efforts," he said. "The partnership will also encourage active involvement by private industry, financial institutions and other nongovernmental organizations."

Benefits of the international partnership include improved energy security and air quality from the use of clean-burning methane as natural gas, improved coalmine safety, enhanced economic growth, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions of methane.

According to the EPA, the partnership has the potential to deliver by 2015 annual reductions in methane emissions of up to 50 million metric tons of carbon equivalent or recovery of 500 billion cubic feet of natural gas. This is roughly equal to removing 33 million cars from roadways for a year or eliminating emissions from 50 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants.

Connaughton called the initiative "one of the most consequential partnerships on the table to reduce one of the most potent greenhouse gases." The partnership, he said, "is focused on a greenhouse gas that can be reduced at a substantial profit and in a manner that can provide an affordable and clean source of energy, especially in developing nations."

The United States will contribute $53 million over five years, he added, "but we'll leverage hundreds of millions of dollars of private-sector investment to focus on three key areas in which the United States excels."

The areas are constructing modern landfills and capturing methane from the landfills to use as an energy source, capturing and recovering methane from coal mining operations, and capturing methane from oil and gas production and distribution activities.

"There's so much enthusiasm for this partnership," Connaughton said, "because it focuses on three essential goals for these countries -- their interest in energy security, in reducing the pollution associated with energy production and generation, and in significantly reducing a greenhouse gas over the long term."

Connaughton noted that partner countries include developed and developing countries, signatories of the Kyoto Protocol and countries that have not signed the treaty, and countries with large populations such as China, India and Russia.

"The genesis of this partnership," said Dina Kruger, director of EPA's Climate Change Division, "was the success that we have had in the United States with our voluntary public-private partnerships to reduce methane emissions -- programs created in the early 1990s to meet U.S. commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

The four 10-year-old programs encourage the additional recovery of methane from landfill gas, work with the oil and gas industry to reduce methane emissions from points in the oil and gas system, work with the coal industry to capture methane from mines, and work with the agriculture industry to recover methane from large animal waste lagoons.

"There's a lot of interest among partnership participants in also looking at the agriculture sector," Kruger added, "particularly at livestock waste. We'll be looking into how to integrate that into the partnership as well."

Today, Kruger said, "U.S. methane emissions are 5 percent below where they were in 1990 as a result of these voluntary partnerships."

The Methane to Markets Ministerial Meeting agenda is available at http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets/docs/agenda1110.pdf

For additional information on Methane to Markets visit: http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets

Methane-to-Markets fact sheets and other information is available at http://www.epa.gov/methanetomarkets/index.htm - inter

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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