World Needs to Spend $110 Billion a Year to Curb Methane

The world needs to dramatically ramp up spending tenfold to $110 billion a year to curb methane releases and avoid the worst of climate change, a new study has found.

The potent greenhouse gas is responsible for nearly half of net global warming to date, yet just 2% of global climate finance is directed towards curbing releases of the gas, according to a report from the Climate Policy Initiative. Money spent cutting methane leaks has “one of the highest ratios of global warming benefit per dollar of capital invested.’’

The biggest opportunity to mitigate emissions are from oil, gas and coal operations, and those cuts ...