Global Methane Hub has helped raise more than $10 billion for methane-decreasing projects.
Until recently, addressing climate change meant reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
However, scientists, policymakers, climate advocates, and non-government organizations are increasingly turning their attention to methane, a “super pollutant” 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide and responsible for about one-third of human-caused global warming. Reducing methane has an outsized impact that could help lower global temperatures more quickly and cut down on deadly explosions, fires, and air pollution that harms vulnerable populations near sites where the gas is produced.
The growing awareness led more than 150 countries to sign the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment to take voluntary actions to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030. Alongside that effort to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a more strategic approach arose: the Global Methane Hub.
Comprised of more than 20 leading philanthropies and organizations, the Global Methane Hub works with funders, nonprofits, governments, businesses, and civil society organizations to fund methane mitigation projects in the most efficient ways possible internationally, nationally, and locally. It was founded in 2021.
Last year, Global Methane Hub hosted a University of Ghana panel discussion about the issue of methane on the African continent. Credit: Global Methane Hub
Since then, this first-ever global, coordinated approach has helped raise more than $10 billion for methane-reducing projects. The Global Methane Hub has accomplished that work by gathering funders addressing climate change and re-granting $200 million to more than 100 grantees that are reducing methane in 152 countries.
Just last year, the Global Methane Hub helped projects around the world raise $1 billion for investment in methane reduction. And in July, the organization announced more than $300 million in new funding that will go directly to methane-curbing projects at all levels.
Just last year, Global Methane Hub helped projects around the world raise $1 billion for investment in methane reduction.
Its financing is global, but its structure is local, working through organizations that can develop culturally and economically appropriate strategies in the energy, agriculture, and waste management sectors. By headquartering in Santiago, Chile, the Global Methane Hub established itself in the "Global South" where 85 percent of methane emissions will originate in upcoming decades, Chief Executive Officer Marcelo Mena-Carrasco said.
Reducing methane production is a form of environmental justice and creates quality jobs. Decreasing the super pollutant is a complicated undertaking, especially in rural and developing economies where life operates at a different pace and with different infrastructure than what exists in the U.S. and Western Europe.
A biochemical engineer with a PhD in Environmental Engineering, Marcelo Mena-Carrasco has been Global Methane Hub CEO since March of 2022. He previously served as Minister of the Environment of Chile. Credit: Global Methane Hub
“The access to electricity is totally different, access to drinking water is different,” Mena-Carrasco said. “The fact that maybe you're having to make three fires a day for each meal is a different beast in terms of challenges.”
Waste management and meat and dairy production are two illustrative examples.
U.S. solutions to waste management are costly and require bulldozers, compactors, and high-tech sorting equipment, whereas waste sites in countries such as India lean heavily on human waste pickers to process garbage. And most U.S. dairy farms have hundreds upon hundreds of cows while farmers in low-income countries might have a handful of livestock.
Working in that complicated landscape, the Global Methane Hub already has achieved significant impact: in 2023, the organization persuaded the U.S. and China to commit to action plans for reducing methane emissions. The Global Methane Hub played a crucial role by providing the Chinese government with tools to create the action plan, Mena-Carrasco said.
“We provided all the support for a consortium of different NGOs, which in turn supported think tanks that are internal and trusted partners for the Chinese government,” Mena-Carrasco said. “It was demand-driven, in their own terms, and that resulted in an ambitious methane action plan that set the tone for other countries to follow the U.S. and China example.”
It demonstrates Global Methane Hub’s effectiveness as an intermediary between global powers, rather than being perceived as directly representing any one perspective.
It demonstrates the Global Methane Hub’s effectiveness as an intermediary between global powers, rather than being perceived as directly representing any one perspective. A location outside the U.S. also gives the organization more flexibility in negotiating with partners, independent of other geopolitical considerations.
Broad and Specific
In its work outside the energy sector, the Global Methane Hub has helped focus environmental philanthropists and funders on the challenges of methane produced in agriculture and waste management, which make up 60 percent of the problem.
“We got the funders to understand that there are really great opportunities and entry points on the waste agenda,” Mena-Carrasco said.
The organization did so in part by developing a global mapping tool, the WasteMAP, that provides satellite images and data on global hotspots for methane emissions. The visual storytelling helps pinpoint areas where immediate intervention is needed, opening the door for the Global Methane Hub to fund local organizations.
The strategy worked in Mexico City, where the Mexican Climate Initiative has received support for its work on a methane emissions observatory.
In more targeted approaches, the Global Methane Hub funds a waste-related methane emissions project in Indonesia, led by local climate organization Viriya ENB, and a project focused on reducing food loss and food waste in India, run in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. And last year, the Global Methane Hub grew its $10 million investment into a $200 million Enteric Fermentation R & D Accelerator, which will develop solutions to the source of 70 percent of agricultural methane emissions: cow burps.
Developing Experts, Funding Policy
The Global Methane Hub also invests in developing needed methane experts. One example is its sponsorship of the COP27 Science for Climate Action Pavilion.
In addition, the organization funds broad policy initiatives on questions such as how best to reduce methane in Asia, always mindful of the many implications. Mena-Carrasco sees the Global Methane Hub’s approach as fixing and improving existing systems, rather than promoting sweeping behavioral changes.
That may mean reducing dairy cow methane through feedstock changes instead of pushing for widespread veganism or encouraging the use of propane in a cookstove instead of firewood, which produces more methane.
Despite the Global Methane Hub’s successes, methane mitigation financing continues to be scarce relative to the need.
Despite the Global Methane Hub’s successes, methane mitigation financing continues to be scarce relative to the need. Global Methane Hub estimates as much as $48 billion annually is needed to reach the 2030 goal. Right now, methane mitigation receives about two percent of all public climate financing.
Driving that financing upward is crucial for several reasons, one of which is that Mena-Carrasco believes that reducing methane production could boost public enthusiasm for broader climate change efforts.
“The best way to keep 1.5-degree temperature reductions alive is to show temperature reductions in the short term with short-term positive consequences,” he said. “And that is exactly what methane reductions offer.”
In 2021, MacArthur contributed $10 million to an international philanthropic initiative to reduce methane emissions around the world. The more than $200 million fund was the largest private pledge to address the issue and included support for the Global Methane Pledge.
