As satellites reveal huge methane leaks from landfills across the USA, the Biden Administration has run out of time to tackle them before November’s election.
When garbage is taken to a landfill, bacteria decompose it and produce methane as a by-product. Unless this gas is captured, it heats up the planet.
Using satellites, scientists can now see how big these leaks are. Ilse Aben, who analyses satellite data at the SRON Netherlands institute for space research, told Climate Home she been “shocked” at the “huge” scale of the leaks.
Climate Trace, an NGO promoted led by former US vice-president Al Gore, estimates the US’s landfill emissions at 169 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.
Climate Trace’s map of US landfill emissions with bigger circles for more emissions (Photos: Climate Trace)
That’s similar to the whole of Ethiopia’s emissions and a third higher than the 126 million tonnes the US government tells the United Nations its landfills emit, a figure worked out using a formula.
But, in its fourth year in power, campaigners say Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has missed its chance to improve regulations on the sector.
Weak regulations
Kait Siegel campaigns against waste sector emissions at the Clean Air Task Force. She told Climate Home that US federal regulations on landfills are “weak”.
The companies which operate landfills are supposed to capture this gas but not for the landfill’s first five years and not if it’s a smaller landfill – broad exceptions which don’t apply in most European countries.
US states can force operators to do more to clean up but so far only California, Maryland and Oregon have done so, she said.
The Environmental Protection Agency is legally required to assess whether new federal standards for landfills are necessary at least every eight years. The last time it did so was in August 2016 so it should do so again by August 2024.
But, according to Clean Air Task Force lawyer Darin Schroeder, they are unlikely to set new standards. At this stage, campaigners don’t want them to either, Schroeder suggested, because they don’t want to risk a Trump administration taking over that process.
In the US, legislation called the Congressional Review Act means a new Congress can overturn measures taken by the previous Congress in its last 60 legislative days. With Presidential and Congressional elections in November, anything introduced after April could be challenged.
Schroeder said there’s not enough time to introduce new regulations before April, so any regulations introduced could be overturned by a Trump administration.
If overturned, any future EPA wouldn’t be legally allowed to submit similar regulations again. “Then we would be stuck in a rut where maybe the EPA may never be able to tdo methane regulations for landfills,” he said.
On the other hand, he said “if the presidency remains in the Democrats hands, that sets the table for them focussing on it in the second term.
Schroeder said that the waste management lobby is very powerful. “Because we do need to put our trash somewhere, they’ve held a lot of sway historically over the standard setting process,” he said.
He said they argue that any costs increases in operating landfills will be passed on to local governments who will pass them on to ordinary citizens. “That’s where the lobby has really stopped a lot of the revolutionary rulemakings,” he said, working in partnership with local governments that don’t want to pay more for having their waste taken away.
On the other side of the argument, with the scale of the problem only recently revealed, climate campaigners have yet to make landfills the big climate issue that fossil fuels are.
Satellite revelations
Until satellites started revealing these landfill leaks, policy-makers could only guess how much methane was coming from a landfill.
In its reporting to the UN, the EPA uses a complex formula to work out its best estimate. Basically, it estimated how much the average landfill emits, multiplied this by the number of landfills and took away the amount of gas they think was captured before it reaches the atmosphere. This is common way for countries to report emissions.
The US government’s formula for estimating landfill methane emissions. Biden misses chance to tackle “huge” US landfill emissions.
But satellites can see how much methane is actually emitted, rather than a best guess. With their cameras pointed at individual landfills, they show huge leaks.
American nonprofit CarbonMapper spotted a leak of 5,000 kg of methane an hour from the Fort Bend landfill on the outskirts of Houston. If this continued all year, it would cause the same damage as 270,000 cars or the nation of Antigua and Barbuda.
But scientists have yet to use satellites to come up with a better figure for the US’s total emissions. Their cameras have focussed on particular sites at particular times rather than non-stop monitoring of all the hundreds of American landiflls.
To get round these limitations, Climate Trace combine satellite imagery with their own assumptions, using Bayesian regression modelling, giving them their 169 million tonnes figure.
The solutions
There are many ways of reducing landfill emissions. The best, Siegel said, is to reduce waste we produce so as little goes to landfill as possible.
After that, she said people should seperate their organic waste (like food and garden waste) so that it can be more easily sent to treatment facilities.
Most food waste can be composted before it rots and releases methane. The compost can be put on new plants to help them grow.
It can also be burned in incinerators to produce electricity. But campaigners have disputed the environmental benefits of this and scientists have linked incinerators, which are predominately located in poor communities, to health problems.
If the garbage does rot and release methane, that gas can be captured. It can be burned, turning it into less potent but still planet-warming carbon dioxide. This burning can produce electricity, potentially displacing other fossil fuels.
As an example of somewhere doing it well, definitely “better than the West”, Siegel points to Indore in India. There, according to the United Nations, residents dilligently seperate their waste and turn it into compost.
A spokesperson for the EPA said that “regulating landfill gas is one of EPA’s many priorities to help combat climate change” and they would review the regulations and “if approriate” revise them.
The spokesperson said they were beginning to collect information on new technologies and strategies for emissions reduction, taking into account cost, health and environmental impacts and energy requirements.
They added that the EPA has an outreach programme which works with industry and government to cut methane emissions from landfills.
The post Biden misses chance to tackle “huge” US landfill emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.
The ongoing “super El Niño” is likely to peak at the end of 2026 and push average global temperatures to record levels next year.
That is according to Carbon Brief’s latest “state of the climate” update, which analyses El Niño forecasts from more than a dozen climate models, as well as six global temperature datasets.
Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor, described this year’s El Niño as “simply staggering” when answering questions from CB+ members during a CB Connect “ask me anything” session.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
This year’s El Niño event – which has been underway since June – has already broken a number of records and reshaped the world’s weather, fuelling fires in Indonesia and “super typhoons” in the west Pacific.
The strength of an El Niño is tracked using the “Niño3.4 anomaly”, which is a measure of how much warmer sea surface temperatures are than average in a section of the central Pacific.
Analysis of more than 600 forecasts from 14 different climate models by Hausfather for Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” update shows how models project this year’s El Niño will peak with an anomaly of around 4C. This would be more than a degree above the previous record in 2015-16.
Writing on CB Connect on 5 November, Hausfather wrote:
“This El Niño event is developing so quickly and is reaching sea surface temperatures so warm that it’s simply staggering. We haven’t seen anything like this in the historical record and it may end up being the strongest El Niño event in the past millennium.”
This year’s El Niño has already chalked up a number of milestones.
On 18 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño3.4 region broke the satellite-era record set in 2015 when it reached 3.11C.
Meanwhile, September as a whole recorded the highest monthly Niño3.4 region temperature anomaly – 2.84C – since sea surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.
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Hausfather wrote on CB Connect that this year’s El Niño had been “running well above any prior El Niño event since June, at times by a full degree [Celsius]”.
Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” analysis indicates that El Niño is set to continue to intensify into December, with 10 out of 14 models expecting temperatures in the Niño3.4 region to peak in the final month of this year. The remainder anticipate a November peak.
While human emissions of greenhouse gases are responsible for almost all of long-term global warming, temperatures in specific years are strongly influenced by El Niño events.
The “state of the climate” analysis explains that this year’s El Niño event will have its largest effect on global temperatures in 2027. This is because global temperatures typically lag warming in the tropical Pacific by around three months.
Carbon Brief projects that the 2027 average global temperature will reach around 1.74C above pre-industrial levels. It calculates a 96% chance that next year will be the warmest on record.
This projection is based on the historical relationship between year-on-year temperature changes and El Niño conditions the preceding autumn. It also factors in uncertainty around how global temperatures will develop across the remainder of 2026.
The post ‘Simply staggering’: Rapidly developing ‘super El Niño’ on track to peak in December appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Simply staggering’: Rapidly developing ‘super El Niño’ on track to peak in December
Some things are too precious to risk. And Scott Reef is one of them.
Today, we’re launching a bold new campaign starring iconic Australian actor Michael Caton and a green sea turtle named Sandy to rally Australians behind one simple message: Flip off Woodside to save Scott Reef.
Off the coast of Western Australia, Scott Reef is one of Australia’s most extraordinary marine environments. It is home to vulnerable green sea turtles, endangered pygmy blue whales and thousands of other marine species.
Each year, one thousand endangered green sea turtles return to Scott Reef to nest. It’s where they lay their eggs. It’s where baby turtles hatch. It’s where they make their first brave dash from the sand to the ocean. It’s their home.
But this remarkable ecosystem is under threat from Woodside’s plans to drill for gas, with up to 57 toxic wells proposed around the reef.
Turtles can’t speak up for their home, so we’re asking Australians to make their voices heard instead.
From one Aussie icon to another
At the heart of our new campaign is an iconic Australian voice, Michael Caton. Caton is using his voice to speak out for, what will soon be, another Australian icon – Scott Reef.
In a cinematic courtroom showdown, Caton lends his unmistakable voice to one of Scott Reef’s most vulnerable inhabitants: a green sea turtle fighting to protect her home from corporate destruction.
As Sandy the turtle defiantly flips her flippers at Woodside, Caton delivers a message that every Australian can get behind.
“Some things are too precious to risk.”
Because when it comes to protecting our natural environment, sometimes being polite just isn’t enough.
Turning a gesture into a movement
We’ve launching a campaign designed to do more than grab attention. We want to turn public concern into meaningful action.
The idea is simple: flip off Woodside and make sure our political leaders know exactly where Australians stand.
We’re calling on people across the country to share the campaign, get involved on social media and, most importantly, tag their local MPs.
We need Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to hear loud and clear that Australians want Scott Reef protected, not sacrificed for another gas project.
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3.1% in the third quarter of 2026, as the Hormuz crisis continued to hit oil demand and coal use also dropped.
This guest post is by:
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
This was the largest quarterly reduction since the 2022 Covid lockdowns and means that China’s CO2 emissions have now fallen by an estimated 0.5% in the year to date.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that coal use fell by 3% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026, while oil was down 4%.
The main drivers were a fall in power-sector coal consumption, a continued sharp reduction in transport oil consumption and slowing growth in the coal-to-chemical industry.
The sharp decline in China’s CO2 emissions extends a “flat or falling” trend that began in March 2024 and has now lasted more than two years, as shown in the figure below.
The outlook for China’s CO2 emissions depends on the balance between rising energy demand, clean-energy growth and the government response to a GDP slowdown.
Decline drivers
Key drivers of the fall in CO2 in the third quarter of 2026 included a 3.3% drop in coal-power generation, after demand growth slowed and the amount of “wasted” wind and solar fell.
Power generation from solar, wind and nuclear increased by 110 terawatt hours (TWh) year-on-year, more than twice as much as the growth in total electricity demand. This added clean-power generation equal to Germany’s total power output in the same time period.
The fall in coal-power output and CO2 emissions came despite the fact that China continues to build new coal-power capacity at near-record rates. This means that average running hours for coal plants are falling even faster than total generation, eroding their profits.
Meanwhile, transport oil consumption continued to fall sharply, down 9% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026. Electric vehicles (EVs) continued to gain market share, hitting a record 67% of passenger car sales and 50% of heavy trucks in September.
The amount of electricity used by EVs grew by 53%, much faster than the number of EVs on the road, showing increased usage of the existing fleet in preference to fuelled vehicles.
Elsewhere, growth in the coal-to-chemical industry continued to slow down in the third quarter of 2026. The sector has been a key source of emissions growth, but high coal prices have weakened profitability and higher output prices hurt downstream demand.
Finally, CO2 emissions from cement and steel production continued to fall in the third quarter, as the contraction in construction volumes accelerated.
Outlook for emissions
Energy consumption growth has been falling after a period of exceptionally high growth during Covid, while clean-power growth has been robust.
This makes it likely that the growth in clean-power generation will exceed total energy demand growth this year, maintaining the structural fall in fossil-fuel use.
Looking ahead, this balance also relies on progress in removing barriers to new solar and wind power being added to the grid, which result in some clean electricity being “wasted”.