The Chinese government has published its long-awaited 11-page plan setting out how it will tackle emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
The plan was announced ahead of a US-China climate summit and outlines measures that will be taken to cut emissions from coal mines, rice paddies, landfills and other methane sources.
But it did not include any targets for emissions reductions. This stands in contrast to the over 150 nations who have promised to collectively reduce emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030.
Experts told Climate Home that China’s baseline estimate of methane emissions was unreliable and a target could invite unwelcome pressure to shut down its coal mines.
Coal’s other problem
Just under half of China’s methane is from its coal mines, as methane gas leaks out of the seams of black rock.
This gas is explosive and dangerous so mine operators suck it from underground mines up to the surface where it damages the earth’s atmosphere, causing climate change.
China’s methane plan says it will “encourage and guide” coal firms to capture more of this gas. It can then be burned to produce electricity, heat the mines or dry coal.
But, coal mine methane analyst Anatoli Smirnov told Climate Home, the “only real solution to reduce methane emissions is to close coal mines”.
They then must be flooded or sealed, with a pump installed to capture the gas that still leaks and use it for something productive.
Lauri Myllyvirta is the co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. He told Climate Home that the Chinese government lacks the “political will and buy-in” to start controlling methane.
Since late 2021, he said, China’s priority has been to increase the amount of coal China produces to get the coal price down.
“So any obligations that would cover a significant part of coal mines don’t really fit into that paradigm,” he said, adding “the same goes for oil and gas”.
Bad measurements
About a year ago, China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that China has “a little bit of a way to go so we can do surveillance and collect statistics as well as verification of our baseline”.
Li Shuo, an analyst at the Asia Society, told Climate Home that “in many of our emitting sectors, we simply don’t know how much methane emissions are there, and that makes setting reduction targets hard”.
But some analysts have accused China of under-counting its coal mine methane emissions even though they have the ability to report more accurately.
Sabina Assan, an analyst at Ember said that, like many countries particularly in the developing world, China works out its coal mine methane emissions with a formula.
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It guesses how much methane leaks per ton of coal and multiplies that by how many tons of coal it produces.
Assan said China actually does measure the methane released from its underground mines, so it could improve reporting to the UN but hasn’t.
On top of this, China hasn’t reported its methane emissions since 2014 so its figures are out of date.
Myllyvirta said this hasn’t been reported since because China doesn’t want to “own up to the huge increase in emissions since 2014 and the Paris Agreement”.
The International Energy Agency and several other scientific studies come up with similar estimates to the Chinese government’s.
But Global Energy Monitor has done analysis based on the number and size of coal mines, how deep they are and what type of coal they have.
Using these variables, it estimates that the real figure for coal mine methane is almost double what the government claims.
The Chinese province of Shanxi alone, it estimates, emits about the same coal mine methane as the rest of the world.
The post China sets out methane plan, but no reduction target appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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Ritidian Point, at the northern tip of Guam, is home to an ancient limestone forest with panoramic vistas of warm Pacific waters. Stand here in early spring and you might just be lucky enough to witness a breaching humpback whale as they migrate past. But listen and you’ll be struck by the cacophony of the island’s live-fire testing range.
US Government Is Accelerating Coral Reef Collapse, Scientists Warn
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