References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-12-9079-2012

Global anthropogenic methane emissions 2005–2030: technical mitigation potentials and costs

Höglund-Isaksson

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

04 10 2012

12 19 9079 9096

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/9079/2012/acp-12-9079-2012.pdf

This paper presents estimates of current and future global anthropogenic methane emissions, their technical mitigation potential and associated costs for the period 2005 to 2030. The analysis uses the GAINS model framework to estimate emissions, mitigation potentials and costs for all major sources of anthropogenic methane for 83 countries/regions, which are aggregated to produce global estimates. Global emissions are estimated at 323 Mt methane in 2005, with an expected increase to 414 Mt methane in 2030. The technical mitigation potential is estimated at 195 Mt methane in 2030, whereof about 80 percent is found attainable at a marginal cost less than 20 Euro t−1 CO2eq when using a social planner cost perspective. With a private investor cost perspective, the corresponding fraction is only 30 percent. Major uncertainty sources in emission estimates are identified and discussed.

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