China has made an “opening play” ahead of the UN climate summit by pledging to track and reduce harmful emissions from methane, as one of  the world’s largest producer of the potent global warming gas

China being one of world’s largest producer of  potent global warming gas, pledged to track and reduce harmful emission from methane right before UN climate summit. One of the drawback is, china failed to set definitive targets for emission cuts and remained vague about timeliness.

The statement from the ecology and environment ministry coincided with tail-end of a four day US visit by China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua for meetings with his counterpart John Kerry in California. The document said China would focus on improving its monitoring and supervision systems for methane through to 2030, covering all sectors from energy to agriculture and waste.

Although China remains outside the global methane pact signed by more than 150 countries two years ago at the Glasgow climate summit. led by the US and Europe, it pledges to cut methane emission by 30 per cent by 2030 compared with 2020 levels. Russia and India also did not sign it. Methane is responsible for an estimated one-third of the rise in global temperatures during the industrial era, and reducing it is seen as the easiest way to limit global warming in the near term.

The biggest contributor to human activity-related methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by the energy sector, including from the production of coal, oil, natural gas and biofuels. While it struggles to reduce emissions from agriculture, such as cattle and rice paddies, as well as waste, China produces the majority of its energy- related missions from coal, with the methane released during mining. It has also said it will strive to reduce flaring, or the burning of gas associated with oil and gas production, to zero by 2030.