Biden Unveils New Measures to Cut Climate Super Pollutants

Half of today's climate change is caused by super pollutant greenhouse gases-including methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and nitrous oxide (N₂O)-that are far more potent than carbon dioxide (CO₂). Slashing emissions of these super-pollutants is the fastest way to tackle climate change and a critical complement to reducing carbon dioxide-while creating good-paying clean energy jobs, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually due to respiratory illnesses, and boosting food security.

Since Day One in office, President Biden has taken historic action to dramatically reduce U.S. and global super pollutant emissions. For example, domestically the Biden-Harris administration is implementing the November 2021 U.S. Methane Action Plan that takes a whole-of-government approach to cut consumer costs, protect workers and communities, maintain and create high-quality, union-friendly jobs, and promote U.S. innovation and manufacturing of critical new technologies essential to tackling the climate crisis.

Globally, President Biden has rallied the world to tackle methane emissions through the Global Methane Pledge to reduce global methane emissions 30 percent by 2030, and he signed the U.S. ratification of the Kigali Amendment, an international agreement to phase down super-polluting HFCs and avoid up to 0.5 °C of global warming by 2100. In total, this administration has taken actions that will reduce super pollutants by nearly 300 megatons per year domestically by 2030, equivalent to 70 million gasoline-powered cars.

Meanwhile, many Republicans in Congress continue to deny the very existence of climate change and remain committed to repealing the President's Inflation Reduction Act-the biggest climate investment in history-which would put good-paying jobs in jeopardy and undermine the health and safety of their own constituents.

Today the Biden-Harris Administration is hosting a White House Super Pollutants Summit with U.S. officials, companies, environmental organizations, unions, philanthropies, and international partners to announce new domestic and international actions to tackle climate super pollutants and celebrate successes in reducing super pollutants to date, including:

New Efforts to Advance Detection and Reporting of Super Pollutants

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Global Monitoring Lab and United Airlines announced an agreement on a pioneering collaboration that will use commercial aircraft to significantly enhance monitoring of climate pollutants, including carbon dioxide and methane, and carbon monoxide and water vapor, which will improve understanding of greenhouse gas emissions. The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement will aid in the development of a new Commercial Aircraft Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Program within the Global Monitoring Laboratory.

• The State Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) committed to deploy 10 state-of-the-art monitoring systems to U.S. embassies and consulates to measure ozone and its precursors. The data from these sensors will be used to improve the capabilities of climate and air quality satellites and develop a new tropospheric ozone forecasting model.

• Carbon Mapper - a non-profit that leads a public-private partnership-including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Planet Labs PBC, and other partners-announced the upcoming launch of the first Carbon Mapper Coalition satellite, further expanding tools to monitor methane emissions across all sectors. The Carbon Mapper Coalition satellites, which are designed to detect methane super-emitters at facility-scale from space, will build on U.S. private sector and non-profit organization detection capability with the launch of MethaneSAT by the Environmental Defense Fund earlier this year. At the Summit, the Bezos Earth Fund announced $10 million in new funding to support MethaneSAT to continue to advance satellite-based detection of methane emissions.

New Industry Leadership to Reduce Nitrous Oxide Emissions

• Leading U.S. companies showcased new actions that, by early 2025, will reduce overall U.S. industrial emissions of nitrous oxide by over 50% since 2020.
  • Ascend Performance Materials, the largest producer of adipic acid in the United States, announced the installation of an additional thermal reduction unit that has virtually eliminated N2O emissions at their Florida facility.
  • ClimeCo, a global sustainability company and the largest developer of industrial N2O abatement projects in the United States, announced three new emissions reduction projects that will come online by early 2025 and reduce nitrous oxide emissions at the three facilities by approximately 95%.

New Initiatives to Reduce Domestic Methane Emissions

• As a key part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s new Clean Air Act rules to reduce methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations by nearly 80% compared to emissions without the rule, the Super Emitter Program leverages data collected by EPA-certified third-party experts using approved remote sensing technologies (such as satellites) to find large methane leaks and releases and notify owners and operators. Once notified, owners and operators must investigate to find the source of the super emitter event, report the results of that investigation to EPA, and repair any leaks or releases covered by an EPA standard. To keep the public informed, EPA will make the super-emitter data publicly available on a timely basis. EPA has begun accepting applications to become certified third-party notifiers, and is working with a number of organizations that are interested in developing applications.

• EPA announced it will issue a proposed rule to update its Clean Air Act emission standards for new and existing municipal solid waste landfills in 2025 to cut and other harmful landfill gas emissions, including through incorporating new technologies that will better measure and address emissions and reduce harmful air pollution in frontline communities.

New Initiatives to Reduce Global Methane Emissions

• Building on three years of international leadership on integrating methane reduction into development programming, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has formed new partnerships with nine private companies to address food loss and waste under its Food Loss and Waste Accelerator launched last year. Food loss and waste contributes 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including highly toxic methane emissions when discarded or leftover food decomposes. USAID will work with nine businesses in Kenya, Nepal, and Tanzania over the next two years to upcycle or otherwise prevent over 85,000 metric tons of food loss through practices like innovative food processing and storage and improved post-harvest handling. This will create more than 600 jobs, at least 45 percent of which will be held by women, and brings the total number of public-private partnerships under the Accelerator to 12.

• A consortium of philanthropies - represented by the High Tide Foundation - announced more than $300 million to support the Global Methane Hub, which will catalyze billions of dollars in crucial project investments and will be dedicated to reducing methane emissions across key sectors, with an emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. The Global Methane Hub was established by philanthropies alongside the launch of the Global Methane Pledge and has already helped catalyze over $10 billion in methane reducing project investments by strategically regranting $200 million to 114 grantees conducting work in 152 countries.

• The UN Environment Programme's (UNEP's) International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) announced new participation in the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) since its launch in December 2023. Countries representing over two-thirds of oil and gas emissions events detected by MARS in 2023 now participate in the program with nominated focal points. These focal points span the over 140 member companies of UNEP's Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 and 15 governments of major oil and gas producing countries, which represent more than 60% of global oil and gas production.

• The World Bank announced that, with $10 million in US funding, they are advancing the work of mainstreaming methane into their global development programming with a first batch of 15 country-led programs focused on reducing 10 million tons of methane from the livestock, rice, waste and sanitation sectors and benefiting over 100 million people.

Today's new actions build on more than three years of work by the Biden-Harris administration to tackle super-pollutants at home and abroad.

Domestic highlights include:

• In 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration took nearly 100 actions to dramatically reduce methane emissions under the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan. These actions included plugging leaks and regulating emissions in the oil and gas sector, reclaiming abandoned coal mines, reducing food waste and agricultural emissions, investing in cleaner buildings and industrial processes, and launching innovative technologies to detect and halt large methane emissions.
• Yesterday, as part of $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants from the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA announced several grants to reduce super pollutant emissions in states across the country, including to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, to the Hudson Valley Regional Council to reduce fugitive methane emissions from closed landfills, and to the Colorado Energy Office to reduce methane emissions from landfills, coal mines, and natural seepage. In total, Climate Pollution Reduction Grant projects are estimated to reduce super pollutant emissions through 2030 equivalent to the annual energy use of approximately 3.5 million homes.
• EPA is implementing a national program under the bipartisan American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act to achieve an 85% phasedown by 2036 of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration, heating and cooling equipment, and other sectors. This phasedown will cumulatively achieve emissions reductions equivalent to 4.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from 2022 to 2050 - equal to approximately three years of U.S. power sector emissions at 2019 levels.
• Last summer, EPA issued a final rule to implement a 40% phasedown of HFCs starting in 2024. This builds on the success of the 10% phasedown that EPA implemented for 2022 and 2023. The 2024 phasedown establishes a similar allowance methodology to provide regulatory certainty to industry and stakeholders, ensuring efficient implementation.
• The Administration's Interagency Task Force on Illegal HFC Trade continues to work diligently on robust enforcement mechanisms to ensure a level playing field for U.S. companies complying with the phasedown requirements. Since the start of the phasedown in January 2022, the Task Force has prevented illegal HFC shipments at the border equivalent to more than 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide - more than the emissions from over 200,000 homes' electricity use for one year.
• In April 2024, PHMSA announced nearly $400 million in grants to fund 130 projects in 26 states to repair, rehabilitate, or replace gas distribution pipelines that are prone to methane leaks and ruptures and other safety hazards in predominantly underserved communities as part of President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's first-of-its-kind Natural Gas Distribution Infrastructure and Modernization Grant Program.

• In June 2024, the White House and several federal agencies released a National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics which lays out a path for the U.S. to meet its national goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50% by 2030. Preventing food loss and waste and increasing recycling of food and other organic materials has important benefits including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving households and businesses money, and building cleaner, healthier communities.

• In May 2024, EPA issued a final rule to strengthen, expand and update methane emissions reporting requirements for petroleum and natural gas systems under their Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, as required by the IRA. The final revisions will ensure greater transparency and accountability for methane pollution from oil and natural gas facilities by improving the accuracy of annual emissions reporting from these operations.
• In June 2024, EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the availability of $850 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding through the Methane Emissions Reduction Program to help oil and natural gas sector operators reduce methane emissions and transition to available and innovative methane emissions reduction technologies. The program also aims to improve emissions data collection and measurement at all scales (ground level, aerial, and satellite) and provide accurate, transparent data and monitoring capability to impacted communities.
• In the first half of 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration has been supporting the development of measurement, modeling, and data standards for detecting methane concentrations and quantifying point source emissions through the 2023 National Strategy to Advance an Integrated U.S. Greenhouse Gas Measurement, Monitoring and Information System.

International highlights include:

• At COP26 in Glasgow, alongside European Commission President von der Leyen, President Biden launched the Global Methane Pledge, which now has 157 countries committed to the global goal of reducing methane 30 percent by 2030.
• At the Major Economies Forum in 2022, President Biden unveiled the Methane Finance Sprint, which catalyzed over $1 billion in new grant funding in 2023 to help developing countries reduce methane across sectors.
• After the successful ratification of the Kigali Amendment, the Biden Administration worked with partners to leverage U.S. contributions to the Montreal Protocol's Multilateral Fund to raise nearly $1 billion to support HFC phasedown and related energy efficiency measures.
• Thanks to U.S. leadership in driving consensus, all parties agreed as part of the Global Stocktake outcome at COP28 to include all greenhouse gases - including super pollutants - in their 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions due in early 2025.