This is the third briefing in InfluenceMap’s regular series on corporate policy engagement with global methane policy, as captured on the Methane Platform. The briefing provides an overview of developments in methane regulation from the year-end of 2024.
This bulletin highlights the oil and gas industry's targeting of US methane regulation in the wake of Trump’s presidential re-election, the passage of Denmark’s historic livestock emissions tax, California’s regulatory loophole for dairy industry methane emissions, and methane-related commitments coming out of COP29.
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s methane waste emissions charge (fee) for high-emitting oil and gas companies was finalized in November 2024 following the presidential election. Following industry responses to the January 2024 guidance, some implementation measures were weakened, yet oil and gas associations have continued to call for the repeal and modification of the fee and other methane regulations. The fee and other US methane regulatory measures face a near-certain challenge from the second Trump administration, assisted by industry associations that are already strategizing to repeal the policies.
Denmark’s Parliament reached a broad majority on the country’s landmark agricultural reform plan, beating New Zealand to be the first country to pass a tax on agricultural methane emissions. Despite initial negative advocacy from industry, Arla Foods has more recently taken a more supportive position on the policy. Danish policymakers also appear interested in eventually aligning the tax with an EU-level agricultural emissions trading system.
New amendments to California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard set a lengthy phaseout timeline for avoided methane credits, a scheme that rewards farms using anaerobic digesters to convert manure methane into renewable natural gas. Opponents claim that it is based on faulty carbon intensity calculations and its extension rewards methane-intensive factory farming practices and delays wide-scale automotive electrification by prolonging the state’s reliance on combustion fuels. Regional industry groups representing the agriculture and fossil fuel sectors advocated consistently to extend the crediting, which exempts projects from impending emissions capture requirements and could lead to similar measures in other regions developing fuel standard policies.
Numerous methane reduction initiatives came out of the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan, including new signatories of the Global Methane Pledge, nearly $500 million in grant funding for methane abatement measures, a declaration on reducing emissions from organic waste, and a collaborative roadmap to minimize emissions throughout the international fossil fuel supply chain.
A United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report launched at COP29 revealed that action against methane emissions continues to lag behind national and corporate commitments: the first global satellite methane detection and notification system delivered 1,200 alerts of large leaks to companies and governments over the past two years, but only 1% were addressed. Several methane-related initiatives emerged from the summit:
New Global Methane Pledge signatories: COP29 host country Azerbaijan, alongside Tajikistan, Guatemala, and Madagascar, joined over 150 other countries in the commitment to cut methane emissions by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.
Methane Abatement Partnership Roadmap: The European Commission, with support from Canada, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, aim to enhance importer-exporter collaboration along the international fossil fuel supply chain and spur emissions reductions.
Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste: 30 countries, representing almost half of global methane emissions from organic waste, joined a pledge to set sectoral targets to reduce emissions from this source within future nationally determined contributions.
Nearly $500 Million for New Project Investment: Philanthropy and governments including the EU Commission, the United States, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and Canada announced new grant money for methane abatement.
The analysis for corporate engagement on specific methane policies is derived from InfluenceMap's Methane Platform. To explore the underlying evidence further, click on the hyperlinks throughout the section.
A week after Trump’s presidential re-election, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced at COP29 that it had finalized the Inflation Reduction Act’s methane fee for the oil and gas sector (the Waste Emissions Charge). This rulemaking confirms that fossil fuel companies will be subject to pay $900 per metric ton of methane emissions above the 25,000-ton threshold come March 2025, rising to $1,200 per ton for emissions in calendar year 2025 and $1,500 in 2026 and beyond.
Implementation guidance for the fee was proposed in January 2024, specifying several measures of the policy including fee calculation, applicable facilities, exemption criteria, and netting provisions. This prompted industry advocacy efforts to weaken such measures. Concessions are evident in the final rule, including the expansion of netting to encompass facilities at the parent company-level and the extension of the plugged wells exemption to emissions from all equipment and processes associated with an individual wellhead. Both of these revisions were pushed in a joint trades regulatory comment spearheaded by the American Petroleum Institute (API) in March 2024. Nonetheless, this marks the first US federal policy that prices greenhouse gas emissions, which is significant as multiple studies using aerial sensors suggest methane emissions from oil and gas operations are up to three or four times higher than government estimates based on industry data.
In October 2024, the Supreme Court rejected several requests by states and industry players to halt the implementation of the EPA’s methane regulations. However, seemingly emboldened by the election outcome, oil and gas industry groups have continued to brazenly target US methane policy:
9 August 2024: American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC) distributed an internal document at a board meeting laying out regulatory priorities for the upcoming election, which was obtained and disclosed in full by a climate nonprofit. The document targets all three EPA methane regulations as the most pressing and quickly evolving policy issue and details potential strategies AXPC could pursue to weaken or repeal the fee depending on which candidate took the White House. The document also reveals that AXPC planned to apply “additional pressure on EPA politicals” related to the fee and reporting revisions. The document contains a draft policy roadmap “to be shared with political campaigns and/or transition teams,” including a list of existing “rules that should be revoked, replaced, or modified to undo inappropriate barriers to the future of responsible US oil and natural gas production.” The list recommends that the methane performance standards and the reporting rules be modified and the Waste Emissions Charge be modified or revoked entirely.
30 September 2024: The AXPC releases a finalized version of the policy roadmap seen in the leaked documents. The 2025 Energy Policy Blueprint for the next Congress and Administration contains a section on “fixing” methane regulations, pushing for the repeal of the fee and parts of the methane rule, and favoring a voluntary approach to methane abatement from the sector that promotes technological innovation over binding regulations.
11 November 2024: AXPC CEO Anne Bradbury is quoted in Bloomberg, stating the group will collaborate with the incoming administration to “fix the unworkable, infeasible, or legally dubious aspects of the last administration’s policy to ensure a durable methane framework moving forward.”
12 November 2024: In response to the EPA announcement, the API, AXPC, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) released statements opposing the fee and anticipating working with the incoming administration and new Congress to amend or repeal the policy.
12 November 2024: API issued a policy roadmap with specific actions that the incoming administration should take to facilitate the expansion of the oil and gas industry. The 5-Point Policy Roadmap, addressed to the president-elect and 119th Congress, openly calls for the repeal of the Waste Emissions Charge.
19 November 2024: The IPAA put out a similar policy plan addressed to the Trump transition team, including a detailed plan for eliminating the methane fee and changing the regulations to develop a “cost-effective” regulatory regime that “provides flexibility.”
Biden also attempted to reaffirm the US’s commitment to reducing methane with a December 2024 update to the country’s nationally determined contribution that includes an anticipated reduction of methane emissions by at least 35% from 2005 levels in 2035. However, immediately following his inauguration, the Trump administration announced an executive order to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. Biden’s methane emissions reduction action plan remains unchanged as of the release of this briefing, but it is particularly vulnerable given Trump’s offer to oil and gas executives at a private dinner to revoke regulations hampering the industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations and rollback of a (later reinstated) Obama-era methane leak detection and repair regulation for oil and gas companies during his first term. InfluenceMap has further tracked entrenched industry interests seeking to benefit from the second Trump administration on its US platform.
In November 2024, following protracted parliamentary negotiations, the Danish Parliament (Folketing) passed its Green Tripartite agreement, which included the world’s first ratified tax on agricultural methane emissions. Despite the livestock industry’s efforts to weaken measures during the policy’s formulation, and resistance after the policy package was announced in June, the tax will come into effect according to the price and timeframe originally agreed by the three-way partnership of government ministers, industry, and environmental organizations.
After the tax was finalized, the CEO of Arla Foods made comments to the New York Times indicating that the company has shifted to supporting the policy, despite initially assuming an oppositional stance. The company found itself at the center of an online controversy at the end of 2024 that spotlighted agricultural methane and the contentious role of climate solutions in farming practices: Arla announced in November 2024 that the company was trialing Bovaer, a livestock feed additive that suppresses methane-producing enzymes in cows’ digestive tracts, at some UK farms. Misinformed social media theories that the compound causes various health issues in humans, apparently stemming from the misunderstanding of a regulatory approval letter, led consumers to post about boycotting and disposing of Arla food products. This prompted other dairy companies to release statements clarifying that they do not use the additive. With agricultural industry players including Arla generally preferring technological options such as feed additives and bio-digesters over government regulation to mitigate the climate impact of farming, resistance to Bovaer could have wider implications for methane reduction policy.
In a year beset by worldwide farmer protests against attempted agricultural reform, Denmark stands out for successfully passing its livestock emissions tax, extending the tradition of collaborative stakeholder negotiations usually reserved for labor market disputes to agriculture. However, the involvement of industry in the policymaking process from the outset has raised some questions in parliament: Rasmus Jarlov, former Minister of Business and member of the Conservative party, commented on X and in parliament condemning the Tripartite as giving interest groups the “right to decide how little agriculture should pay for the green transition.” Danish watchdog organization Danwatch, meanwhile, was denied access to correspondence between the Ministry of Taxation and several industry groups, including highly-engaged farming firms Arla and Danish Crown, prior to the proposal of potential tax models at the end of 2023. This raised further concerns about the influence of private interests on the policy during the initial negotiation process and is currently under investigation by the parliamentary Ombudsman.
Since the tax’s announcement at COP29, Danish officials have suggested that it could be a model for a more unified response to emissions from the agricultural sector:
Denmark’s climate minister Lars Aagaard suggested that EU policymakers take inspiration from the tax in the consideration of a bloc-level agricultural policy. The Commission has been looking into pricing emissions from the agri-food system, with a European Scientific Advisory Board report on mitigation options for the sector expected later in 2025. However, farm lobbies such as Copa-Cogeca have long opposed the idea of an agricultural emissions trading system.
In comments to POLITICO, Danish MEP Morten Løkkegaard pushed for other Nordic countries to introduce similar national-level agricultural policies.
The Danish delegations to the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council (AGRIFISH) presented the tax model at a December 2024 council meeting. The Commission and member states’ responses appeared hesitant, with many rejecting it as a one-size-fits-all approach incompatible with some national conditions.
It remains to be seen how Denmark’s agricultural methane tax will be emulated in the global policy arena and whether it can deliver on the nation’s emissions reduction targets.
In a November 2024 hearing, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) considered several amendments to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) that could have significant repercussions for methane emission reduction efforts. The LCFS is a market-based compliance policy established in 2014 to reduce the overall carbon intensity of California’s transport fuel mix by creating a declining number of credits that producers of low-carbon fuels sell to high-carbon fuel producers. In 2017, CARB introduced new certification pathways for fuel produced from animal manure, under which methane voluntarily captured from manure lagoons using anaerobic digesters and injected into the pipeline system as renewable gas (RNG) is eligible for “avoided methane crediting.”
The scheme relies on the baseline assumption that captured methane converted into transportation fuel would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere, meaning that the carbon intensity values of manure RNG are some of the lowest of all fuels under the program, making this a lucrative revenue stream for dairy farms that can get certified for several 10-year crediting periods. Environmental groups have challenged the scheme since its inception, suggesting it constitutes flawed carbon accounting that delays emissions reduction progress. The groups state it would counterintuitively incentivize manure production and methane-intensive farm consolidation when lower-emitting manure management options exist, while the IPCC specifically recommends automotive electrification over biofuels for land-based transport.
This set of amendments comes as part of a wider regulatory update to align the LCFS with California’s 2022 climate Scoping Plan. As part of the pre-rulemaking process, the state Environmental Justice Advocacy Committee (EJAC) issued a series of recommendations to improve the LCFS in August 2023, which included the immediate elimination of avoided methane crediting and direct regulation of methane from enteric fermentation and manure management. EJAC cited SB 1383, a bill adopted in 2016 giving CARB the legal authority to mandate methane emission reductions from this source as of 2024 and calling for the immediate winding down of any voluntary methane reduction crediting mechanism as soon as a regulatory framework is in place. Instead, CARB rejected EJAC’s resolution as infeasible, and between December 2023 and October 2024 the board proposed three different phaseout timelines. All three proposals allowed manure methane digester projects that were already built or due to begin construction by 2030 to continue profiting from avoided methane credits for decades until their certification periods ended, exempting them from any methane reductions mandate during that period.
InfluenceMap has identified consistent advocacy from the fossil fuel and RNG industry in favor of extending the avoided methane crediting scheme at every stage of the policymaking process:
Pre-rulemaking LCFS amendment workshops: Several entities engaged with CARB amendment discussion workshops in December 2022 and March 2023. The Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas (RNG Coalition), Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), American Biogas Council (ABC), Chevron, and Air Liquide submitted comments opposing amendment proposals that would end avoided methane crediting.
Pre-proposal: The ABC and RNG Coalition submitted letters to CARB in September 2023 supporting the scheme and advocating for its continuation. The RNG Coalition also published an op-ed urging CARB to reject the calls from “anti-dairy” groups to eliminate the credits.
December 2023 proposal, 45-day comment period: WSPA, ABC, RNG Coalition, and Chevron responded to the original phaseout proposal in February 2024, protesting CARB’s plan to phase out avoided methane credits in 2040 for projects coming online after 2030.
August 2024 update, 15-day comment period: ABC, RNG Coalition, and the Transport Project submitted oppositional comments in response to CARB’s updated proposal, which scaled back the amount of crediting time for which projects would be eligible. RNG Coalition published another op-ed expressing concern with the crediting phaseout timeline being brought forward.
October 2024 final proposal, 15-day comment period: CARB relented and increased the crediting time for certified projects in the final proposal, however Chevron, ABC, and RNG Coalition responded suggesting that CARB further extend the scheme to incentivize RNG production.
November 2024 hearing: ABC and the Transport Project gave in-person testimonies in favor of preserving the crediting at the CARB board meeting for the October proposal.
At the hearing, CARB ultimately voted 12 to 2 to preserve the credits for livestock manure emissions for the time being. This move has since been litigated by environmental groups and criticized by the two outvoted board members, as it signals to the intensive dairy industry to continue business-as-usual for years and extends the state’s reliance on combustion gases. Among other LCFS revisions, the hearing decided that:
Rulemaking to directly mandate methane emissions reductions from manure management will begin by 2025 and be ready for Board consideration by 2028 and potential implementation by 2030 — 6 years after CARB gained legal grounds to regulate as per SB 1363.
Avoided methane credits will be phased out for new digester projects as of 2030. However, projects that currently exist will be eligible to continue being certified for up to three 10-year crediting periods, and projects that break ground between now and 2030 will be eligible for up to two crediting periods.
Adding a grandfather clause for existing and pre-2030 facilities locks in decades of rewards for methane generation, potentially incentivizing the expansion of dairy digester projects in the short-term and compensating developers for emissions reductions that would be mandated from 2030. The final rulemaking package has been submitted for final determination by mid-February. These amendments are especially significant given that California’s LCFS acts as a precedent, informing the role of methane in alternative fuel programs being developed in other jurisdictions looking to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. New York, Michigan, and Vermont are among the states considering or in the process of implementing an LCFS.
