Oil Change International Response to the COP29 Summit on Methane and Non-CO2 Gasses Hosted by the US, China, and Azerbaijan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

12 November 2024

Contacts: Rebecca Stoner, [email protected], +1-917-561-2607, GMT-5

Al Johnson-Kurts, [email protected], +1 802-595-9593, Baku time 

In response to the COP29 Summit on Methane and Non-CO2 Gasses hosted by the U.S., China, and Azerbaijan, Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, said:

“The announcements shared at today’s Summit on Methane will be used to justify selling American LNG to countries around the world under the guise of it being “clean.” The International Energy Agency has identified that “an unprecedented volume of LNG is due to come online in the second half of the 2020s, particularly from the U.S., leading to a dangerous oversupply and displacing renewable solutions like wind, solar, and heat pumps. 

“Minimizing fossil fuel consumption and phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to reduce climate pollution at the scale the climate crisis demands. Attempts to limit the amount of methane leaked or vented into the atmosphere during oil and gas production never get us to our climate goals by themselves, since doing so doesn’t address emissions from burning oil and gas. We will never get to our climate goals by eliminating methane leaking and venting alone; we only reach 1.5 by phasing out oil and gas. We can’t let focus on the former at the expense of the latter. *

“Any growth in oil and gas production and exports will exacerbate health and safety impacts frontline communities already face, which are disproportionately borne by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities particularly in the Global South. It’s time governments take real action, not just by measuring pollution but by stopping it at the source by phasing out fossil fuels.

“Without real policies to phase out oil and gas expansion, these commitments to measure, report, and verify methane emissions mean nothing for keeping 1.5 alive and are a dangerous distraction from the issue at hand this COP – the need for Global North countries to commit to an ambitious new climate finance goal.”

*The previously released version of this quote has been updated as of November 13, 2024 at 8:15 AM ET