Project description
Advancing research on methane politics
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is the second largest contributor to climate change. To mitigate its impact, the Global Methane Pledge was introduced in 2021, aiming for a 30 % reduction in methane emissions by 2030. Nevertheless, research into methane policies and regulations is limited, and there is little understanding of how the political challenges associated with methane differ from those of carbon dioxide. To address these gaps, the ERC-funded METH-POL project will gather evidence from five key methane-emitting sectors – livestock, oil and gas, solid waste, coal and wastewater – and 16 countries representing each continent. The project will comparatively investigate these sectors and countries, identify political barriers to emissions reduction, and consider implications for improving research, policy and practice.
Objective
The ambition of the Global Methane Politics project is to produce a pioneering body of research that simultaneously establishes the distinctiveness of methane politics, investigates and demonstrates the most significant political obstacles to methane emissions reduction, and has transformative impacts on global methane and climate policies and practices.
Research on methane politics is urgently needed because 1) methane is the second largest contributor to anthropogenic climate change; 2) reducing methane emissions provides one of the most obvious routes to short-term climate mitigation, including limiting warming to near 1.5°C; 3) methane has become widely recognised as an important international policy concern since the launch of the Global Methane Pledge (GMP) in 2021; and yet 4), very little research has so far been conducted on methane policy, regulation or politics in practice - which is a critical shortcoming if the GMP target of a 30% reduction in emissions by 2030 is to be more seriously pursued.
METH-POL will be novel, impactful and timely. Guided principally by research in political ecology, it will test a series of original hypotheses about the specificity of methane politics, the political barriers to methane emissions reduction, and the implications thereof for research, policy and practice. It will produce the first dedicated body of cross-sectoral, cross-national, multi-scalar, trans-disciplinary and comparatively informed evidence on methane politics. It will involve research on 16 countries, on the global North and global South, on every continent, on the top five methane emitting countries, on the major methane emissions sectors, and on a wide range of methane governance initiatives, institutions and techniques. And it will also involve extensive knowledge exchange with scientific, policy and practitioner communities.
A 5-year project, METH-POL will run from 2026 to 2030 – the critical years if the GMP 30-30 target is to be achieved.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology governance
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry aliphatic compounds
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
LS2 9JT Leeds
United Kingdom
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