Strategies to reduce atmospheric methane
Snapshot
GRAND CHALLENGE
MIT Faculty and Researchers
MIT Schools/Affiliation
External Collaborators
Research summary
Climate scenarios that limit changes in global temperature to 1.5-4 degrees Celsius require methane controls, but few such technologies exist. We seek to drive down methane levels by inventing scalable new technologies, businesses, and policies within a framework of social justice. Guided by an understanding of Earth and industry, we seek to convert methane to value-added or reduced-warming substances, lower primary methane emissions dramatically through land use change, create policy test beds to inform effective legislation, and chart a path to a decarbonized future. Methane control measures are uniquely poised to have a large and rapid effect on the rate of warming, and intergovernmental agencies urge 45 percent reductions at once. Our integrated approach provides tractable paths to achieve this by acting across a spectrum of sources, leveraging synergies in fundamental discovery, and constructing accelerated implementation plans that are economic and equitable for measurable impact within 10-20 years.
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