Coal Mines Say They Slashed Methane Emissions. Experts Don’t Believe Them.

Article content

Sabina Assan, a senior analyst at energy thinktank Ember, granted that while Buzek’s approach can help determine how much methane the coal originally contained, it doesn’t account for emissions released during extraction. “The conclusion that the 75% emissions occurred before mining doesn’t hold.”  

Article content

Australia provides an instructive case study. It adopted the site-specific testing approach over a decade ago, allowing open-pit mine operators to abandon state-based emissions factors and determine their own standards. What happened next foreshadowed the situation in Europe. Between 2016 and 2023, three mines collectively reported 8.5 million tons less in emissions than they would have had they been using state-based emissions factors, according to an analysis by Ember. In New South Wales, where the site-specific method is most commonly used, reported emission intensity is around six times lower than it would have been under the state-based emissions factor, said Assan.

Article content

A preliminary large-scale study funded by the United Nations and published in March found that operator-reported estimates for surface coal mine emissions were lower than expert external estimates. The authors suggested the site-specific testing method was “unsuitable” for accurately estimating pollution, and indicated that emissions from Australia’s coal mining industry may be higher than officially reported.

Article content

Article content

Critical shareholders in Europe are already voicing concern about companies adopting site-specific testing. When RWE, Germany’s largest coal miner, held its annual general meeting at its Essen headquarters in April, activist investors proposed a vote of no confidence for the company’s executive board. One group, Environmental Action Germany, accused the firm of using methane measurements that “do not meet scientific standards” and “systematically underestimate the real emissions.” Ultimately, 99% of voting shareholders sided with RWE’s board members.

Article content

Michael Müller, the Chief Financial Officer at RWE, responded that the company’s measurements were “based on established sampling and analysis procedures” that had been “confirmed by external expert reports.” 

Article content

Spokespersons for the other German coal miners, LEAG, Mibrag and Romonta, described their measurements as “state of the art,” and said that they are in close contact with authorities and in full compliance with the EU Methane Regulation.

Article content

Jutta Paulus, a member of the Green Party in the European Parliament and a key negotiator for the methane regulation, said the regime was mainly intended to rein in the oil and gas industries and target hard coal. “For lignite,” said Paulus, which is sourced from surface-level mines, “we always said that we need a better methodology.” 

Article content

Article content

A spokesperson for the European Commission said that EU national authorities were responsible for “enforcement, decisions around compliance, and reporting for much of the regulation.”

Article content

In the meantime, Felicia A. Ruiz, director of coal mine and methane research at climate thinktank Clean Air Task Force, is one of many voices calling on the European Commission to draw up exact and transparent guidelines for proper measurement. From 2027 on, the EU will also require companies to audit their emissions results. “Independent third-party auditing for monitoring, reporting and verification in the coal sector is absolutely critical,” she said.

Article content

The European Committee for Standardization, the body responsible for developing bloc-wide standards, said it’s not currently working on guidelines to address methane emissions from coal mining, nor does it have a dedicated committee focused on this. The European Commission, which is expected to present its own regulatory guidelines next week, said it’s preparing a request to draft standards. That will “also cover rules for estimation of the emission factors for surface coal mines,” according to spokespeople.

Article content

The fate of the EU’s methane regulation could hang on how — or whether — this happens. If auditors are too close to industry or belong to authorities willing to rubber-stamp questionable results, Necki said, “then we still have a problem.” And should that continue unchecked, he added, “the regulation will be dead.”

Article content

Article content

—With assistance from Aaron Clark, Maciej Martewicz, John Ainger, Ewa Krukowska, Michal Kubala and Eva Brendel.

Article content