How can methane be reduced

Depending on the farm, it might be that some of those options can save you time, and money. In a nutshell, methane emissions are related to the total amount of dry matter eaten.

Nitrous oxide emissions depend on the total amount of nitrogen going through your farm via feed and fertiliser. So, what steps can be taken to change these quantities, while still running a profitable business?

Can you use feeds with lower nitrogen or higher energy content to get animals to market quicker? Would a less-intensive system work for you? It might be reducing fertiliser inputs and stocking rates, changing the ratio of your stock type, or once-a-day milking. You could try using precision technologies for improving the amount and timing of your fertiliser application. Could you run slightly fewer animals and focus more on getting the most out of each animal to keep production up?

You could also consider the balance of your land use to reduce livestock emissions. Many farmers are now integrating trees onto their less productive land, and there is Government support to help do this.

For some farms, diversifying some of the land use to cropping or horticulture could reduce overall emissions and dependence on one income stream. Scientists are working hard on new solutions, with some very promising results. Some of them are being trialled already.

In short, yes. Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are long-lived gases. Nitrous oxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, and carbon dioxide for millennia. Therefore, every unit emitted today increases their concentration in the atmosphere and adds to the warming caused by past emissions. By comparison, methane is a relatively short-lived gas—virtually all of the methane emitted today disappears within about 50 years.

So new methane emissions today replace, rather than add to, previous methane emissions. However, while methane is up there, it's much more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Averaged over years, one tonne of methane causes about 30 times the warming as one tonne of carbon dioxide. Some of the heat trapped by methane causes other changes in the global climate system as well, resulting in warming that extends beyond methane's relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere.

But ongoing methane emissions keep Earth a lot warmer than it would be otherwise. For more on the targets, see the Government and climate change topic page. Many people ask whether methane is part of a 'carbon neutral cycle'; carbon in and carbon out meaning that it doesn't need to be reduced.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. All carbon dioxide absorbed into grass and eaten by grazing animals eventually returns as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and is therefore part of a closed carbon cycle. However, it is the conversion of some of the ingested carbon into methane that causes the challenge. Methane contains the same amount of carbon as carbon dioxide but behaves very differently in the atmosphere—as described in the section above.

So, while the cycle remains carbon neutral, it is not greenhouse gas or warming neutral. Skip to main content. The recommendations come from an international team of scientists, who have produced the Global Methane Assessment for the UN Environment Programme Unep.

Drew Shindell, the study's lead author, and a professor of Earth science at Duke University in Durham, US, agrees CO2 is the number one target in the fight against climate change, but says cutting methane will have a more rapid impact. Scientists regard a temperature rise of 1. The Paris agreement, signed by nearly countries, aims to keep the increase to within the 1. One of the difficulties in tackling the methane problem has been knowing precisely where the gas is coming from.

But this is changing thanks to an emerging satellite capability that can pinpoint sources. The Canadian company GHGSat has the highest-resolution instrument in orbit currently, able to detect plumes of CH4 down to about 25m across.

In the example above, the technology is tracking emissions from a giant landfill area serving the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. On an annualised basis, this is like the greenhouse gas output of , cars driving for a year. GHGSat's spacecraft are being followed by a fleet of other methane-detecting satellites this decade.

Identifying super-emitters is about to get a lot easier. The Unep report says the fossil fuel industry has the greatest potential for low-cost methane cuts.

Plugging leaks in oil and gas wells and along production and transmission lines would significantly cut methane emissions at little to no cost, it concludes. There are 2 approved methodologies under the Emissions Reduction Fund ERF for using feed additives or supplements to reduce methane emissions and claim carbon credits.

Adding nitrates to the diet at a specified rate optimises rumen fermentation, and changes the pathway of hydrogen to produce ammonia rather than methane. This can have the dual effect of reducing methane emissions while improving or maintaining animal performance.

We recommend that producers seek specialist advice before using this option because overdosing can result in nitrate poisoning. In the approved methodology for feeding nitrates to beef cattle, nitrate salt licks are substituted for animals previously fed urea, and is potentially applicable outside of feedlots. The use of dietary additives is currently approved only for grazing milking cows, and includes the addition of eligible additives to increase fat content of the diet to reduce methane emissions.

Carbon farming: reducing methane emissions from cattle using feed additives. Page last updated: Tuesday, 26 October - pm. Please note: This content may be out of date and is currently under review. Feed additives or supplements can reduce methane emissions from ruminant livestock. Contact information Mandy Curnow. Email Mandy Curnow.