Methane reduction is sometimes cheap, because the pollutant is also a fuel. The IEA’s Global Methane Tracker 2026 estimates that around 30 per cent of methane emissions from fossil fuel operations could be avoided at no net cost, using average 2025 energy prices. That estimate describes a whole sector in one particular year, and it says nothing about the bill at any single site.
Picture a hissing valve on a gas site. Every cubic metre escaping into the air is product nobody will ever sell. Methane is a pollutant with a resale value, and in some circumstances, collecting and selling it covers the cost of preventing its release.
The stakes are high because, according to UNEP, methane warms about 80 times as much as CO₂ over 20 years, mass for mass. A cut that pays for itself and slows warming within years is as close to good news as climate economics gets.
The IEA identifies established options in fossil fuel operations, such as repairing leaks and changing equipment that releases gas. Some of them pay for themselves because the captured gas has a buyer. Every month one of those fixes waits is another month of sellable gas warming the air.
What does “no net cost” mean?
It means the gas recovered is worth at least what recovering it costs. The IEA runs that sum across the industry with 2025 numbers. If gas sells for less, the sum moves. If a site has no route to market, the revenue side can shrink towards zero.
Net is the word doing the work. Somebody still pays for the repair or the new equipment, and the recovered gas has to sell before the sums come out even.
The formal term is abatement cost, meaning the cost of avoiding emissions relative to a defined alternative. The value of the gas, financing, site conditions and the comparison baseline all move it.
A carbon credit is a different product with its own programme rules, so the IEA figure tells you little about what one costs. A sector average has never repaired a valve.
Two sites, one average
Put two sites side by side. One sits beside a pipeline with a buyer at the end of it. The other lies hours from the nearest connection and needs new equipment before a single cubic metre moves. Both vanish into the same estimate.
Market access, suitable gas quality and existing infrastructure explain much of the gap. Financing, permissions and the ability to maintain the installation can decide whether a project proceeds at all.
Then the equipment has to run. A capture plant can sit installed and unavailable during maintenance, and an idle plant avoids no methane at all. Uptime belongs in any honest cost sum.
Is landfill gas capture cheap?
The IEA’s no-net-cost estimate covers fossil fuel operations. Waste and farming need different tools and more money.
Collecting landfill gas takes wells, pipework, a blower and a flare or an engine at the end of the line. Methane and carbon dioxide commonly make up most of the mixture, and its composition varies with the waste, its age, moisture and operating conditions. A closed site can go on producing methane for decades, so the system needs active management long after the gates close. Even the cover over the waste counts, because a well-maintained cover supports gas collection and helps control surface emissions.
An engine can turn the gas into electricity for the local grid, which helps the sums. The gas can also be upgraded to biomethane, removing CO₂ and other unwanted components so it can meet specifications for certain gas networks or vehicle uses, and upgrading carries losses of its own. Burning the gas still releases CO₂, so the climate benefit depends on how much methane the system collects and destroys. Assume perfect destruction and you overstate the result.
Capture efficiency and destruction efficiency measure separate stages: how much of the gas generated reaches collection, and how much of the methane entering treatment is destroyed. A well-run flare at the end of a leaky collection system still misses the gas that never reached it.
Monitoring has to show how much methane reached the device and how much escaped. Site-level estimates carry wide uncertainty without direct measurement, and a low headline cost cannot answer any of those questions.
If it pays, why does it still leak?
The tempting answer is that leak repair lacks glamour. That is a hypothesis about motivation, and we have no evidence to apply it to a whole market.
The obstacles on the ground are easier to name. A no-net-cost measure still needs a lender or a budget, a permit and someone to keep it running, and an average can look healthy while the site in front of you does not.
Cheapness also poses an awkward question to anyone funding a cut. If a measure pays for itself, would it have happened anyway? Additionality asks exactly that, and likely investment counts as evidence, alongside legal duties and common practice. A funder needs a convincing reply before claiming any part of the result.
Ask for the boundary
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A credible cost figure names its site or sector, its year and the record of what escaped. Next time someone calls methane reduction cheap, ask for all three.