China: do we need to monitor its methane emissions differently?

As global attention intensifies on cutting short-lived climate pollutants like methane (CH₄), a critical question emerges: should China’s emissions be monitored differently than those of other countries?

By Jed Thomas

The answer, increasingly, appears to be yes—and not just for political or economic reasons, but because the structure of China’s oil and gas emissions demands a more nuanced, spatially refined, and segment-specific approach to monitoring. 

China has undergone a dramatic transformation in its energy infrastructure over the past few decades, particularly in its shift from coal to natural gas.  

This shift, while positive in some respects, has led to a rapid rise in methane emissions, which have grown nearly eightfold from 0.5 Tg in 1990 to 4.0 Tg in 2022. But this growth is far from uniform.  

China's emissions are deeply shaped by geography, infrastructure, and data gaps—factors that differentiate it from countries with more mature, centralized energy systems. 

A recent study, published in Nature Communications (2025), presents a comprehensive, high-resolution methane (CH₄) emissions inventory for China’s oil and gas sector from 1990 to 2022.¹  

How have methane emissions in China changed? 

Using a bottom-up approach, the researchers developed a 0.1° × 0.1° gridded map that tracks over 80% of national CH₄ emissions by spatially allocating emissions across point, line, and field sources such as production fields, pipelines, refineries, and urban gas distribution networks.  

The analysis reveals a dramatic sevenfold increase in emissions over the study period, primarily driven by the expansion of natural gas infrastructure, especially in unconventional gas fields in western China.  

The study also highlights significant spatial mismatches between production and consumption regions, as well as limitations in existing global methane inventories, offering a refined methodology for targeted climate mitigation efforts. 

Why traditional approaches to methane inventory fail for China 

One key issue is spatial heterogeneity.  

Methane hotspots in China are overwhelmingly concentrated in a few western provinces like Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Xinjiang, where unconventional gas production—particularly from tight gas fields—dominates.  

These regions account for a disproportionate share of national CH₄ emissions, yet benefit less economically from the energy produced.  

Meanwhile, demand is highest in densely populated eastern cities like Shanghai and Qingdao, creating a stark production-consumption mismatch. This has driven the construction of over 300 long-distance pipelines, each a potential source of leakage. 

Traditional global methane inventories often rely on broad proxies like population density or uniform well distribution.  

But such approaches fail in China, where gas infrastructure sprawls across diverse terrains, and emission factors vary widely depending on the segment—whether it’s upstream production, midstream transport, or downstream distribution.  

Beyond the GFEI

The researchers revealed that earlier datasets like the Global Fuel Exploitation Inventory (GFEI) significantly misallocated emissions, missing key field-level hotspots and overestimating emissions in rural areas. 

What China requires, therefore, is a form of emissions monitoring that is both more granular and more tailored.  

The latest research has begun to deliver on this front, producing a 0.1°×0.1° gridded CH₄ emissions map built from point, line, and field-level data, capturing over 80% of national emissions at likely source locations.  

This includes segment-specific mapping of gas processing plants, urban pipelines, offshore platforms, and production fields. 

But precision is only half the equation. Equitable responsibility is the other. 

We need to update how China does emissions accounting  

As the study points out, the bulk of emissions occur in western regions that bear the environmental cost, while energy benefits accrue to the east.  

Monitoring frameworks should therefore inform not just mitigation strategies but also policy mechanisms for resource redistribution—perhaps requiring eastern provinces to invest in emission-reducing technologies in the west. 

Ultimately, China’s case challenges the global methane mitigation community to move beyond one-size-fits-all accounting.  

A country as geographically, industrially, and infrastructurally diverse as China demands a monitoring approach that reflects its unique energy geography.  

Without this, both domestic policy and international climate goals will remain out of reach. 

¹ Structural shifts in China’s oil and gas CH4 emissions with implications for mitigation efforts. Luo et al. Nature Communications. 2025.