As the EU moves to delay its methane law, scientists warn it is fighting the wrong battle

PRESS RELEASE | Climate Crisis Advisory Group

As the EU moves to delay its methane law, scientists warn it is fighting the wrong battle.

In a full scientific assessment published ahead of the 29 October Energy Council, the Climate Crisis

Advisory Group finds the supply fears driving calls for delay do not hold – and warns that a core question,

whether a rule enforced through tradable certificates will cut methane at all, is barely being asked.

LONDON / BRUSSELS, 22 October 2026 – On 14 October the European Commission proposed a binding

one-year postponement of the EU Methane Regulation’s import obligations – moving the start date

from 2027 to 2028 and the methane-intensity standard from 2030 to 2031 – a proposal now being fast

tracked through the European Parliament and the Council. Today the Climate Crisis Advisory Group

(CCAG) publishes a full independent scientific assessment of the law, “Should the EU enforce or delay its

Methane Regulation?”, and its central message is that the debate driving that delay has fixed on the

wrong question.

The report’s principal warning concerns a risk the political argument has largely passed over. To ease

compliance, importers may now rely on tradable certificates rather than physically tracing their gas.

Because a certificate can be bought and sold, the scientists warn, a loosely designed system lets the best

performers sell their clean credentials to the worst – so an importer looks compliant on paper while

nothing changes at the wellhead. The rule would then move paper between companies rather than cut

methane. Reporting, the report stresses, is not the same as reducing: companies covering around 42%

of global oil and gas production now report under the main voluntary standard, yet the emissions they

report come to under 2% of what the sector actually emits. The report sets out what a certificate must

do to be meaningful – measured at the producer, independently verified, and bound to the gas it

describes.

On the supply fears now being used to justify postponement, the assessment confirms and deepens

CCAG’s earlier finding that enforcement would not put Europe’s gas at risk. The “43%” figure invoked all

year comes from a single industry-commissioned study that calls its own result “illustrative” and “not a

forecast,” and reaches that number only by assuming penalties the Commission has itself asked member

states not to apply. Compliant gas already runs to several times EU import needs, and the cost of

meeting the standard is about €0.07 per MMBtu – roughly 0.3% of the gas price. A postponement, the

report argues, does not buy a year of preparation; it forfeits a year of the cheapest and fastest climate

action available to us.

CCAG urges Parliament and member states not to wave the postponement through on evidence that

does not support it. Should a short and strictly time-limited delay nonetheless proceed, the report

argues it must leave the obligations intact and the year must be used to finish the verification

framework and set the certification criteria strictly – not to weaken the rule or let a temporary measure

harden into a lasting exemption. It calls on the Commission to commission an independent evidencebase, in parallel, to inform its review due by 1 January 2028, and warns against folding the Regulation

into the wider “energy omnibus.”

Professor Sir David King, Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former UK Chief Scientific

Adviser, said:

“Europe is being asked to postpone this law to solve a problem that does not exist, and in doing

so it risks missing the one that does. The supply scare comes from a single illustrative model. A

fundamental question – whether a rule enforced through tradable certificates actually cuts

methane – is one almost no one is talking about. If a short delay moves ahead, it must be used to

make the rule work rather than further wear it down. Methane is the fastest brake we have on

warming this decade; this is not the moment to take our hand off it.”

Professor Örjan Gustafsson, Stockholm University, said:

“We can now see that methane emissions are far higher than the official figures admit, and the

gap between what is being reported and what we know is in the air is significant. That gap is at

the heart of the problem. A certificate is only meaningful if it reflects what is being emitted, not

what is being written down. Postponing the rule does nothing to close it.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

● The report, “Should the EU enforce or delay its Methane Regulation?”, is published by the

Climate Crisis Advisory Group on 22 October 2026. It assesses two questions: whether

enforcement threatens supply, and whether a rule enforced through tradable certificates will

cut methane.

● The “43%” / 114 bcm figure is from Wood Mackenzie, EU Methane Emissions Regulation –

Analysis of Market Impacts, prepared for IOGP Europe and Concawe, March 2026. The

“illustrative” and “not a forecast” caveats are on page 8; the study assumes penalties “would be

dissuasive – effectively excluding such volumes from the market.” Its own Adaptive scenario

brings the excluded volume down from 114 bcm to 53 bcm.

● Commission Recommendation (EU) 2026/1835 (20 July 2026) asks member states not to apply

penalties for importers’ information failures in 2027–2029, fraud excepted; Recommendation

(EU) 2026/1834 sets out the trace-and-claim and certification routes. The obligations

themselves remain in force.

● Compliant supply estimate: Rystad Energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, June 2026

update. Compliance cost: Rystad Energy for the Clean Air Task Force (€0.07/MMBtu). Reporting

coverage: OGMP 2.0, against the Global Methane Budget.● The EU Methane Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1787, applies to importers from 1 January

2027 (Article 28); the methane-intensity standard applies from 5 August 2030 (Article 29); the

Commission’s review is due by 1 January 2028 (Article 36).

● CCAG is an independent group of scientists chaired by Sir David King. It has no commercial or

national interest in the outcome.

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