The social cost of methane

A rapid and sustained reduction of methane emissions has been proposed recently as a key strategy to meet the climate targets of the Paris Agreement. The social cost of methane (SCM), which expresses the climate damage cost associated with an additional metric ton of methane emitted, is a metric that can be used to design policies to reduce the emissions of this gas. Here, we extend the DICE-2016R2 model so that it includes an improved carbon cycle and energy balance model as well as methane emissions, methane abatement cost, and an atmospheric methane cycle explicitly to be able to provide consistent estimations of the SCM. We estimate the SCM to lie in the range 880-8100 USD/tCH(4) in 2020, with a base case estimate of 4000 USD/tCH(4). We find our base case estimate to be larger than the average SCM presented in other studies mainly due to the revised damage function we use. We also estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and find that SCM estimates are less sensitive to variations in the social discount rate than the SCC due to the relatively short lifetime of methane. Changes in the parameterization of the damage function have similar relative impacts on both SCM and SCC. Furthermore, we evaluate the ratio of SCM to SCC as an alternative metric to GWP-100 of CH4 to facilitate tradeoffs between these two gases. We find this ratio to lie in the range 7-33 in 2020, with a base case estimate of 21, based on an extensive sensitivity analysis with respect to the discount rate, damage cost, and underlying emission scenarios. We also show that the global warming potential (GWP) and the SCM to SCC ratio are almost the same if the inverse of the effective discounting (in the social cost calculations) is equal to the time horizon used to evaluate the GWP. For comparison, the most widely used GWP, i.e., with a time horizon of 100 years, equals 27, hence in the upper range of the ratio we find using the SCM to SCC ratio.

Automated summary

A consistent estimation of the social cost of methane (SCM) is proposed using an extended DICE-2016R2 model that includes methane emissions, abatement cost, and atmospheric methane cycle. The estimated SCM in 2020 ranges from 880-8100 USD/tCH(4), with a base case estimate of 4000 USD/tCH(4). The SCM is found to be less sensitive to variations in the social discount rate compared to the social cost of carbon (SCC) due to the shorter lifetime of methane. The ratio of SCM to SCC is evaluated as an alternative metric to facilitate tradeoffs between methane and carbon gases.