Economic impacts of reducing methane emissions in British Columbia’s oil and natural gas sectors: Taxes vs technology standards

As countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fight the potential impacts of climate change, increasing attention is being paid to methane, which is roughly 34 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year time span. Governments in many jurisdictions aim to reduce methane by 45–75% in oil and gas sectors by 2030. Methane reductions are often achieved by implementing new technologies and operational techniques, but jurisdictions have discussed the implementation of a methane tax. While several studies have focused on the financial costs of reducing methane emissions through adopting new technologies, little information exists on the economy-wide impacts of these initiatives and the effectiveness of different policy tools. We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model for British Columbia, Canada, to evaluate the economy wide impacts of methane technology standards versus taxes. Findings indicate that methane can be reduced by 75% by 2030 using technology standards at a loss of 0.0089% of GDP in 2030. Impacts associated with a methane tax will range from a loss of 0.0071–0.18% in 2030, depending on whether new technologies are assumed to be adopted. If a sufficiently high methane tax incentivizes adoption of new technology, the negative impacts of a tax are lower than that of a standard once the policy is fully implemented. While the overall economy-wide impact of a technology standard is relatively low, we find that it is as much as 65% higher than the direct costs.