U.S. part of multinational plan to reduce methane emissions

WASHINGTON — The United States plans to spend $53 million over five years on a multinational program to capture methane from coal mines and landfills in developing countries to provide energy and reduce global warming.

The partnership includes the U.K., Japan, Australia, India, Italy, Mexico and Ukraine, said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt, in a statement. Methane is the largest component of natural gas, which is used for heating, cooking and power plant fuel.

"The Bush administration welcomes this global partnership, a partnership that has the double benefit of capturing the second most abundant greenhouse gas and turning it to productive use as a clean-burning fuel," Leavitt said.

The administration has come under fire from states and environmentalists for not doing enough to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses that scientists say cause global warming.

Last week, eight states sued American Electric Power Co., Southern Co. and three other coal-burning utilities that are the biggest U.S. utility sources of carbon dioxide emissions, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. The suit says the utilities own power plants that emit more than 650 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

The methane-reduction plan would remove the equivalent of up to 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2015, the environmental agency said. In the U.S., methane emissions were reduced to 5 percent below the 1990 level because of agency and other programs since 1993.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, which trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, are not regulated by the U.S. government. The Bush administration withdrew the U.S. from an international treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on emissions of so-called greenhouse gases.