The writer is executive director of The International Energy Agency

With the tightness of natural gas supplies and the damaging impacts of the climate crisis taking turns to dominate the headlines, it is inexplicable that huge volumes of natural gas — two-and-a-half times the amount that the United Kingdom consumes annually — are being allowed simply to leak out into the atmosphere each year from fossil fuel operations worldwide. An amount almost as large is needlessly burnt in flares.

These emissions are mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has contributed to about 30 per cent of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has highlighted methane emissions as a key opportunity for tackling global warming.