A new report by the Changing Markets Foundation and Planet Tracker finds 80% of investors assessed scored less than 10% of available points on methane – with a particular gap in addressing agricultural methane emissions persisting.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), JP Morgan and Capital Group were the only investors to engage with the study, and NBIM was the only one to have agricultural methane specific policies.

London, 3 February 2026 – New analysis released today, Materially Neglected: Agricultural Methane and Investor Risk, assesses the methane policies of some of the world’s largest investors in meat, dairy, and rice and reveals how limited progress is being made to treat agricultural methane as a material climate and financial risk.

The report by Changing Markets Foundation and Planet Tracker asked 25 major global investors – including Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, Fidelity, UBS and T. Rowe Price – to complete a survey and disclose their approaches to agricultural methane. Only three investors offered to discuss the topic – the first of which was Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), followed by JP Morgan and Capital Group. NBIM is one of the largest shareholders in Tesco and Nestlé (holding approximately 3% stake), and so their interest ignites hope of greater investor pressure on the agriculture industry to enhance methane reduction policies.

While the remaining investors did not respond to repeated requests to disclose or contextualise their current methane practices, the eventual engagement from JP Morgan and Capital Group suggests a growing – but cautious – appetite from global investors to engage with the issue of agricultural methane.

Lily Roberts, Campaigns Adviser, Changing Markets said: “We launched this report to take stock of where investors are at on methane, following our earlier exposé. The response was stark: despite repeated requests over a month-long period, almost none of the world’s biggest financial institutions were willing to discuss their methane exposure. Methane is a major driver of warming, and agriculture is a huge part of portfolio exposure, yet the financial sector continues to overlook it. This silence speaks volumes, and it highlights a persistent transparency gap around agricultural emissions.”

Methane is a super-pollutant, more than 80 times as powerful as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Agriculture accounts for around 42% of today’s global methane emissions, primarily from farmed animals and rice cultivation.

Ailish Layden, Associate Analyst, Planet Tracker said: “Agricultural methane is one of the biggest and most overlooked drivers of global warming. Since the industrial revolution, it has contributed roughly a third of temperature rise. The good news is that methane action now can deliver rapid climate benefits. Investors have a major role to play in making this happen. They can and must do better.”

The latest analysis builds on two previous reports – Planet Tracker’s 2025 Methane Matters and the organisations’ joint analysis, Hot Money in 2023. This was a first-of-its-kind investigation that identified the 40 financial institutions financing the world’s 15 highest methane-emitting meat and dairy companies and revealed they all had weak or non-existent policies for reducing methane emissions.

Materially Neglected was conceived to take stock of progress since then, but the results are disappointing. Given the lack of investor engagement, Changing Markets and Planet Tracker reviewed publicly available disclosures across two key areas: integration of methane into investment and risk frameworks, and engagement with high-methane sectors.

Across both indicators, the report’s scoring assessment of financial institutions’ methane-related policies shows that 80% scored less than 10% of the total available points. Other key findings include:

• Methane is largely absent from investment and risk strategies: Only four investors (NBIM, UBS Asset Management, State Street Investment Management, and Fidelity Investments) explicitly recognise methane’s short-term warming impact. Most include methane as part of generic carbon dioxide (CO₂)-equivalent frameworks – with no standalone targets or agriculture-specific policies. NBIM is the only investor with agriculture-specific methane expectations in its climate policy. When investors do prioritise methane, the focus is limited to the oil and gas sector, for example JP Morgan Asset Management and State Street Investment Management have methane-specific policies, but focus only on oil and gas.
• No policies fully align with the Global Methane Pledge: The GMP commits governments worldwide to cutting methane emissions 30% by 2030, including those home to the world’s largest financial institutions. Yet no investor analysed aligns their policies with this commitment. NBIM stands out as the only investor to explicitly reference the GMP, embed methane expectations into its Climate Action Plan and encourage companies in methane-intensive sectors to set standalone methane targets.
• Methane is missing from agriculture policies: In the food sector, engagement addresses critical issues such as deforestation, biodiversity, and supply chain issues, but often fails when it comes to methane reduction. Investments in technical solutions, such as alternative proteins or low methane livestock systems, also remain small and disconnected from methane targets.

Ailish Layden, Associate Analyst, Planet Tracker said: “Investors are hurting themselves, as persistent methane oversight creates significant risk for them. Methane is rapidly shifting from a voluntary reporting topic to a regulated climate risk, which in turn is raising compliance, disclosure, and transition pressures for the livestock and dairy sectors and their financiers. Financial institutions must take responsibility for their role in this and seize the opportunity to demonstrate climate leadership by incentivising methane emissions reductions.”

In the report, Changing Markets and Planet Tracker set out a best practice pathway for financial institutions to decisively treat methane as a core climate and financial risk. These include:

1. Publicly recognising methane as a distinct climate driver. Financial institutions should explicitly acknowledge methane as a standalone and material climate and financial risk.
2. Integrating methane into all net-zero strategies. Investors should require companies – especially those in high-emitting sectors – to set meaningful methane-specific reduction pathways.
3. Aligning portfolio commitments with the GMP. Investors must seek at least a 30% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.
4. Adopting methane policies and frameworks. Investors should adopt dedicated methane policies covering disclosure, targets and mitigation across scopes 1, 2 and 3.
5. Redirecting capital toward sustainable proteins and resilient food systems and away from high-emitting livestock.

Through the report and recommendations, Changing Markets and Planet Tracker aim to encourage the finance sector to step up and show climate leadership. With capital shifting toward technologies and business models that can demonstrably cut methane emissions across the agrifood chain, investors who engage early will be better positioned as the sector transitions to low methane food systems, and will crucially help slow the impact of climate change.

About Changing Markets | www.changingmarkets.org | @ChangingMarkets  

The Changing Markets Foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to exposing irresponsible corporate practices and driving sustainable market change. Our campaigns focus on holding companies accountable for environmental impacts and accelerating the transition to sustainable business models.

About Planet Tracker

Planet Tracker is an award-winning non-profit financial think tank aligning capital markets with planetary boundaries. Created with the vision of a financial system that is fully aligned with a net-zero, resilient, nature positive and just economy well before 2050, Planet Tracker generates break-through analytics that reveal both the role of capital markets in the degradation of our ecosystem and show the opportunities of transitioning to a zero-carbon, nature positive economy.