The commitment was made by the US Environmental Protection Agency through the Methane to Markets Partnership.

“Climate change is a global issue that requires a global solution," said EPA administrator Stephen Johnson.

“By leveraging [these] grants, EPA and our international partners are reducing methane emissions and realising a clean, reliable energy source."

The Methane to Markets project grants range from $90,000 to $700,000 to help fund a diverse range of activities which the group said would “remove technical or informational barriers currently interfering with the successful capture and use of methane” on a global scale.

Grant recipients were chosen in coal mine methane as well as landfill gas, oil and natural gas systems and agricultural waste. Chosen to receive grants in the coal sector are the following:

China, Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs;

China, Virginia Tech, Southern Shanxi Province;

India, Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Jharia, Bokaro and Raniganj coal fields;

Mongolia, the Mongolian Nature & Environmental Consortium;

Poland, the Institute for Ecology of Industrial Areas (IETU); and

Poland, the Central Mining Institute of Katowice.

Among the services provided will be training, development of databases on potential project sites, feasibility studies, technology transfer and project analysis, the agency said.

Last December, the partnership announced $7 million in funding for activities and projects with international impact and said at the time that as many as 40 cooperative grants would be awarded in the $100,000 to $700,000 range.

The partnership said it would seek project proposals that "directly identify, characterise or implement" methane capture-and-use technology and would award funding for the endeavours held between September 2008 and September 2011. It accepted proposals from interested parties until February of this year.

Also last year, the EPA's Coalbed Methane Outreach Program made public the capabilities of a new web-based coal mine methane and utilisation international database.

Developed at the request of Methane to Markets for coal, it has compiled information on more than 200 projects worldwide with varying levels of information on each. Results can be sorted using five factors: country, mine name, mine status, project type or region.

Methane to Markets Partnership countries include Australia, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.