 "Polluters Beware! How new satellite will monitor global methane leaks")
A new satellite will track emissions of methane – and name and shame some of the biggest polluters around the world.
Known as MethaneSAT, the satellite was launched from California on Monday via a SpaceX rocket.
Methane, known as natural gas, is far more potent that carbon dioxide.
It is estimated to be responsible for a third of the warming driving the climate change.
But what do we know about the satellite? And how will it track methane emissions?
Let’s take a closer look:
What do we know about the satellite?
According to The Guardian, the satellite was developed by the US-non-profit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the New Zealand Space Agency.
The satellite, which is the size of a washing machine, cost $88 million to build.
The satellite, whose instrument measures 140 metres, will orbit the earth 15 times a day at an altitude of 590 kilometres.
It can detect changes as small as three parts per billion.
According to Indian Express, the satellite has a high-resolution infrared sensor and a spectrometer.
It also has a wide-camera view of 200x200 kilometres which lets it recognise ‘super emitters.’
“We’re fitting into a place where nobody else is operating,” Steve Wofsy, an atmospheric scientist at Harvard University and lead of MethaneSAT’s technical team told Nature.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe Guardian in March 2023 identified over 1,000 such sites based on data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 5P satellite.
The worst leak was releasing methane gas at a rate equal to 67 million cars.
It also showed that Turkmenistan was releasing a massive amount of methane.
The EDF said its data will be made publicly available later this year via Google Earth Engine.
This geospatial analysis platform is free for researchers, nonprofits and the news media.
Google Cloud is providing the computing capabilities to process the information.
According to Scientific American, Google will employ AI algorithms to build maps of oil and gas infrastructure around the world that will help researchers find where the methane is coming from.
‘Incredibly valuable’
“We think this information is incredibly valuable for energy companies, researchers and the public sector to anticipate and mitigate methane emissions in components that are generally most susceptible,” Yael Maguire, vice-president of geo sustainability at Google, told reporters.
“Infrastructure changes rapidly, and keeping a map like this up to date requires constant input. But this is something that we in our maps and geo organization, we’ve built up a lot of expertise," Maguire was quoted as saying by The Verge.
The MethaneSAT satellite will add to a growing fleet of spacecraft in orbit that are meant to help fight climate change by publishing data on emissions of the invisible but potent greenhouse gas.
While methane emissions also come from agricultural waste and landfills, Steven Hamburg, EDF’s chief scientist and MethaneSat’s project lead, told Scientific American the focus is on oil and gas facilities because they comprise a huge share of global methane emissions.
The website quoted the International Energy Agency as saying the energy sector accounted for around 40 per cent of the world’s methane emissions produced by humans.
The industry puts out around 80 million metric tons of methane every year.
Hamburg added that these emissions can be easily tamped down on once they are singled out.
“Some call it the low-hanging fruit — I like to call it fruit lying on the ground,” Hamburg was quoted as saying. “We can really reduce those emissions, and we can do it rapidly and see the benefits.”
Nature quoted Hamburg said the satellite would provide “radical transparency.”
“This will be the first time that we have ever had this type of information for any greenhouse gas,” he added.
“Methane dominates what’s happening in the near term,” Hamburg was quoted as saying by The Verge. “The timing really matters. Because if we do it really quickly and dramatically reduce those methane emissions, we can significantly reduce that rate of warming over the coming decades.”
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said the data will bring accountability to the more than 50 oil and gas companies that pledged at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December to zero out methane and eliminate routine gas flaring, and help those preparing to comply with forthcoming methane regulations in the EU and the US, including a methane pollution fee.
“We could basically cut warming nearly in half over the next couple of decades if we were to eliminate our methane emissions,” Ilissa Ocko, an atmospheric scientist at EDF, told Nature. “In a lot of cases, fixing the problem is easy.”
The United States is among the biggest methane-emitting countries, and has proposed mandatory measures to stem leaks from oil and gas operations.
A new rule by the US Environmental Protection Agency would allow the public to report large methane leaks to federal regulators if they have access to methane detection technology.
The Guardian quoted EDF’s senior vice-president Mark Brownstein as saying, “MethaneSat is a tool for accountability. I’m sure many people think this could be used to name and shame companies who are poor emissions performers, and that’s true. But [it] can [also] help document progress that leading companies are making in reducing their emissions.”
‘No place to hide’
Some have criticised the satellite.
Oil industry group the American Petroleum Institute said emissions data from third parties should not be used for regulatory purposes without verification.
“The environmental regulator is still going to be paramount here as the authority in terms of validating the data,” said Aaron Padilla, API vice president of corporate.
But Brownstein urged people to look on the bright side.
“We’ll be able to see who the laggards are, but hopefully they will use that information in a constructive way to improve their performance.”
“The capabilities of this satellite are phenomenal,” Róisín Commane, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University in New York City told Nature.
But Commane pointed out MethaneSAT’s reach remains limited to just 30 swaths of land measuring 200 square kilometres each.
“There’s an awful lot more to be done,” Commane added.
“Soon, there will be no place to hide,” Ben Cahill, a climate expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank told Washington Post. “There’s going to be a lot of public data on methane emissions, so companies will have very strong incentives to figure out the problem and fix it.”
But others remain sceptical.
As Drew Shindell, an earth-science professor at Duke University, told The New York Times, “There’s no guarantee that this information leads to a change in behaviour.”
With inputs from agencies
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