Satellites Fighting Climate Change

“When the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany was damaged by mysterious explosions in 2022, the resulting leaks of methane were so big they could be seen from space”

“GHGSat, which operates the largest collection of greenhouse gas-monitoring satellites, had already been developing the ability to detect offshore leaks of methane, as the gas has much more warming power when in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide”

“GHGSat has focused on methane, which leaks when coal, gas or oil is extracted and transported. Other sources include farms and waste dumps”

“[Methane] is estimated to be responsible for 30 per cent of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, so cutting these emissions is a relatively easy way to combat climate change”

“Last year, GHGSat detected methane equivalent to 0.5bn tonnes of CO₂, double the level it achieved in the previous year”

“Globally, methane levels stayed close to a record high last year, according to the International Energy Agency, despite pledges at the UN COP26 summit in 2021 to cut them by 30 per cent between 2020 and 2030”

“Methane leaks have been increasing: the number detected by satellites rose 50 per cent in 2023, year on year, according to the IEA. Some 5mn tonnes of leaks were detected from fossil fuel facilities, including a well blowout in Kazakhstan that lasted for more than 200 days”

Guanter, Luis, et al. “Multi-satellite data depicts record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout.” Earth ArXiv, February 13, 2024. https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/6709/.

“Stephane Germain, founder and president of the Montreal-based company … ‘It’s been a real eye-opener to realise how much of the problem in oil and gas could be readily addressed by different maintenance or operating practices,’ he says. ‘It starts with best practices shared between companies. It absolutely is accelerated by government—regulations, enforcement, taxes, different mechanisms’”

“One collaborative project started when GHGSat was monitoring natural eruptions of methane from a mud formation in Turkmenistan. It noticed further emissions nearby, which turned out to be an oil and gas facility. The company contacted SRON, the Dutch space research institute, which verified the findings using an ESA satellite. GHGSat alerted the authorities in Turkmenistan and, six months later, the emissions stopped”

“‘With that kind of collaboration, you have really powerful complementarity between all these different systems and technologies, to ultimately give actionable information to operators,’ Germain says”