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 Published
at the Yale School of the Environment
A computer rendering of a methane-sensing satellite to be launched in
2023 by Carbon Mapper, a U.S. public-private partnership.
Carbon Mapper / Planet
In Push to Find Methane Leaks,
Satellites Gear Up for the Hunt
Stemming the methane leaks from landfills,
oil fields, natural gas pipelines and more is one of the most
powerful levers we have to quickly slow global warming. New
satellites are bolstering this urgent mission by pinpointing
emitters of this potent greenhouse gas from space.
By
Cheryl Katz •
June 15, 2021
The threat was invisible to the eye: tons
of methane billowing skyward, blown out by natural gas pipelines
snaking across Siberia. In the past, those plumes of potent
greenhouse gas released by Russian petroleum operations last year
might have gone unnoticed. But armed with powerful new imaging
technology, a methane-hunting
satellite sniffed out the emissions and tracked them to their
sources.Thanks to rapidly
advancing technology, a growing fleet of satellites is now aiming to
help close the valve on methane by identifying such leaks from
space. The mission is critical, with a series of recent reports
sounding an increasingly urgent call to cut methane emissions.
While shorter-lived and less abundant
than carbon dioxide, methane is much more powerful at trapping heat,
making its global warming impact more than 80 times greater in the
short term. Around
60
percent of the world’s methane emissions are produced by human
activities — with the bulk coming from agriculture, waste disposal,
and fossil fuel production. Human-caused methane is responsible for
at least 25 percent
of today’s global warming, the Environmental Defense Fund estimates.
Stanching those emissions, a new
Global Methane Assessment by the United Nations Environmental
Programme stresses, is the best hope for quickly putting the brakes
on warming.
“It’s the most powerful lever we have
for reducing warming and all the effects that come with climate
change over the next 30 years,” said Drew Shindell, an earth
sciences professor at Duke University and lead author on the UN
report. Scientists stress that major reductions in both carbon
dioxide and methane are critical for averting extreme climate
change. “It is not a substitute for reducing CO2, but a
complement,” Shindell said.
Atmospheric methane levels surged
over the last half-decade. 2020 saw the biggest one-year jump on
record.
Nearly half of the roughly 380 million
metric tons of methane released by human activities annually can be
cut this decade with available and largely cost-effective methods,
according to the UN assessment. Doing so would stave off nearly 0.3
degrees C of warming by the 2040s — buying precious time to get
other greenhouse gas emissions under control. The easiest gains can
be made by fixing leaky pipelines, stopping deliberate releases such
as venting unwanted gas from drilling rigs, and other actions in the
oil and gas industry, the UN report says. Capturing fumes from
rotting materials in landfills and squelching the gassy belches of
ruminant livestock will also help.
For now, though, the trend is running in
the opposite direction: The methane concentration in Earth’s
atmosphere has been surging over the past half-decade, the
NOAA Annual
Greenhouse Gas Index shows. And despite the pandemic, 2020 saw
the biggest one-year jump on record. The causes of the recent spike
are
unclear, but could include natural gas fracking, increased
output from methane-producing microbes spurred by rising
temperatures, or a combination of human-caused and natural forces.
All this, experts say, underscores the
need to track down and plug any leaks or sources that can be
controlled. Tracing emissions to their source is no easy task,
however. Releases are often intermittent and easy
to miss. Ground-based sensors can detect leaks in local areas, but
their coverage is limited. Airplane and drone surveys are
time-intensive and costly, and air access is restricted over much of
the world.
That’s where a crop of recently
launched and upcoming satellites with increasingly sophisticated
tools comes in.
Satellite imagery shows a Russian
gas pipeline (left) and highlights huge amounts of
methane (right) being emitted from the pipeline on September 6, 2019.
Kayrros and
modified Copernicus data, 2019
A cluster of satellites launched by
national space agencies and private companies over the last five
years have greatly sharpened our view of what methane is being
leaked from where. In the next couple of years, new satellite
projects are headed for launch — including
Carbon Mapper, a
public-private partnership in California, and
MethaneSAT, a subsidiary
of the Environmental Defense Fund — that will help fill in the
picture with unprecedented range and detail. These efforts, experts
say, will be crucial not just for spotting leaks but also developing
regulations and guiding enforcement — both of which are sorely
lacking.“You can’t mitigate what
you can’t measure,” said Cassandra Ely, director of MethaneSAT.
Earlier satellites, such as the Japan
Aerospace Exploration’s
GOSAT
launched in 2009, were able to detect methane, yet their resolution
wasn’t good enough to identify specific sources.
But satellite technology is now
advancing rapidly, boosting resolution, shrinking size, and gaining
a host of cutting-edge capabilities. Powerful new eyes in space
include the European Space Agency’s
Sentinel 5P (launched in 2017), the Italian Space Agency’s
PRISMA (launched
2019), and systems operated by private Canadian company
GHGSat (with
satellites launched in 2016, 2020 and 2021). Companies like French
Kayrros
are using artificial intelligence to enhance satellite imaging,
paired with air and ground data, to provide detailed methane
reports.
At any given time,
there are about 100 high-volume methane leaks around the world.
In the past year, methane-hunting
satellites have made a number of concerning discoveries. Among them:
Despite the pandemic, methane emissions from oil and gas operations
in
Russia rose 32 percent in 2020. Satellites also observed
sizeable releases from gas pipelines in
Turkmenistan, a landfill in
Bangladesh, a natural gas field in
Canada, and coal mines in the U.S.
Appalachian Basin.
At any given time, according to
Kayrros, there are about 100 high-volume methane leaks around
the world, along with a mass of smaller ones that add significantly
to the total. Targeting emitters on a global scale from space, the
European Space Agency says, provides “an important new tool to
combat climate change.”
Now, Carbon Mapper is developing what
it promises will be the most sensitive and precise tool for spotting
point sources yet. The project aims to launch two satellites in
2023, eventually growing to a constellation of up to 20 that will
provide near-constant methane and CO2 monitoring around the globe.
Partners include NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California
Air Resources Board, private satellite company Planet, and
universities and nonprofits, with funding from major private donors,
including Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The impetus is the current global
monitoring gap, said Riley Duren, a remote-sensing scientist at the
University of Arizona and Carbon Mapper CEO. “There’s no single
organization that has the necessary mandate and resources and
institutional culture to deliver an operational monitoring system
for greenhouse gases,” Duren said. “At least not in the time frame
that we need.” Duren likens Carbon Mapper to the U.S. National
Weather Service, as it will provide an “essential public service”
with its routine, sustained monitoring of greenhouse gases.
Cows at a dairy farm in Merced,
California. Gassy belches of ruminant livestock are a significant
source of methane.
MARMADUKE ST. JOHN
/ ALAMY
The project’s main focus is to find super
emitters, Duren said. He and colleagues conducted a previous study
via methane-sensing airplane surveys of oil and gas operations,
landfills, wastewater treatment, and agriculture in California that
found that nearly half of the state’s methane output came from
less
than 1 percent of its infrastructure. Landfills produced the
biggest share of the state’s overall emissions in that survey,
followed by agriculture and then oil and gas.
The survey pointed out the need to
“scale that up and operationalize it globally by going into space,”
Duren said. The orbiters will employ “hyperspectral” spectrometers
designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which the project’s
website says will provide
“unparalleled sensitivity, resolution and versatility.” The
minifridge-sized satellites will be able to target a release to
within 30 meters, precise enough to identify the exact piece of
equipment that’s leaking.
When emissions are detected,
subscribers to a rapid alert service will be notified within 24
hours by Planet, a private,
San Francisco-based satellite operator that will build and manage
the Carbon Mapper satellites.
The satellites will enhance the
California Air Resources Board’s monitoring with wider and more
frequent coverage, said Jorn Herner, who heads the board’s emissions
monitoring program. Monitoring now is done once a quarter, he said.
When the full constellation of Carbon Mapper satellites is deployed,
that will increase to near-daily. “You just have a much better
handle on what’s going on [and] when,” Herner said, “and you’ll be
able to address any leaks more quickly.”
The global policies needed to do something about methane emissions
aren’t yet in place.
Also joining the orbiting hunters will be
MethaneSAT, a satellite that will scan wider areas — up to 200
kilometers in a swath, albeit with lower, 100-meter, resolution.
This program uses a special algorithm that generates flux rates from
the satellite data. “So instead of just getting a picture or a
snapshot, you actually get more of a movie,” said MethaneSAT
director Ely. That’s a first for satellite-based sensing and a boon
to tracing wind-blown plumes back to their source, she said.
MethaneSAT will focus on the global oil
and gas industry and aims to be sensitive enough to reveal the
multitude of small methane releases that can account for the
majority of emissions, Ely said. The findings will be made available
to industry operators, regulators, investors and the public in
near-real time. The data, she said, will help “prioritize what makes
the most sense in terms of emissions reductions and mitigation.”
Yet while the world’s ability to hunt
down methane emitters is growing, the global policies needed to do
something about it aren’t yet in place.
Much of the current approach to dialing
back methane is dependent on voluntary actions by the oil and gas
industry. Satellites can help with that, UN report lead author
Shindell and others said, by identifying leaks that, if stopped,
will save or make those companies money. “If you capture the methane
instead of letting it escape to the atmosphere, you have something
quite useful,” Shindell said. “So, there’s a nice financial
incentive not to waste it.” But if gas prices aren’t high enough,
operators can feel it’s not worth the expense and effort to find,
stem, and utilize runaway emissions — making rules and fees a
necessary part of the picture.
“Having stronger regulations is really
key,” Shindell said.
The global monthly average concentration of
methane in the atmosphere.
NOAA
Regulations on methane emissions today are a patchwork of local
and national measures, with few international agreements that set
specific targets, the UN report points out. In the United States,
state policies range from fairly strict controls in some states,
such as
California and
Colorado, to little enforcement in
Texas and others. The U.S. Senate
recently moved to reinstate methane emissions rules for the oil
and gas industry that the Trump administration had rescinded;
Congress is expected to vote on that action later this month. A
Senate bill proposed in March would levy a fee on the industry’s
methane output. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just
issued a
plan to cap methane and other air pollutants from landfills.
The
European Union is currently working on new regulations for
emissions from the energy sector. However, other big emitters, such
as Russia, have almost no methane-restricting policies in effect,
according to the
International Energy Agency analysis. Ahead of the UN climate
change conference in November, the International Energy Forum this
month launched its
Methane Measurement Methodology Project, giving member nations
access to data from the Sentinel 5P satellite along with analyses
from Kayrros, to get a better handle on emissions from the energy
industry.
Data from satellites could provide a
useful political lever to compel countries to crack down on their
emissions, scientists say. Precise measurements on Russian pipeline
leaks, for example, could enable the EU, a major customer for
Russian oil and gas, to impose border tariffs based on the emissions
from production and transport. Better monitoring could also aid
recent actions by shareholders and courts compelling major
fossil fuel corporations to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions.
Whatever measures come into effect,
policymakers and regulators will need eyes in space to keep tabs on
whether those rules are working, and to pinpoint violators and
incentivize change.Said Carbon
Mapper’s Duren: “There are many uses for just making the invisible
visible.”
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