A privately funded satellite is set to push methane tracking into a new era, once it launches into space on Monday.
A collaborative mission between Environmental Defense Fund, Google, the Government of New Zealand and several other partners, MethaneSAT will track methane emissions around the globe in attempts to identify and quantify sources spewing the climate-heating greenhouse gas.
For 20 years after its release into the atmosphere, methane gas is 80 times more harmful than carbon dioxide in its ability to increase global temperatures. But currently, the scale of methane pollution is unclear.
“We don’t have a really granular picture on the true amount of methane that’s being emitted from individual sectors and sources and exactly where those emissions are coming from,” said Katlyn MacKay, a Canadian scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
“MethaneSAT fills a critical data gap that current missions aren’t capable of.”
‘Game-changing’ technology
MethaneSAT’s mission is focused on methane from oil and gas production and consumption, which is the biggest source of the polluting gas, after agriculture.
The project team estimates the satellite will be able to quantify total regional emissions, globally, and capture and attribute data on individual oil and gas field emission for 80 per cent of global production sites. This builds on current methane-tracking technology that has yet to offer a full picture of the scale and precise origin points of the heat-trapping gas.
Experts around the world are watching this mission closely, including Jonathan Banks, the Clean Air Task Force’s global director of methane pollution prevention. He says MethaneSAT fills a significant need, as current reporting is “wildly underestimating the amount of emissions.”
“What the satellites like MethaneSAT are going to do is give us a better ability to start to capture those discrepancies,” said Banks. “It will be a game changer for all of us that are working on this.”
Promises to reduce, but how much is there?
Many policy-makers are watching, too, as methane regulations offer tangible solutions for slowing climate change.
“It’s one of the lowest-cost opportunities,” said Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy policy analyst from the International Energy Agency. “Methane emissions can be reduced by 75 per cent in the fossil fuel sector, and delivering that could reduce global warming by 2050 by about 0.1°C.”
He says that’s more significant than it seems, and would be the equivalent to moving all of today’s cars, trucks, trains and ships to net-zero CO2 emissions.
Canada a leader
Methane reductions are increasingly at the forefront of international climate policy discussions.
Since 2021, 155 countries have signed on to a global pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. The Government of Canada has announced some of the most stringent regulations, with ambitions to cut methane leaked and emitted by oil and gas production by up to 75 per cent, from 2012 levels, by 2030.
The Government of Canada unveiled its plan to reduce methane gas emissions from the oil and gas sector at the COP28 climate change summit. Methane is a significantly more potent greenhouse gas and contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide.
But while promises have been made, there’s a glaring issue, according to experts — there has been no clear sense of how much methane is currently being released into the atmosphere. That’s where MethaneSAT could be historic.
“It will be very important that all these pledges are backed up by robust monitoring, reporting and verification,” said de Oliveira Bredariol. “Otherwise, it will be very hard to say, you know, we have achieved our goals, or not.”
Integrating private sector data
MacKay says her team hopes the MethaneSAT mission will provide governments and industry with new tools for transparency, monitoring and accountability.
Legacy agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as governments, are grappling with how to track and utilize data from privately funded missions.
“NOAA Is all about continuity,” said Jeff Privette, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Science Division. “Using satellites and instruments and products from algorithms that we didn’t provide requirements for or design […] Can we do that and still be authoritative?”
“In the old days, we wouldn’t even consider it. But we’ve changed, and we have a very new paradigm,” he said. “We have this huge, urgent international need — the climate crisis and trying to understand greenhouse gasses.”
In February, the National Physical Laboratory even hosted a workshop in the U.K. to discuss how to establish internationally recognized standards for satellite-derived methane data.
In Canada, the government is considering if and how to leverage the data MethaneSAT will provide.
“[Environment and Climate Change Canada] scientists and technical experts are evaluating the potential use of this new satellite information,” the federal department wrote in a statement to CBC News. “As these new satellites continue to come online, ECCC will identify potential applications for the data based on evaluations of data quality and plume detection capabilities. At present, there are no current plans to leverage this technology for regulatory enforcement purposes.”
Tackling methane encourages hope
Banks, who has worked on methane policy for 20 years, says he’s relieved to see the conversation and technology around methane emerging as a key piece of the climate change conversation.
“If we reduce methane today, we see an impact on temperature in our lifetimes,” he said.
“There’s an atmospheric aspect that’s really important, but there’s also a psychological impact that is almost as important,” he said. “Methane provides that thing that allows us to bend the curve on climate and gives people that hope that, yes, we can solve this.”
MethaneSAT will start to feed free, public data into Google Earth Engine once calibrated and tested in orbit. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that will be later this year.
