Satellite company targets emissions

Finding and fixing methane leaks has been identified as one of the most effective ways to curtail global warming. To help uncover those leaks, Canadian company GHGSat launched six satellites to search for methane plumes.

Those satellites made troubling discoveries, including record-high methane emissions from the oil and gas industry and growing emissions from coal mines. GHGSat plans to launch six more methane-hunting satellites by year’s end.

And soon it will launch a satellite targeting another threat — carbon dioxide. Stephane Germain, president of GHGSat, spoke with The Associated Press about his vision.

What are the main challenges that the world faces in reducing emissions?

I like to joke that rocket science and artificial intelligence is the easy part. The hard part is the human. It’s about the culture change and the action that we need to bring to bear in every different jurisdiction. Our goal is to make data available to everybody so that ultimately more actions can be taken and more mitigations happen.

U.S. oil and gas emissions are at record high levels. What can be done?

Methane emissions absolutely are higher than they have been in the last couple of years. And that’s not just in the U.S., that’s worldwide. We see it pretty much in every sector. We see it in oil and gas, coal mining and landfills. In oil and gas, I’m very pleased that there’s increased efforts on all fronts for reducing emissions. We haven’t seen the results we want to get, that’s for sure.

There are operator initiatives, there’s a U.N. initiative. The Biden administration has proposed new rules to tighten emissions standards and make it easier for new technologies to be used to monitor and mitigate emissions. We need to keep at it. There’s a lot more work to be done.

What percentage of methane leaks that your company found have been fixed?

Right now it’s pretty small. It’s currently in the single percentage range, and that’s clearly something we need to improve on. We have a huge opportunity to raise awareness with all of these operators so they know what their real emissions are and where some of these sources are. In many cases the technologies exist to mitigate the emissions from those sources so they’re really easy to address quickly.

Why do you name satellites after children?

We name the satellites after our kids because it reminds us of why we do what we do. Ultimately, we’re going to be leaving our planet to future generations, and that includes our very own kids. And it’s really heartwarming for us to know that what we do every day is going to be helpful, not just to the current world, but to the future world.