New satellite will track elusive methane pollution from oil and gas industry globally

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 De‐ fense Fund, Google, the Gov‐ ernment 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 re‐ lease into the atmosphere, methane gas is 80 times more harmful than carbon dioxide in its ability to in‐ crease 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 individ‐ ual sectors and sources and exactly where those emis‐ sions are coming from," said Katlyn MacKay, a Canadian scientist with the Environ‐ mental Defense Fund.

"MethaneSAT fills a critical data gap that current mis‐ sions aren't capable of."

'Game-changing' tech‐ nology

MethaneSAT's mission is focused on methane from oil and gas production and con‐ sumption, which is the biggest source of the pol‐ luting gas, after agriculture.

The project team esti‐ mates the satellite will be able to quantify total regional emissions, globally, and cap‐ ture and attribute data on in‐ dividual oil and gas field emission for 80 per cent of global production sites. This builds on current methanetracking 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 preven‐ tion. He says MethaneSAT fil‐ ls a significant need, as cur‐ rent reporting is "wildly un‐ derestimating the amount of emissions."

"What the satellites like MethaneSAT are going to do is give us a better ability to start to capture those dis‐ crepancies," 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 so‐ lutions for slowing climate change.

"It's one of the lowest-cost opportunities," said Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an en‐ ergy policy analyst from the International Energy Agency. "Methane emissions can be reduced by 75 per cent in the fossil fuel sector, and deliver‐ ing that could reduce global warming by 2050 by about 0.1°C."

He says that's more signif‐ icant 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 pro‐ duction by up to 75 per cent, from 2012 levels, by 2030.

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 in‐ to the atmosphere. That's where MethaneSAT could be historic.

"It will be very important that all these pledges are backed up by robust moni‐ toring, reporting and verifica‐ tion," said de Oliveira Bredar‐ iol. "Otherwise, it will be very hard to say, you know, we have achieved our goals, or not."

Integrating private sec‐ tor data

MacKay says her team hopes the MethaneSAT mis‐ sion will provide governmen‐ ts and industry with new tools for transparency, moni‐ toring and accountability.

Legacy agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmos‐ pheric Administration, as well as governments, are grap‐ pling with how to track and utilize data from privately funded missions.

"NOAA Is all about conti‐ nuity," said Jeff Privette, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Science Division. "Us‐ ing satellites and instruments and products from algorith‐ ms that we didn't provide re‐ quirements 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 estab‐ lish internationally recog‐ nized standards for satellitederived methane data.

In Canada, the govern‐ ment is considering if and how to leverage the data MethaneSAT will provide.

"[Environment and Cli‐ mate Change Canada] scien‐ tists and technical experts are evaluating the potential use of this new satellite infor‐ mation," the federal depart‐ ment wrote in a statement to CBC News. "As these new satellites continue to come online, ECCC will identify po‐ tential applications for the data based on evaluations of data quality and plume de‐ tection capabilities. At present, there are no current plans to leverage this tech‐ nology for regulatory en‐ forcement purposes."

Tackling methane en‐ courages 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 conversa‐ tion.

"If we reduce methane to‐ day, we see an impact on temperature in our life‐ times," he said.

"There's an atmospheric aspect that's really impor‐ tant, but there's also a psy‐ chological impact that is al‐ most 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.