Satellite aims to trace methane emissions

Eyes in the sky tracking Texas’ oil-rich Permian Basin and other methane hot spots are, for the first time, precise enough to see whodunit.

A pollution-tracking satellite dubbed MethaneSAT launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after 4 p.m. Monday, promising a new level of accountability for companies and governments thought to be underreporting their emissions.

The device is designed to trace methane released anywhere in the world to its individual source, whether an oil well, farm or landfill, and share findings directly with the public online. Jon Goldstein of the Environmental Defense Fund, the nonprofit that spearheaded the satellite’s development, said its unprecedented level of granularity should allow for more targeted advocacy to lower the key driver of climate change.

“Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, it’s more than 80 times more powerful, ton for ton, in

the short term at driving climate change than carbon dioxide,” said Goldstein, the nonprofit’s senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs.

The Biden administration released its long-anticipated methane rule at the COP28 United Nations climate change conference in December. The rule spelled change for Texas oil producers by imposing

new emissions limits and increased the urgency of methane tracking methods that are not restricted by company reporting.

Precise, companyowned satellites that privately track emissions from a predetermined source are already in orbit, as are global methane trackers that capture more generalized readings of methane emissions. Companies

are also required to report their methane emissions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

Still, a 2018 paper in the journal Science showed that in 2015, methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas industry were about 60% higher than the EPA’s inventory indicated.

Environmental Defense Fund said its work on MethaneSAT is directly related to the outcomes of that research. A more recent 2022 analysis from Ceres and the Clean Air Task Force found that across top-down academic studies, oil and gas companies’ leak rates for methane and other pollutants were between 3.1 and 15.4 times higher than those reported to the agency.

“In the Houston area and the development in South Texas, the satellite will help us get a fuller picture of total emissions and not rely on estimates from operators based on ideal operating situations,” said Elizabeth Lieberknecht, a regional manager for the Environmental Defense Fund’s campaigns to improve oil and gas industry regulations.

Lieberknecht said methane from the oil and gas sector is emitted alongside other air pollution that has more pronounced public health impacts on nearby communities and that about 2.5 million Texans live within half a mile of an active oil or gas well. MethaneSAT should give a clearer picture of who is most affected by those secondary pollutants as well.

Prior to the satellite’s launch, Steven Wofsy, a professor of environmental science at Harvard University, described MethaneSAT as a washing machine-sized device that weighs about 840 pounds. It will fly nearly 370 miles above the Earth, circling the planet 15 times a day.

“There are many ways these data can be very useful to federal regulators and to people managing various facilities without necessarily being used in providing enforcement actions,” Wofsy said, though the satellite’s developers expect that some environmental agencies will use the data directly.

Emissions violations from individual companies in Texas are assessed primarily through self-reports and the government’s regulatory monitors.

Other MethaneSAT partners and contributors included Google, SpaceX and the government of New Zealand.

Environmental Defense Fund Fred Kupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, speaks in 2018 about MethaneSAT, which launched last week to track methane released anywhere.