In 2024, two new satellites launched to detect methane super-emitters from space: Environmental Defense Fund methanesat Flew in March 2024; And carbon mapperLaunched as a public-private partnership late last year.
Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Pound-for-pound, methane is 80 times More powerful than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after release. Its density has increased in the last two centuries more than doubleMuch faster increase than carbon dioxide. Methane concentrations are increasing more rapidly than at any time since record-keeping began.
Human activities dominate global methane emissions to a far greater extent than carbon dioxide. more than this 60 percent Global methane emissions come from human activity: fossil fuel extraction; Rearing cows that burp (not fart); Dumping garbage into our landfills and waste treatment sites.
The good news is that a small portion of the sites are responsible for that pollution. Methane emissions are dominated by so-called super-emitters: 5 percent facilities Producing more than half of all methane emissions in a given oil and gas field or industry. Reduce those emissions and we will substantially reduce global methane pollution.
MethaneSat and Carbon Mapper orbit the Earth north-south in a polar orbit. As the planet rotates beneath them – like a basketball spinning on your finger – they see a different band of potential emitting sites on each pass.
MethaneSat's field of view is wider than Carbon Mapper's. The pixels it covers are 15,000 square miles, equivalent to the size of Montana's Glacier National Park. This will be good in identifying methane hot spots. In contrast, Carbon Mapper is like a zoom on your camera. This would isolate individual sources on the scale of a football field, attributing methane plumes to single sources (and single owners) on the ground.
There is one caveat: Both of these satellites need sunlight to see the world. This could allow unscrupulous owners of oil and gas companies to order their employees to perform facility maintenance at night, when such satellites cannot see them. Now I do not believe that the majority of oil and gas company owners are dishonest, but some of them are dishonest and, in 2025, they will be defrauding us.
Regardless, gone are the days when major gas leaks, such as the 2015 explosion at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in Los Angeles, would go unreported for weeks. That explosion sickened nearby residents, resulted in a $1.8 billion settlement from SoCalGas for about 10,000 evacuated families, and ultimately emissions 97,000 metric tons of methaneThe largest gas leak in American history.
In 2025, these satellites will let us track the world's biggest polluters. We will be able to peek into coal mines and oil and gas fields in remote corners of the world and in countries where we are not allowed to work today, such as the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia and the Qingshui Basin in China.
We'll find super-emitters in the United States too, and some Fortune 500 executives will have egg on their faces. Big oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron and their subsidiaries will be singled out for pollution in the Permian Basin in West Texas and the Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota. Landfill, feedlot and wastewater treatment operators would also be embarrassed. In 2025, there will be no place to hide for the “most wanted” methane polluters.