Measuring power plant emissions from space
WattTime’s other solutions are enabled by access to granular emissions data that power plants in the United States are required to report to the US EPA. However, these data are not available in most countries, making it harder for organisations to accelerate climate action.
In order to make our solutions available globally, WattTime, along with our partners, began to explore the possibility of using satellite data to monitor emissions from power plants — regardless of whether the country it was located in reported it publicly.
In 2019, we won the Google AI Impact Challenge to spearhead a collaboration to monitor greenhouse gas emissions from all large power plants worldwide using artificial intelligence. The project applies machine learning and computer vision trained on satellite imagery of these power plants matched against ground-based sensor data at the same times and places. In addition to one day making other solutions like Automated Emissions Reduction available anywhere worldwide, WattTime will also be sharing free with the public the resulting emissions data, similar to how the US EPA makes emissions data from US power plants free and open.
We are currently exploring about a dozen other potential use cases where data like these can be used to reduce emissions, from supporting corporate sustainability efforts to enabling regulators to detect violations of local pollution control laws.
