Methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry are a key challenge in the global energy transition. It’s now well understood that deliberate ventin

Solving methane mysteries with satellite imagery

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2024-10-03 13:30:04

Methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry are a key challenge in the global energy transition. It’s now well understood that deliberate venting and accidental leaking of methane from oil and gas infrastructure across the world is a significant contributor to global warming, with methane in general being responsible for as much as 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

The international community has reacted. In 2021, the United States and European Union announced the Global Methane Pledge and the International Energy Agency (IEA) now publishes an annual Global Methane Tracker report. At least three major satellite programmes now exist — NASA EMIT, GHGSat and MethaneSAT — and the data that they’re sending back to Earth is making darkness visible, revealing huge plumes that have in some cases been flowing for decades.

A growing body of scientific work has emerged around this new data, using visual satellite imagery and maps of global oil and gas infrastructure to help identify and attribute the methane plumes observed from space. This is also the approach taken by the industry-led Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), which published the results of a satellite monitoring campaign covering Kazakhstan, Algeria and Egypt this year.