The MethaneSAT mission: Status, perspectives, and perspectives for a global map of climate action for the next 2025-25 century
A mission to map and track global methane pollution, a powerful greenhouse gas, is scheduled to launch today after years of collaboration between some of the biggest names in tech. It’s called MethaneSAT, a satellite that’s garnered funding and support from Jeff Bezos, Google, and SpaceX, among others.
The goal is to quickly see how much methane is escaping and from where, so that measures might be taken to plug all those leaks. Methane is 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels when it comes to heating the planet but only after 20 years in the atmosphere.
If all goes to plan, MethaneSAT should start publicly releasing some data by early summer. Data on the oil and gas basins around the world won’t be complete until 2025, but it can be found on websites.
If this mission is successful, it could be a game-changer by allowing policymakers to assess how much progress they’re making on climate action based on real-world measures of pollution rather than estimates based on companies self-reporting their emissions.
When you measure emissions in the field, it turns out that the total magnitude of emissions coming from the industry is higher than what has been reported by them using engineering calculations.
MethaneSAT: Monitoring the Oil and Gas Industry with a Government-Funded Explosion-Initiated Space Mission
The cost to build and launch a satellite was almost $90 million. The $100 million grant given by the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 is one of the largest funders for the MethaneSAT project. MethaneSAT also marks the New Zealand’s Space Agency’s first government-funded space mission.
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. — Not far from the Pacific Ocean, where just to the south, oil platforms dot the horizon, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted into space Monday with dozens of satellites on board.
The oil and gas industry has historically had a culture of confidentiality, says Antoine Halff, chief analyst at Kayrros, a climate analytics firm. “They like to keep the data private,” he says. “There’s, I think, a cultural discomfort with the transparency provided by independent monitoring.”
When this satellite is fully operational in the coming months, it will provide data that will be free to the public. A professor from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University, who was not involved in the project, said that it would allow for an objective view of oil and gas operations.
“The beauty of having MethaneSAT,” Brandt says, is “we don’t have to ask [oil companies] permission nicely to go on site and make measurements, right?”
But focusing on the oil and gas sector was strategic, Hamburg says. Oil and gas has a concentrated number of players, with bigger budgets to clean up their operations. “The ability to remediate is much greater and it’s cost-effective,” he says.
The hope is that this data will be used by regulators. There’s interest. He said there were conversations with other regulators as well as the U.S. EPA.
The new EPA rule has a way for third-party notifiers who use approved remote sensing to be certified, so they can inform the EPA of methane super-emitter events. Super-emitter events can happen when large amounts of methane are released. “EDF, along with other owners of remote sensing technologies, may apply to be certified,” the EPA said.
Aaron Padilla, vice president of corporate policy at the American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest oil and gas lobby, says his industry has many years of experience using their own satellites and technologies to identify and then reduce methane emissions.
“This industry recognizes that their reputation and markets are under threat and they are working to change888-607-3166,” says Hamburg. “So, if you’re going to compete in a world in which the demand is going down, you want to prove that you’re a better actor.”