Monitoring methane
The rationale for focussing on oil and gas activities is that easy wins should be tackled first. “If you’re looking to have the biggest impact and make the biggest difference, it’s reasonable to focus on oil and gas first,” according to Mark Brownstein, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the environmental non-profit funding MethaneSat and working in partnership with Google on the project. “There’s fewer actors involved than in agriculture,” he told reporters. And “there’s also the resources there to solve it”.
Conversely, agriculture’s methane output is more elusive. Aerial remote sensing measurements, such as those taken from aircraft or drones, can capture methane leaks, says Aaron Davitt, principal analyst on remote sensing for the non-profit WattTime, but these technologies can only be deployed in limited regions for limited amounts of time.
Plus, even knowing where to direct remote sensors or satellites to look in the first place can be fraught, adds Sam Schiller, chief executive of Carbon Yield, a firm that helps farmers adapt to climate change. “In most parts of the world, public datasets of livestock facilities are hard to come by.”
New satellites
So can more precise satellites help? “In the last five years, satellites have revolutionised our knowledge and understanding of methane emissions for the better,” says Antoine Halff, chief analyst and co-founder at Kayrros, an environmental intelligence company. “Thanks to satellites, we can not only track the large emissions events known as ‘super-emitters’ with great accuracy, but also measure overall emissions at the basin or country level. Importantly, we can do so in a way that is completely independent and verifiable.”