NEW YORK (AP) — Finding and fixing methane leaks has been identified by scientists as one of the most effective ways to turn the tide of global warming. To help uncover those leaks, Canadian company GHGSat has launched six satellites to search for methane plumes.
Those satellites have made troubling discoveries, including record-high methane emissions from the oil and gas industry and growing emissions from coal mines around the world. To aid in the fight against climate change, GHGSat plans to launch six more methane-hunting satellites by year's end.
And soon it will launch a satellite targeting another threat — carbon dioxide. Stephane Germain, president of GHGSat, spoke with The Associated Press about why he believes that armed with information about where the leaks are coming from, companies and nations can take steps to slow global warming. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What are the main challenges that that the world faces in reducing emissions?
A: I like to joke that the rocket science and the artificial intelligence is the easy part. The hard part is the human. It’s about the culture change and the action that we need to bring to bear in every different jurisdiction, in every different environment. The way to bring about action in India might be very different than a way to bring about action in the United States. And that may be very different than how to do it in Latin America. So we need to, first and foremost, make the measurements available so that people are aware of what’s really going on in their jurisdictions and in their own operations. But then we need to progressively accelerate our efforts at driving to action with that data. It’s one project at a time, one initiative at a time. Our goal is to make the data available to everybody so that ultimately more and more of those actions can be taken and more and more mitigations happen.
Q: U.S. oil and gas emissions are at record high levels. What can be done?
Methane emissions absolutely are higher than they have been in the last couple of years. And that’s not just in the U.S., that’s worldwide. We see it pretty much in every sector. We see it in oil and gas, coal mining and landfills. In oil and gas in particular, I’m very pleased to see that there’s increased efforts on all fronts for reducing emissions. We haven’t seen the results we want to get, that’s for sure.
There are operator initiatives, there's a U.N. initiative. The Biden administration has proposed new rules that will tighten emissions standards and also, we think, very importantly, make it easier for new technologies to be used to be able to monitor and mitigate those emissions. We need to keep at it. There's just a lot more work to be done, as is obvious from the trends.