Just before the US presidential election in 2020, UK satellite data company Terrabotics noticed something strange going on in the oilfields of New Mexico. “There was this flurry of well sites being built, just in case Biden would ban fracking overnight,” says Gareth Morgan, the company’s founder and chief executive. “It was a noticeable uptick.”
Even though another US election is looming, Morgan sees no sign of another frenzy. These days, the company, born out of an incubator at London’s Imperial College, finds customers are less focused on drilling activity and more on asking for help to track emissions in their operations and supply chains.
Companies are under pressure to disclose what, when and where they emit. Regulators are demanding information not just on carbon dioxide emissions, but on other greenhouse gases — in particular, methane. It is a new and rapidly growing market that companies such as Terrabotics, France’s Kayrros and others want to serve.
Methane accounts for just 16 per cent of global emissions, but is much more damaging than CO₂. The International Energy Agency estimates that one tonne of methane, in its first 100 years, has the same warming impact as 30 tonnes of CO₂.
Last year, both the EU and US proposed new regulations requiring their fossil fuel industries to track and reduce methane pollution.
“If companies had not started taking action before now, clearly these regulations are playing a role as an effective driver to get them to pay attention,” says Jean-Francois Gauthier, head of strategy at GHGSat, which has been a pioneer of using satellites to identify methane leaks.
GHGSat has 12 small satellites flying some 500km above the Earth, with infrared sensors that can detect methane emitted from individual sites. Gauthier says that, in 2023, his company helped clients address emissions equivalent to six megatonnes of CO₂. “That is 1.4mn cars off the road a year,” he explains.
But other start-ups, like Israel’s Momentick, are also developing algorithms to scour data gathered by existing satellites, instead of flying their own constellations. The EU’s Copernicus is the world’s largest Earth observation (EO) constellation and the data gathered by its Sentinel satellites is free for anyone to use. Using intelligent software to exploit this existing infrastructure keeps costs down, says Momentick’s co-founder Daniel Kashmir.
While demand for methane detection from space is growing, many satellite companies and space agencies are hoping to offer the same capability for CO₂ emissions from individual sites.
GHGSat launched its first CO₂-detecting satellite late last year, but site-specific monitoring of CO₂ from space will always be more difficult than methane, Gauthier says. Unlike methane, the background concentration of CO₂ in the air is relatively high, so it is harder for satellites to detect the changes made by smaller individual leaks, he explains. “For something to distinguish itself from the background concentration, it needs to be pretty high. We are expecting to see large emissions from cement factories, steel or power plants.”
The company hopes to expand the range of pollutants it will detect from space, to nitrous or sulphur oxides and others. “It is just a matter of having the business case,” Gauthier says. However, the business case for using space data to cut emissions is still not fully made.
Regulations are not yet in force for everyone, says Lucy Edge, chief operating officer of the UK’s Satellite Applications Catapult, a research organisation set up by the UK innovation agency. “The push is not yet there to add to the costs of running your business,” she says.
And costs are still a barrier. One industry executive says a single data set — a selection of images looking at a particular site, for example — could cost more than £100,000.
But some suggest that businesses do not yet understand the value of space-based data, which can cover bigger areas more quickly than terrestrial applications. “I have sat in meetings with people . . . who would spend £20mn on a seismic survey . . . and then they would be reluctant to use satellite data because of the perception it might be hugely expensive,” says Terrabotics’ Morgan. “It would be nice if the price was lower, but it isn’t expensive.”
Many industries have been using space-based navigation services, such as Europe’s Galileo, for years. For example, aviation — one of the most hard-to-abate sectors — relies on satellites to help it hit net zero targets. “Our aircraft positions are now monitored in real time by a network of orbiting satellites, which has given us the opportunity to improve efficiency within our north Atlantic operation,” notes British Airways’ flight efficiency manager, Spencer Norton.
Satellites are also being used for advanced weather applications, which helps pilots choose “a more efficient route”, he adds.
EasyJet says new satellite-based air traffic navigation services are being trialled in the Netherlands and have shown that an average 91kg of CO₂ per flight could be saved in that region. “More efficient use of airspace is absolutely critical to how we can tackle industry emissions,” EasyJet says.
Gradually, other sectors are expected to incorporate space-based intelligence into their decision-making. A report by the World Economic Forum last week found that EO technologies could help to eliminate 2 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent a year.
Partnered with navigation services, EO is already helping to cut shipping emissions. Satellite company Spire, for example, tracks more than 250,000 active vessels a day. Joel Spark, co-founder, says one customer reduced its carbon emissions by as much as 40 per cent on some routes by using this data. “It makes no sense for an operator to use more fuel going full steam if they are only going to wait outside a port,” he says. “By knowing how global maritime traffic behaves, you can save costs and emissions.”
But space will only ever be a partial solution. Some technologies struggle to see through cloud cover, others over water. That is why most companies offering space-based services integrate data with intelligence gathered on the ground or from drones.
The real challenge, now, is to prove that space-based data can be both cost-effective and easily integrated into a company’s decision-making, says Edge at the Satellite Applications Catapult — and then it must become just another ordinary tool in a company’s emissions strategy.
“One day, using space-based data will be the norm,” she says. “The fact that the word ‘space’ is embedded into this data will become irrelevant to everyone.”
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