Tech giant Google is collaborating with the Environmental Defense Fund to launch a satellite project in March that will monitor methane levels around the world. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. The project will focus on methane emissions from oil and gas plants, as these facilities regularly burn or release methane. The data collected by the satellites will be processed using Google’s artificial intelligence tools to create a methane map, which will help identify leaks in oil and gas infrastructure worldwide.
However, Google clarified that if it identifies a significant leak, it will not directly notify the company responsible for the infrastructure. Instead, the information will be made available to governments and regulators, who can then take appropriate action. Currently, there is no international regulation on controlling methane emissions, although the European Union has proposed measures to reduce them, including requiring oil and gas operators to repair leaks.
Google’s methane map will be published on its Earth Engine platform, but the data will not be in real time. The satellite will send back data every few weeks. In 2017, the European Space Agency launched a similar satellite instrument called Trompomi, which tracks the presence of trace gases in the atmosphere, including methane. However, the mission may end this year due to its minimum seven-year lifespan.
Methane emissions remain a concern, with levels having more than doubled in the last 200 years, according to NASA. Human activity, particularly livestock farming, is a major contributor to methane emissions. Cows, in particular, produce methane through their digestion process. The US Environmental Protection Agency reported that a single cow can produce 154-264 pounds of methane gas annually, and there are an estimated 1.5 billion cows raised for meat worldwide.
Detecting methane emissions from agriculture is challenging compared to larger sources, such as oil and gas facilities. Satellites are effective at identifying significant methane sources, but diffuse emissions from agriculture are more difficult to monitor, according to Peter Thorne, a professor of physical geography at Maynooth University in Ireland.
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