Satellites can now identify methane “super emitters.”

In 2024, two new satellites are launched to find methane super-emitters from space: Environmental Defense Fund. methane sat It took off in March 2024; and Carbon chartwhich was launched later last year as a public-private partnership.

Methane is a high-energy greenhouse gas. Pound for pound is methane 80 times Stronger than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after its release. Over the past two centuries, its focus has been More than doublewhich is a much faster increase than carbon dioxide. Methane concentrations are rising more rapidly than at any time since records began.

Human activities also dominate global methane emissions to a much greater extent than carbon dioxide. more than 60 percent Of the global methane emissions come from human activity: fossil fuel extraction; Raising cows that burp (don’t fart); Dumping waste into landfills and waste treatment sites.

The good news is that a small portion of sites are responsible for much of this pollution. Methane emissions are dominated by so-called super-emitters: 5% of utilities More than half of the total methane emissions in a given oil and gas field or industry are produced. Squeeze these emissions and we will reduce global methane pollution dramatically.

MethaneSAT and Carbon Mapper orbit the Earth from north to south in a polar orbit. As the planet rotates beneath them — like a basketball spinning on your finger — they see a different range of potential emission sites with each pass.

MethaneSAT has a wider field of view than Carbon Mapper. The pixels it depicts are 15,000 square miles in area, about the size of Glacier National Park in Montana. It will be good at identifying methane hotspots. In contrast, Carbon Mapper is like zooming on a camera. It will distinguish between individual sources on the scale of a football field, and attribute methane plumes to individual sources (and individual owners) on the ground.

There’s a caveat: Both of these satellites need sunlight to see the world. This could lead to unscrupulous oil and gas company owners ordering their crews to perform facility maintenance at night, when these satellites cannot see them. Now, I don’t think the owners of most oil and gas companies are unscrupulous, but some of them are, and in 2025, they will attack us.

Regardless, gone are the days when massive gas leaks like the 2015 explosion at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in Los Angeles went unreported for several weeks. That explosion sickened nearby residents, led to a $1.8 billion settlement from SoCalGas for about 10,000 evacuated families, and ultimately resulted in the release of greenhouse gases. 97,000 metric tons of methaneThe largest gas leak in US history.

In 2025, these satellites will allow us to find the world’s biggest polluters. We will be able to look at coal mines and oil and gas fields in remote parts of the world and in countries where we are not allowed to operate today, such as the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia and the Qingshui Basin in China.

We will also find super emitters in the US as well, and some Fortune 500 CEOs will have their faces smeared white. Major oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and their subsidiaries will be flagged for contamination in the Permian Basin in West Texas and the Bakken oil field in North Dakota. Workers in landfills, feedlots and wastewater treatment will also be embarrassed. In 2025, there will be nowhere for the “wanted” methane polluters to hide.