How to Track the Emissions of Every Power Plant on the Planet from Space

[mahatmakanejeeves]

11 Aug 2020 | 18:00 GMT
How to Track the Emissions of Every Power Plant on the Planet from Space

It’s easy to measure greenhouse gases but hard to tell where the gases came from. Using satellite images and AI, we’re about to change that.

By Heather D. Couture

Fossil-fuel power plants are one of the largest emitters of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Collectively, these 18,000 or so plants account for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including an estimated 15 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels also seriously degrade air quality and public health. They contribute to heart and respiratory diseases and lung cancer and are responsible for nearly 1 in 10 deaths worldwide.

Averting the most severe impacts of air pollution and climate change requires understanding the sources of emissions. The technology exists to measure CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere, but not with enough granularity to pinpoint who emitted what and how much. Last month, a new initiative called Climate TRACE was unveiled, with the aim of accurately tracking man-made CO2 emissions right to the source, no matter where in the world that source is. The coalition of nine organizations and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has already begun to track such emissions across seven sectors, including electricity, transportation, and forest fires.

I’m a machine-learning researcher, and in conjunction with the nonprofits WattTime, Carbon Tracker, and the World Resources Institute (with funding from Google.org), I’m working on the electricity piece of Climate TRACE. Using existing satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, we’ll soon be able to estimate emissions from every fossil-fuel power plant in the world. Here’s how we’re doing it.

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[in2herbs]

1. This will be a game changer and tangible evidence for people to see. nt