Montreal satellites play role in climate fight

Interest in a Montreal-based company's satellites to monitor methane emissions is reaching new heights, even as governments appear to be wavering on climate commitments.

MONTREAL – The CEO of a Montreal-based company that uses satellites to monitor methane emissions says interest in his technology continues to reach new heights, even as governments appear to be wavering on their climate commitments.

Since 2016, Stéphane Germain’s GHGSat has launched 14 satellites that roam the skies to detect emissions from oil and gas facilities, coal mines, landfills and agricultural feed lots. Methane is responsible for about one-third of global warming, according to scientists.

GHGSat last month announced a deal with ExxonMobil Corp. to monitor emissions at the oil giant’s sites in Canada, the United States and Asia, and that it raised $47 million in equity and debt financing to help accelerate its global expansion.

Germain says the company has managed to continue its growth despite a U.S. pullback from greenhouse gas monitoring, and a political class that has seemed to cool on climate commitments. Among other actions, the Trump administration is moving to shut down two NASA missions that monitor carbon dioxide and plant health.

President Donald Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 includes no money for the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, which can precisely show where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed and how well crops are growing.

Despite the U.S. government’s apparent waning interest in climate change, Germain says his clients, by and large, are “playing the long game.”

“They understand that in the medium to long term, their end customers really care about climate change and that they are going to have to be both the lowest cost and the lowest carbon footprint producer of oil or gas in order to win in the long term,” he said in a recent interview.

He notes that companies plan their capital expenditures over many years, going “beyond any one administration” and trying to anticipate what regulations will look like in the future.