New satellite will track elusive methane pollution from oil and gas industry globally

A privately funded satellite is set to push methane tracking into a new era, once it launches into space on Monday.

A collaborative mission between Environmental Defense Fund, Google, the Government of New Zealand and several other partners, MethaneSAT will track methane emissions around the globe in attempts to identify and quantify sources spewing the climate-heating greenhouse gas. 

For 20 years after its release into the atmosphere, methane gas is 80 times more harmful than carbon dioxide in its ability to increase global temperatures. But currently, the scale of methane pollution is unclear.

"We don't have a really granular picture on the true amount of methane that's being emitted from individual sectors and sources and exactly where those emissions are coming from," said Katlyn MacKay, a Canadian scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. 

"MethaneSAT fills a critical data gap that current missions aren't capable of."

MethaneSAT's mission is focused on methane from oil and gas production and consumption, which is the biggest source of the polluting gas, after agriculture.

The project team estimates the satellite will be able to quantify total regional emissions, globally, and capture and attribute data on individual oil and gas field emission for 80 per cent of global production sites. This builds on current methane-tracking technology that has yet to offer a full picture of the scale and precise origin points of the heat-trapping gas. 

Experts around the world are watching this mission closely, including Jonathan Banks, the Clean Air Task Force's global director of methane pollution prevention. He says MethaneSAT fills a significant need, as current reporting is "wildly underestimating the amount of emissions."

"What the satellites like MethaneSAT are going to do is give us a better ability to start to capture those discrepancies," said Banks. "It will be a game changer for all of us that are working on this."

Many policy-makers are watching, too, as methane regulations offer tangible solutions for slowing climate change. 

"It's one of the lowest-cost opportunities," said Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy policy analyst from the International Energy Agency. "Methane emissions can be reduced by 75 per cent in the fossil fuel sector, and delivering that could reduce global warming by 2050 by about 0.1°C."

He says that's more significant than it seems, and would be the equivalent to moving all of today's cars, trucks, trains and ships to net-zero CO2 emissions.

Methane reductions are increasingly at the forefront of international climate policy discussions.