New Satellite for Monitoring and Sharing Carbon Emission Data from Individual Facilities

Canadian emissions monitoring company GHGSat launched a satellite on Saturday with the aim of monitoring carbon dioxide emissions from individual facilities such as coal and steel plants from space for the first time. The satellite, named Vanguard, was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The company stated that space-age technology is increasingly being used to hold polluting industries accountable for their contributions to climate change. GHGSat's data is available for sale to emission sources in the industrial sector that wish to reduce their emissions, as well as to governments and scientists. Vanguard will rely on a growing network of satellites that are already monitoring plumes of methane, an invisible greenhouse gas that is difficult to detect as it tends to leak from a variety of small sources, including pipelines, drilling sites, and farms. Carbon dioxide accounts for nearly 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States from human activities and tends to enter the atmosphere from major industrial sources such as power plants. The Canadian company mentioned that satellites monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are currently not focused on emissions at the individual facility level. CEO Stefan German stated that the data collected by Vanguard will help to demonstrate practices that contribute to carbon dioxide emissions and measure these emissions.