From upstream Shanghai along the Yangtze River, a vast factory complex in eastern China is producing tens of millions of tons of steel a year – and huge amounts of planet-warming gas.
The plant’s owner does not disclose the amount of emissions the site emits. Now, however, researchers say that by looking down from space, they have found that the emissions of this plant are likely to be higher than those of any steel mill. other on Earth.
Here’s how they did it.
Their estimates are part of a new global summary of emissions published on Wednesday by Climate TRACE, a nonprofit coalition of environmental groups, technology companies and academic scientists. By using software to probe data from satellites and other sources, Climate TRACE says it can forecast emissions not only for entire countries and industries, but also for polluting facilities. individual infection. It lists steel and cement plants, power plants, oil and gas fields, cargo ships, cattle ranches – 72,612 emitters and counters, a hyperlocal atlas of human activities who are changing the chemistry of the planet.
Scientists measured concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases for decades. They know the average is growing around the world, and they know that burning fossil fuels is the main driver. That’s when they try to allocate causes more precisely – How much do specific industries and companies emit? In which countries? – things get complicated.
Governments and organizations don’t have monitoring devices attached to each chimney and exhaust, so they often predict emissions by operational measures: how much coal is burned, how much steel is produced, traffic on the road. However, such estimates are not always accurate and it can be very difficult to avoid double counting.
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The satellites of NASA and their Japanese and Chinese partners can measure the amount of greenhouse gases in the column of air below them, but clouds and darkness at night hinder their observations. And satellite measurements do not directly indicate where or when the gases were emitted. The gas mixes and gets blown around by the weather. They persist in the sky for years, even centuries.
The United Nations requires countries to report emissions to guide global climate negotiations, like this month’s climate summit in Egypt. But tallying it all is a challenge for many governments, let alone companies and cities that are setting their own climate goals.
Angel Hsu, an environmental policy expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said: “The entire future of our ability to tackle climate change and avoid the most dangerous impacts depends on our ability to have our solid data. “We need to be able to measure things to be able to manage them.”
Climate TRACE says it can provide more up-to-date emissions estimates than existing estimates and relies less on information reported by governments about their own emissions. It does this largely by mining satellite imagery and other data to get a more accurate measure of individual facilities’ manufacturing operations, then estimating their emissions. .
For steel mills, for example, the team uses satellite measurements of heat from blast furnaces to estimate steel production. (The owner of the steel mill in China, Shagang Group, declined to comment.) For power stations, Climate TRACE uses satellite imagery of their chimneys to predict power generation.
The team’s analysis found that the oil and gas industry emits more emissions than countries have previously reported, in part due to underestimated emissions from rise upor ignite unwanted methane, and big gas leak known as “super event. In other areas, however, the Climate TRACE estimate is very much in line with existing estimates, said one of the team’s researchers, Gavin McCormick.
Mr McCormick said having point-by-point emissions data made it clear how much global warming could be mitigated by reducing the carbon emissions of the biggest polluters. Climate TRACE has begun working with six regional governments in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Spain and Italy to provide information on local emissions, said one of the group’s sponsors, a former Vice President. President Al Gore said.
Simon Fischweicher, head of corporations and supply chain for the North American division of CDP, a nonprofit that collects information on companies’ environmental impact.
“We know we have a climate crisis; we don’t need emissions accounting to tell us that,” he said. “The calculation of emissions tells us where decisions need to be made, what actions need to be taken.”
Other supporters of Climate TRACE include partners of Generation Investment Management, a company founded by Mr. Gore; Google’s charitable arm; and the foundations of Eric Schmidt, a former executive at Google, and his wife, Wendy, and John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and his wife, Ann. Among the Climate TRACE contributors is the Minderoo Foundation, founded by the Australian iron ore tycoon Andrew Forrest.
Mr. McCormick said Climate TRACE has no “plans” to commercialize.
Consistent with its technological roots, the team has made its data and methods available to the public before submitting them for scientific peer review, a process that could take years. McCormick said he and his collaborators are planning to soon write an academic study based on their work.
Why didn’t they do it before? “Because the world is on fire,” Mr. McCormick said. “We firmly believe in double-checking everything, but not in ‘wait years before you publish.’
This approach has made some scientists wary. Jocelyn Turnbull, a scientist at GNS Science, a government research institute in New Zealand, said Climate TRACE is still “one way to go” in demonstrating the quality of its data, although she describes described the project as “interesting.” Dr. Turnbull helps lead an initiative at World Meteorological Organization helps scientists provide governments with emissions information.
Philippe Ciais, a researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences near Paris, helps lead Carbon screen, a project that tracks daily carbon dioxide emissions. He calls Climate TRACE’s methods “very promising”. But, he said, “everything is not judged by colleagues, I would be suspicious.”
