Climate change is a pressing issue, and part of it is being driven by methane.Methane is approximately 30% of today’s global warming. Reducing methane emissions can slow short-term warming and avoid the worst climate damage. To address this issue, the Environmental Defense Fund launched MethaneSAT, the world’s first artificial satellite developed by an environmental nonprofit. MethaneSAT aims to quantify regional methane emissions across more than 80% of global oil and gas production, classifying diffuse regional emissions and high-emitting point sources.
MethaneSAT produces public data that allows stakeholders to track emissions and hold polluters accountable. This data will enable a variety of actors, including governments, businesses, and investors, to make informed decisions about emission reduction strategies. This will be an invaluable resource for economists and public policy researchers looking to analyze and design effective climate policies.
Data available from MethaneSAT
MethaneSAT is not the first satellite designed to measure methane emissions, but it fills a unique niche between two existing satellite types: global mappers and point source imagers. This allows us to track overall changes in emissions both at high resolution and at a regional level, making it a valuable tool to effectively inform policy and reduce emissions.
Global mappers such as TROPOMI and GOSAT are designed to provide global resolution of methane concentrations, but have larger pixel sizes and higher detection thresholds. TROPOMI’s point source detection threshold is several tons of methane per hour, allowing it to identify only the most extreme emission events. Point source imagers are designed to detect radiation from point sources and have small detection thresholds and pixel sizes. Additionally, point source imagers are limited to a narrow field of view and do not provide regional or global emission characteristics.
MethaneSAT maps and quantifies emissions from the world’s oil and gas producing regions, while providing high-resolution spatial resolution of diffuse area emissions within individual regions and detecting high-emitting point sources. Masu. Importantly, the data produced by MethaneSAT will be freely accessible for non-commercial use and will be processed in an operational data pipeline to convert methane concentrations into quantitative methane emissions through atmospheric inversion. MethaneSAT provides diffuse emission heatmaps at high spatial resolution and area emissions resulting in high-emission point source emissions. The combination of global coverage and much finer resolution than global mappers provides unique opportunities for research and emissions reduction.
Overview of the economics of methane emissions
Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are a classic example of what economists call an “externality.” Externalities occur when individuals or companies cause harm (or benefit) to others without influencing their own decisions. Methane emissions from oil and gas are primarily leaked natural gas. However, the price of natural gas on the market is much lower than the social cost of methane emissions.
By way of background, over the past decade, the Henry Hub natural gas spot price has typically fluctuated between $2 and $4 per Mcf, while the social cost of methane emissions from a natural gas leak is approximately $35 .1 This means that operators face some incentive to reduce emissions, but the incentives are orders of magnitude too low and methane emissions are “too cheap.”
moreover, methane Measuring emissions from individual sites is expensive, and there are millions of oil and gas facilities around the world. Environmental economists typically support taxes to strike a judicious balance between the benefits and costs of regulating pollution. However, when measurements are expensive or estimates of emissions are imprecise, alternative measures such as technical obligations may provide a more cost-effective means of reducing pollution.
Designing effective policies requires understanding corporate incentives and considering all associated costs, benefits, challenges, and opportunities. Economists have already thought long and hard about how incentives affect emissions and how to effectively use policies to reduce methane emissions.
For example, a recent study on providing information about breaches to operators found evidence that informing operators of small breaches reduces the risk of breaches. few It may be possible to fix them. This is probably because the value of gas loss due to a small leak is less than the cost of repairing it. Other studies have demonstrated that midstream capacity and market power constraints may be important contributors to flaring methane emissions.
These results highlight the need for thoughtful regulation that considers the relationship between policy and incentives. To this end, economists have proposed solutions to improve the effectiveness of methane emissions prices even in the absence of complete measurement data. Such measures include targeted audits and built-in incentives for operators to report empirically measured and verified emissions data. Economists have proposed methane border adjustments to foster coordination among countries and ensure that ambitious countries are not put at a competitive disadvantage by their policies.
However, many unanswered questions remain about how to effectively regulate methane emissions given these measurement challenges and how to translate good theoretical ideas into actionable policies. I am.
Using MethaneSAT data for better policy
MethaneSAT helps public policy and economics researchers improve this research by providing a new data source to inform policy design, assess policy effectiveness, and create new opportunities for policy implementation. offers a unique opportunity to further develop.
- Evaluating policy effectiveness: The satellite will help researchers estimate the effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing emissions. Examples include the recently finalized methane regulations in the United States and proposed regulations in the European Union and Canada that include technical requirements and obligations on producers such as mandatory leak detection investigations. Reduction of associated gas flaring was mandated. Once these rules take effect, policy evaluations based on measured emissions data will help provide a more cost-effective and equitable approach in the future.
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wide band MethaneSAT makes it possible to carry out such assessment efforts around the world. This is especially valuable in regions with fewer environmental reporting requirements compared to the US, EU, and Canada. Once a new policy is implemented, economists may also be able to use quasi-experimental variation to generate high-quality evidence about the effectiveness of the policy or to conduct randomized controlled trials.
- Policy design and enforcement Regulators can use MethaneSAT data to inform timely policy implementation and enforcement.. For example, the new methane fee created by the U.S. Inflation Control Act is part of the U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP). Some of these emissions estimates are generated by taking the number of equipment and multiplying that number by the “emission factors” of the various equipment.However, there are strong evidence current Emission factor too low. New sources of emissions data will help policymakers improve emissions inventories, thereby increasing the effectiveness of methane fees. New satellite data can also be used to understand the levels and changes in methane emissions over space and time. Just as LandSAT data and subsequent more detailed remote sensing information have enabled us to better understand deforestation and other land use patterns and changes, and to design international policy based on this, MethaneSAT Data can be used to inform and evaluate counterfactual baselines. Potential leakage of methane emission reduction credits on a sectoral or national scale.
We learned and discussed many of these ideas at EDF’s recent 2024 EDF Methane Policy Research Workshop. In addition to hearing about research from economists around the world, the workshop also included an overview of some projects that are running on a lack of funding. Harvard University Salata Institute Global Methane Initiative.
Methane data that anyone can use
MethaneSAT data will be made freely available for non-commercial use, including businesses, governments, and the general public, and will be updated regularly. MethaneSAT’s timely, open-access data efforts will yield benefits that go beyond what can be achieved through policy.
- The private sector can benefit from accessing MethaneSAT data to identify problem areas within production facilities and determine cost-effective ways to reduce their methane emissions. This means that providing MethaneSAT data reduces the marginal abatement cost curve, potentially benefiting everyone.
- Investors can use data to make investment decisions.
- The public, including NGOs, can put pressure on companies and countries to reduce emissions faster.
- Countries can use newly identified opportunities to pressure each other to increase their ambitions to fight climate change.
MethaneSAT has had a positive impact even before its launch. The satellite will help raise awareness of the methane issue and will support several international commitments ( Global methane pledgesigned by more than 150 countries aiming to reduce collective methane emissions by at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030) and corporate commitments (most recently Global Oil and Gas Decarbonization CharterUnder the plan, 50 companies, including many national oil companies, pledge to reduce methane emissions to near zero by 2050. And we will be able to monitor the fulfillment of these promises. Investment in technology has increased and regulatory efforts by governments have increased to reduce methane emissions.
Now that MethaneSAT has reached space, we can all look forward to using the data it generates to drive climate action. Economists and public policy makers can leverage the intense research of countless scientists to inform the design and implementation of more effective policies, ultimately reducing global methane emissions. This can lead to faster and more cost-effective savings.
This blog is co-authored by Maureen Lackner, Senior Manager of Economic Policy Analysis at the Environmental Defense Fund, and Lauren Beatty, High Meadows Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics at the Environmental Defense Fund.
