(Credit: Google)
Google is joining MethaneSAT, the Environmental Defense Fund's (EDF) satellite project, which will use Google's AI tools to help identify existing oil and gas infrastructure on Earth and help scientists map out where methane emissions are coming from around the world.
"Our goal is to help EDF quantify and trace methane emissions to their source," says Yael Maguire, Google's VP and general manager of geo development and sustainability. "With this information, energy companies, researchers and the public sector can take action to reduce emissions from oil and gas infrastructure faster and more effectively."
Methane emissions are "one of the biggest climate challenges we face today," he adds.
MethaneSAT has over 70 team members, including scientists and engineers from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, four aerospace firms including Elon Musk's SpaceX, the New Zealand Space Agency, and Google.
The EDF satellite is scheduled to launch into Earth's orbit in early March on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It'll then circle Earth 15 times a day from more than 350 miles above our planet's surface. Scientists at Harvard and Smithsonian will then be able to track and confirm both high-quantity and low-quantity methane sources using Google Cloud-powered algorithms.
While everyday users might enjoy Google Maps' satellite-powered features, Google wants to map out some of the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitters, too. The company's AI image-detection tools will analyze data from the satellite and label various man-made structures it believes to be part of the oil and gas industry.
Creating a global map of all oil and gas-related facilities is a pretty ambitious task, but once complete, the project's team of scientists will be able to compare that data with the methane detection data to determine to what extent the oil and gas industries are responsible for the rise in global methane emissions.
The amount of methane in the Earth's atmosphere has more than doubled in the past 200 years, NASA says. And the International Energy Agency has reported that methane is to blame for 30% of the rise in global temperatures contributing to climate change.
After the data is collected and analyzed, Google plans to make it available on its Earth Engine platform later this year.