“Methane emissions are analogous to a wildfire,” Riley Duren says. “Except these wildfires are invisible.” Duren is the CEO of a nonprofit, Carbon Mapper, that is working with the company Planet to launch two new satellites that will track these emissions from orbit. These occur at gas wells, pipelines, refineries, and power plants, but also landfills and cattle fields. While they dissipate faster than carbon dioxide, they have a greater proportional impact on global warming.”
Quartz: The era of real-time emissions surveillance is upon us
Published on: Apr 15, 2021
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Point source methane emissions
Point source methane emissions generally refer to discrete sources such as components of infrastructure or a facility that emit large plumes of concentrated methane. Examples include leaking gas pipelines, venting coal mines, or a leak in a landfill gas capture system.
Area source methane emissions
Area source methane emissions refer to sources that emit methane across a wide area. This can include a single large but diffuse source (like wetlands) or a collection of thousands of small sources across a wide area (like marginal wells).
def: Facility Scale
When we say “facility scale,” we mean that the technology Carbon Mapper uses to spot methane emissions can show exactly where emissions are coming from down to the level of a specific facility (like a production plant) or, in some cases, a piece of equipment (like a tank battery). We’ll dig deeper into this topic in a future post.
def: Facility Scale
When we say “facility scale,” we mean that the technology Carbon Mapper uses to spot methane emissions can show exactly where emissions are coming from down to the level of a specific facility (like a production plant) or, in some cases, a piece of equipment (like a tank battery). We’ll dig deeper into this topic in a future post.
AP: How technology affects the progress toward methane mitigation