Mind you, identifying leaks isn’t enough; it takes actively fixing them and decommissioning the infrastructure which resulted in methane release in the first place.
Mind you, identifying leaks isn’t enough; it takes actively fixing them and decommissioning the infrastructure which resulted in methane release in the first place.
In the US, the biggest oil and gas industry sources have a significant emissions tax ($900/tonne, rising to $1500 in 2026) attached to them. So they can do a bit more than wag for the worst cases.
It’ll take shifting that down to include smaller sources though, and enforcing that kind of penalty worldwide.
Unfortunately these satellites don’t have a high-enough resolution for oil and gas source attribution in most cases. They’re great for CAFOs and landfills, though.
My understanding is that the plan is to use a mix of high-frequency-low-resolution imaging with less-frequent-higher-resolution images to pinpoint specific leak sources.