Keep knowledgeable with free updates
Merely signal as much as the Local weather change myFT Digest — delivered on to your inbox.
An $88mn satellite tv for pc backed by Google, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been misplaced in house, in a blow to world efforts to detect the planet-warming emissions of the highly effective greenhouse fuel methane from the oil and fuel business.
The MethaneSAT satellite tv for pc was launched in March 2024 aboard SpaceX to observe plumes and leaks of methane, an invisible greenhouse fuel answerable for nearly a 3rd of the world’s warming within the industrial period.
However this week, MethaneSAT mentioned the satellite tv for pc had “misplaced energy and that it’s seemingly not recoverable”.
“The engineering crew is conducting an intensive investigation into the lack of communication. That is anticipated to take time,” a press release mentioned, including that its work on tackling methane emissions would proceed.
The Environmental Protection Fund, the non-profit that had spearheaded the satellite tv for pc, informed the Monetary Instances it was “too early to say whether or not one other satellite tv for pc might be launched”.
“Proper now, the main focus is on understanding what occurred, persevering with to course of and launch the high-quality methane knowledge MethaneSAT already collected, and making use of the confirmed expertise and insights from the mission.”
The gadget, which was described as “some of the superior methane monitoring satellites in house”, had been gathering knowledge and pictures of emissions at oil and fuel websites the world over.
It was certainly one of a rising variety of satellites that had sprung as much as acquire knowledge on methane leaks as nations and fossil gasoline firms the world over pledged to handle emissions of the extremely potent fuel in recent times.
Greater than 100 nations led by the US and Europe signed up in 2021 to a world methane pledge to chop emissions 30 per cent by the tip of the last decade.
The power business is the second-biggest contributor to human-caused methane emissions after agriculture. However addressing the business’s methane emissions is considered as among the many most cost-effective and quickest alternatives for tackling global warming at present obtainable.
Consultants have warned, nonetheless, that power firms have discovered quite a few methods to hide the magnitude of their emissions, making expertise comparable to satellites essential for monitoring emissions.
“Oil and fuel is emitting way more methane than we realise,” Eric Kort, professor of local weather, house sciences and engineering on the College of Michigan, informed the FT final yr.
The Bezos Earth Fund, Bezos’ philanthropic arm, mentioned final July that it will present $10mn in funding to the EDF to assist MethaneSAT, after it had already supplied a three-year $100mn donation in 2020. The satellite tv for pc was additionally backed by the New Zealand authorities and others.
Google had additionally provided AI computing capabilities required to crunch huge quantities of information produced by the orbiting methane monitor.
The satellite tv for pc was designed to measure methane emissions that another satellites can not. It might additionally calculate whole emissions, the place they arrive from and the way they alter over time.
World power methane emissions remained at near-record ranges in 2024, with the Worldwide Vitality Company saying earlier this yr that 70 per cent of such emissions could possibly be prevented at a low value.
Local weather Capital
The place local weather change meets enterprise, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.
Are you interested in the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here
