Satellite Hunt for Superpollutant Wins $100 Million Infusion
(Bloomberg) -- Work to find and stop methane emissions is getting a $100 million boost, with an investment aimed at expanding satellite monitoring and helping countries adopt policies to rein in releases of the potent greenhouse gas.
The Bloomberg Philanthropies’ investment was announced Thursday as world leaders gather in Brazil for a summit ahead of the COP30 climate conference. It’s part of a global effort to increase the focus on methane, a superpollutant that has at least 80 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after it’s released.
Environmental groups and philanthropic organizations have already stepped up the use of satellites and hand-held cameras to track methane plumes. Increasingly, more of that data is being made publicly available to help pinpoint large leaks, and there are some tentative signs that polluters are beginning to act as a result.
“The challenge now is to scale up action globally,” said Riley Duren, chief executive officer and founder of Carbon Mapper, a not-for-profit organization that analyzes satellite and aerial data to detect methane. There’s a “gap between data and action on methane emissions,” he said.
Additional funding will enable the expansion of global alert networks that work directly with companies, utilities and government regulators to address large methane emitters, Duren said. That will include tracking the repairs meant to stifle leaks.
Supporters cast the program as a next step in the world’s effort to confront the greenhouse gas four years after dozens of countries first agreed to cut global methane emissions generated by human activity by at least 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade. The emissions are produced by sectors such as oil and gas production, agriculture, landfills, and from natural sources like wetlands or wildfires.
“This initiative can help usher in a new era of transparency and accountability,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “We have the technologies. What we need now is maximum ambition, acceleration and cooperation.”
The new effort aims to strengthen collaboration with nine major methane-emitting countries, including Indonesia, Mexico and Nigeria. California, Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania are among nine US states that will also be in focus.
Separately, another new program seeks to significantly reduce methane releases and water use from rice cultivation by developing low-emissions varieties of one the world’s largest food staples.
Some strains of rice generate 70% less methane and use half the water of other varieties, and more research is needed to identify breeds with reduced climate impact, according to Marcelo Mena-Carrasco, chief executive officer of Global Methane Hub, which has committed $30 million to its Rice Methane Innovation Accelerator initiative. The hub is backed by the Bezos Earth Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The effort “aims to give farmers new, viable options,” enabling them “to grow rice with lower methane emissions, while saving water and building resilience,” said Hayden Montgomery, director of the Global Methane Hub’s agriculture program.
(Bloomberg Philanthropies, the philanthropic organization of Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg News, is a Global Methane Hub donor.)
(Updates with new investment figure in 10th paragraph and adds comment about rice-methane initiative in 11th paragraph.)
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