How energy use and emissions can be measured from space
My takeaways from a NASA panel including researchers and industry members
Satellite data is commonly used to track greenhouse gases from oil and gas production - this includes flaring, leaks, and mining activities. However, monitoring energy consumption using satellite remote sensing data is still an under-researched topic.
NASA hosted a series of webinars through its Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences program. One of the webinars was focused on how satellite remote sensing data can be used in research or industry to track and quantify energy use. This post is a review of that information and a summary of their conclusions.
If you want to watch the webinar, you can find it here.
TROPOMI and emission inventories
Nitrogen dioxide is a chemical commonly associated with combustion-related processes. The high resolution of the TROPOMI instrument has allowed many studies to track urban air pollution in the context of environmental justice studies, some even to a 1 km spatial resolution. But can we also use it to track areas where combustion fuels are emitted?
In the first presentation, satellite remote sensing nitrogen dioxide measurements from TROPOMI were compared with emission inventory estimates over the continental United States.
Examples of these data were plotted over Texas, and there was a strong spatial correlation between the satellite remote sensing data and the emission inventory data. However, it is important to note that these results were clearly marked as preliminary.
Despite the strong agreement between the two datasets, the correlation was less accurate when trying to pinpoint and quantify emissions from point sources.
One major takeaway is that satellite remote sensing data can actually be used to validate emission inventories, as many overestimate in suburban areas and underestimate in more industrial areas.
TROPOMI and building energy emissions
The next study attempted to answer the question, can we see building energy emissions from space?
They used spatial estimates of residential wood combustion and natural gas heating and aggregated the results at a county level. Here’s what it looked like:
Then, they correlated these results with TROPOMI nitrogen dioxide columns at a similar spatial resolution (again, because nitrogen dioxide is emitted through combustion processes). The results were mixed. There was NOT a strong correlation between county-level energy use and satellite remote sensing NO2 columns.
Then, they compared TROPOMI overpass columns with daily minimum temperature, daily maximum temperature, temperature at the time of the TROPOMI overpass and heating degree days (you can see the number of heating degree days in the following image). Notice how the northern areas have more heating degree days than the south?
The results from this exercise were interesting - TROPOMI was best correlated with the heating degree days variable. However, when averaging across all counties and creating a time series, the correlation was low to moderate (see image below). This could be for multiple reasons: 1. building heating is less than a third of all NOx emissions in the U.S., there are a lot of meteorological effects, and building energy emissions may not create a strong signal.
My takeaway from this is that TROPOMI is just too coarse to catch something as fine as building-level emissions. Perhaps that may change with the launch of TEMPO, not simply because of it’s finer spatial resolution but also it’s 1-hour temporal resolution. I’m looking forward to seeing a paper come out of this, and perhaps updated results next year once we have TEMPO data.
Methane Monitoring and the Energy Transition
The next two presentations were more focused on industry applications. The first industry speaker was from Madison Gas and Electric. He provided an overview of how satellite remote sensing monitoring of greenhouse gases was important for managing emissions from their natural gas pipelines.
One of the things they’re heavily focused on is how to reduce end use emissions reductions. They’re also looking to increase electricification of the grid, find alternatives to natural gas, and to invest further into renewable natural gas and green hydrogen.
They emphasized that it’s important to find ways to reduce fugitive emissions along the entire value chain but particularly in the oil and gas field and production
Some of the areas where fugitive methane emissions take place is near burner tips, power plants, furnaces, gas stoves and more (obviously it would be difficult to monitor emissions indoor from satellites but it’s definitely an area that would need to be quantified).
The next topic he discussed is the increased regulatory focus on methane monitoring. Some of the key pieces of methane regulations include:
identifying methane sources
aiding in the quantification of emissions
allowing resources to be spent on super emitting sources
Complimenting on the ground and other sources of emissions data
helping calculate Scope 1 to Scope 3 emissions
GHGSat
The famous GHGSat! I’ve seen this company growing rapidly everywhere, and it already seems bigger than when I interned there a year ago. If you’re not familiar with GHGSat, they’re a Canadian company that monitors fugitive methane emissions using microsatellites.
Most of this section was a review of GHGSat’s services, which already provide emissions monitoring for the energy sector. For instance, they were able to monitor the Nord Stream pipeline leak, in which the plume was 12 km long!!! On the day the measurement was taken, the methane emissions were around 79 tons/day on the day the measurement was taken. Soon, GHGSat will start providing data to NASA.
Honestly, most of this section was a pitch for the company so let’s just move on.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory – Vikram Ravi
The final speaker was from Vikram Ravi from the NREL. This presentation felt slightly out of place, but review some of the biggest energy users in the years to come. Here were some of the points mentioned:
The energy sector in Southeast Asia is the 5th largest in the world.
both the residential and commercial buildings there use a significant amount of energy in the country
The power generated from 2025 onward is expected to increase significantly
This includes the use of both renewables and coal
NERL created an emissions inventory using different use-case scenarios and a model called “Global Inmap”
They also created predictions for how different types of energy use will increase in the decades to come.
That’s it! Those were my big takeaways from this first webinar. There are many more that were posted through this NASA program, and I’ll make sure to post my summaries of each. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share it with others.
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