By Anders Lorenzen

One of the world’s largest tech companies, Google (owned by Alphabet), has often come under criticism, partly for its commitment to tackling climate change and its overall sustainability goals, but also for double standards.  Its platform hosts climate-denying content, and the company seems unable to crack down on it.

But the latest initiative by Google will be likely to attract praise, as it will be using technology to overcome a critical problem when it comes to cutting emissions: oil and gas methane leaks.

In a collaborative project partnership with the Environmental Defence Fund (EDF), a US-based environmental group, Google’s platform will be used to expose sources of methane climate-warming emissions from oil and gas operations, the emissions detected from space by a new satellite.

The satellite, MethaneSat, will be launched next week.  It is one of several satellites being deployed to monitor methane emissions across the globe, in order to locate the major sources of the invisible greenhouse gas. Methane has 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Apart from EDF, the project is also supported by the New Zealand Space Agency, Harvard University and others.

Mapping methane leaks

Later this month the data will be made available powered by Google Cloud, which will provide the computing power to process the information.

For it to be widely available, Google will create a map of oil and gas infrastructure via its Google Maps platform, using artificial intelligence (AI) that will identify components like oil tanks. The data on emissions from MethaneSAT will then be overlayed with Google Maps, to assist in the understanding of which types of oil and gas equipment tend to leak the most.

The information will be published and available via Google Earth Engine, a geospatial analysis platform, later this year.

Yael Maguire, vice president of geo sustainability at Google, said about the project: “We think this information is incredibly valuable for energy companies, researchers and the public sector to anticipate and mitigate methane emissions in components that are generally most susceptible.”

The launch of the project is announced at a time when there has been an increased focus with governments on how to tackle the short-lived greenhouse gas (GHG) source.  Over 50 major independent and state-owned oil and gas – companies pledged at the UN climate summit, COP28, held late 2023, to reduce their methane leaks to near zero by the end of this decade.

The US is among the world’s biggest methane emitters and has proposed mandatory measures to eradicate the leaks from oil and gas operations.

The US public is to gain significant use of the Google initiative. A new rule by the government body, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would allow the public to report large methane leaks to federal regulators if they have access to methane detection technology.

Google Earth Engine is a tool available to researchers, nonprofits and the news media for free.

Methane emissions are estimated to account for one-third of global heating. Methane has around 80 times the warming potential of CO2, but is short-lived, staying active in the atmosphere for 12 years whereas CO2 is active for between 300-1,000 years.