Climate TRACE, the global coalition founded by Al Gore, released the most updated and detailed facility-level global inventory of GHG emissions at COP27
The top 500 individual sources of emissions worldwide represent less than 1% of total facilities being tracked, yet accounted for 14% of global emissions in 2021. This is more than the annual emissions of the United States.
Shocked? Or outraged? Likely both.
Here’s more.
Power plants, which compromise three-fifths of the assets in the top 500 list, contribute to more than 50%, while 26 of the 50 largest sources of emissions worldwide are oil and gas fields (including associated production, processing, and transportation sites).
That’s not all.
As of the end of October, not a single country has submitted a complete accounting of its emissions for 2021 to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), while as many as 52 have not submitted any emissions inventories of the past 10 years.
There’s more.
Among the top countries that self-report their oil and gas production emissions to the UN, emissions are found to be as much as three times higher.
And it just goes on.
The most updated and detailed facility-level global inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to date released by the Climate TRACE coalition at COP27 on Wednesday (Nov 9) is damning in every way for every industry – be it the power sector, oil and gas production and refining, shipping, aviation, mining, waste, agriculture, road transportation, and the production of steel, cement, or aluminum.
Climate TRACE’s dataset – which is available publicly and at no cost — now includes emissions data for a total of 72,612 individual sources worldwide and provides a full view of annual GHG emissions since 2015 — the year of the Paris Agreement.
“The climate crisis can, at times, feel like an intractable challenge – in large part because we’ve had a limited understanding of precisely where emissions are coming from,” former US Vice President and Climate TRACE founding member Al Gore said while releasing the latest update.
“This level of granularity means that we finally have emissions data that enable us to act decisively. It also means we can prioritize efforts to achieve the deep cuts in greenhouse gas pollution we need to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.”
ALSO READ: How Climate TRACE is Using Earth Observation Data and AI to Monitor Emissions
Power of remote sensing and AI
“Our collective goal is to bring radical transparency to global emissions monitoring by pinpointing exactly where emissions are coming from and fill in the critical gaps in existing greenhouse gas emissions inventories,” Gavin McCormick, Founder and Executive Director of Climate TRACE convening member WattTime, had told us earlier.
He had explained that the relatively recent proliferation of lower-cost satellites in orbit studying our planet, coupled with advances in AI and machine learning technology, have in recent years made new forms of tech-forward emissions monitoring possible.
Climate TRACE harnesses breakthroughs in satellite technology and the power of artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to spot the exact sources of GHG emissions. It sifts through data from 300-plus satellites, 11,100-plus sensors including air, land and sea, and billions of gigabytes of data from public and commercial announcements/platforms.
At the same time, its analytical tools are also capable of detecting and analyzing emission activities that are otherwise invisible or undetectable. The AI is trained to spot the subtle differences in satellite imagery and other data patterns, which enables analysis and calculation of emissions from individual sources that the traditional monitoring methods are likely to miss. As with all AI and machine learning models, they become more and more precise with time as they handle more and more data.
ALSO READ: The Fight Against Climate Change From Space
Oil & gas under scanner
Climate TRACE claims that “in no sector is the power of this emissions monitoring approach more apparent than in oil and gas” – a sector which faced brutal criticism from Gore as part of Al Gore’s address at COP27.
Calling on governments and private sector to take the climate crisis seriously, he said, “More is needed, but we have the basis of home. Just days ago, the people of Brazil chose to stop the destruction of the Amazon. Earlier this year, the people of Australia chose to start leading the renewable energy revolution. Earlier this year, the people of my country (the US) chose leaders who enacted at long last the biggest and most ambitious climate legislation in the history of the world.”
Expanding dataset
The Climate TRACE global inventory, which was first released in September 2021 at the last year’s COP meet, presents a more complete view of global emissions for every country and across more sectors than previously available.
“The release of this massive dataset represents the combined efforts of more than 100 contributing organizations worldwide,” said McCormick.
The inventory was jointly created by 10 coalition members — Blue Sky Analytics, Carbon Yield, Earthrise Media, Former Vice President Al Gore, Hypervine.io, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, OceanMind, RMI, TransitionZero, and WattTime. Additionally, over 90 organizations and researchers are contributing to the inventory, including: Carbon Mapper, CTREES, Descartes Labs, Global Energy Monitor, Google.org, Michigan State University, Minderoo Foundation/Global Plastic Watch, Planet Labs PBC, Synthetaic, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and others.
Next year, Climate TRACE is planning to expand its facility-level inventory from at least the top 500+ sources of emissions per sector represented in the Q4 2022 edition of the inventory to cover every major industrial-scale source of emissions in the world.
“Our work is far from done, but I’ve been thrilled to hear from climate negotiators, corporate sustainability teams, investors looking to decarbonize, climate scientists, and even activists that this information is already a game changer that can help them make better decisions and decarbonize faster,” he added.
