Shipping emissions monitoring and enforcement from space?
Shipping has already been, and will continue to be, profoundly influenced by concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
As a practical matter, regulatory efforts rely on estimates of emissions in contrast to reporting from direct measurements of stack gases. At present, such emissions are not monitored remotely for compliance purposes.
A breakthrough on remote observation of emissions, both CO2 and methane, is now in the offing. While there are no instant plans for observing vessels there is a shipping connection in play. In mid August, the U.S. space agency- NASA, launched a satellite dubbed Tanager-1, from Vandenberg Space Force Base, in California, powered into orbit on a SpaceX rocket. According to the agency, Tanager-1 “will use imaging spectrometer technology developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to measure methane and carbon dioxide point-source emissions, down to the level of individual facilities and equipment, on a global scale.”
NASA explains, further, that the driving force behind the satellite is a “public-private coalition led by the non-profit Carbon Mapper…The group plans to launch a second Tanager satellite, called Tanager-2, also being built by Planet Labs and equipped with a JPL-built imaging spectrometer.” Tanager-1’s orbit is 324 miles above the earth.
The Carbon Mapper Coalition is a non-profit coalition whose backers include Jet Propulsion Lab, funded by NASA and managed by California Institute of Technology, Planet Labs - a data-analytics platform founded by ex-NASA engineers, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Arizona State University. Supporters include a number philanthropic endeavors; one of which- the High Tide Foundation, has been a sponsor of numerous ship finance events where banking incentives for funding vessels with lowered emissions have been a prominent topic in recent years.
Ships in transit will not have satellites 300+ miles above the ocean peering down their stacks- at least not for a while. The business focus of coalition heavyweight Planet Labs centers on its “PlanetScope” platform and says that its “…data is used by hundreds of our customers in defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial markets to take informed action, and better contextualize events they’re seeing on the ground now.”
Talking about the recent satellite launch, they say: “We’re incredibly excited to apply Tanager’s unique capabilities to make methane and CO2 emissions visible at high resolution globally - translating data into transparent and actionable information to help decision makers act now.”
Worth noting also is the support of satellite data collection by the State of California, which has broken new regulatory ground with ship emission dictates from the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Focused on methane, California has committed $100 million of state money for using satellite methane data. Following the Tanager-1 launch, California Governor Gavin Newsome said: ”We have more satellites going up in the coming years that will provide real-time methane detection and enforcement.”
Resource:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26411-carbon-mapper-coalitions-tanager-satellite
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