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> EDF is planning to launch its own methane-detecting satellite in about a year, which will take much sharper pictures, showing smaller leaks. Other organizatio

> EDF is planning to launch its own methane-detecting satellite in about a year, which will take much sharper pictures, showing smaller leaks. Other organizations are developing their own methane detectors. When this does launch, the images taken should be open to public consumption, preferably on a website. Once we put these companies on blast with the hard facts, things will begin to change. Very quickly.

gostsamo 5y ago
You read the part of the article where they mentioned Russia and Turkmenistan, right? The executives there won't be impressed by a protest.
- yoavm 5y ago
  I am assuming some of those companies are selling their gas and oil in Europe? We would need to trace that and just stop buying until they fix it.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Stop buying means not turning on the heater in winter… so go back to hearth and fireplace for heat to combat… pollution?
    - henearkr 5y ago
      I know many electric-only houses: you can heat yourself without methane.
      - mc32 5y ago
        That’s fine for a long ye strategy. But asking people who are fitted for gas to go electric? Politicians tend to make delusional promises which can never happen. Something like this is a long term thing it’s not… stop using gas now!
        henearkr 5y ago
        I think that's the right time to ask people to make the change, on the contrary, as it's the middle of the gas crisis (through geopolitical reasons). Governments are trying hard to artificially keep the prices low, but the reality is that the market really really wants people to give up on fossil fuels.
      - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
        The Netherlands wants to push towards electrification - probably to reduce dependency on Russian gas - but the power grid cannot handle it, and it'll take years and billions to increase its capacity. I mean electric boilers, heating panels, ranges and car chargers will easily increase peak loads by 15-25 kilowatts per house, that's 2-4x as much as they currently pull. Do that times hundreds of thousands of houses and you see the issue.
        henearkr 5y ago
        What you are right about is that both consumer and production endpoints transitions must be synchronized. But they should still happen very fast. The right conclusion is that now they need to buff up the power grid extremely quickly TOO (it needs not take such a long time, some choices like solar or wind are quite quick to install). Both the consumer endpoints and production endpoints have to change, of course. As for the billions required for the transition, since when absolute figures make for good decisions? What is required is a comparison with alternatives. And one sure thing is that the cost of a failed transition, of a climate catastrophe, or indirect consequences like wars, are tremendously more expensive.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Electric is an option, but we've already switched from coal to gas... which is the problem. And nuclear energy, while having no carbon emissions, has the problem that nobody wants it in their backyard. Plus, huge upfront investments and costs.
      - tremon 5y ago
        Actually, I would seriously consider putting a small-scale nuclear reactor in my backyard if it were possible. My neighbours might object, but since you said my backyard: I'm perfectly ok with that.
    - baud147258 5y ago
      Aren't fireplaces much more polluting when compared to burning gas for heating?
      - roywiggins 5y ago
        Plausibly better for the climate (it's not fossil carbon, it's much more recent carbon) but much much much worse for immediate human health, since it spews all sorts of nasty particulates out the chimney and also into the home. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/fireplaces-and-stoves-are-bigger-polluters-than-traffic https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/fireplac...
    - gefhfffh 5y ago
      Buying somewhere else, using alternatives, such as green gas or heat pumps ...and then never go back
      - gambiting 5y ago
        >>Buying somewhere else Where? And how? >>using alternatives, such as green gas You mean synthetic gas? There is absolutely no capacity to produce anywhere near enough to satisfy even a single percent of European needs. >>or heat pumps Heat pumps are not a universal solution, they don't work in all climates, or they require digging trenches or wells to actually be efficient - again, not possible everywhere and for everyone. And even if it was - with what money? Where I'm from in Poland I know lots of people who still heat their houses with coal, purely because gas is too expensive as it is. And you want to switch their source of heat to an even more expensive one? I'm sure they will be super happy to do that, sure.
        gefhfffh 5y ago
        Pretty sure there exists more than one source of gas. You only need as much gas as is required to fill the gap that alternative gas providers and heat pumps can't provide to compensate the lost gas. Another option is to improve the houses such they leak much less heat. Money allocation could be managed through a variety of ways, such as EU funds
      - dirtyoldmick 5y ago
        Heat pumps suck in really cold climates. I highly recommend a natural gas water heater if you have a gas line. I have never run out of hot water.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - dmm 5y ago
      Calling for individual action is a deliberate strategy to shift responsibility from corporations.
  - edf13 5y ago
    We have an energy (mostly gas related) crisis here in Europe. Turning off supplies is not an option
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    The days when Europe was the dominant oil and gas customer are long, long gone.
  - belorn 5y ago
    We are currently in a situation where people are discussing if a military invasion is enough of a reason to stop buying gas. Germany in particular does not want to turn off the gas, and has invested a lot of money, infrastructure and political capital in order to use Russian gas in the next few decades.
    - yoavm 5y ago
      Ah cynical German could argue that Russia invading to Ukraine is none of their problems, but emitting methane sure is. To clarify however, I didn't mean to say that Europe is clearly going to stop buying from these sources, just that _there are other means_. Too often with the climate crisis, options are there, but the nature of how we humans organized ourselves seem to stand in the way of taking them. Thinking of this as "well there's nothing we can do because it's in Turkmenistan" might sometimes be just a way to clear our conscious while not doing anything.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>and just stop buying That's incredibly naive, if you excuse me saying so. 300 million people depend on Russian gas supplies, yes, most EU countries have emergency supplies for few weeks in case of a major disruption, but those are for emergencies - not for threats of "do X or else".
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      And those reserves (not even for emergencies, just to stabilize supply) have not been replenished since last year's severe winter, causing gas prices to spike in the past few months.
  - thinkcontext 5y ago
    Since Europe is in a gas shortage they aren't going to not buy it. However, they are in talks to impose a carbon border tax on imports. This would make producers that didn't have leaks have a price advantage over those that do.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  > The countries where bursts of methane happened most frequently included the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria. Lauvaux says they found relatively few such releases in some other countries with big gas industries, such as Saudi Arabia. Russia and Turkmenistan might not care, but what about the companies in Algeria and the United States? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - gostsamo 5y ago
    Drop Algeria as well. The only viable place remains the US and the lobby there is such that I'd be buying popcorn to watch how Texas will try to regulate the local industry.
    - rq1 5y ago
      Don't have such prejudices. Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they have quite few incentives to make the right call. Algeria for what I know is corrupt like hell and this undermines everything. Public policies if decided, won't have any impact. In the US the federal gvt can have quite a huge impact if the chambers follow. But you need indeed to convince a lot of people with conflicting interests.
      - yyyk 5y ago
        There are quite a few Russian analysts which believe Russia will gain from climate change (unblocked Northern route, more workable soil, lower heating expenditures). Don't expect any help from Russia on this.
        rq1 5y ago
        No they won’t. The methane contained in their soils will just finish us. As if you were saying that you’d gain Alaska if you get rid of the permafrost. Yeah sure but you’ll lose all the rest. The biggest issue with global warming is that it’s a non linear phenomenon. There’s threshold effects involved followed by exponentially worsening situation until we reach a new equilibrium.
hannob 5y ago
A lot of this is already commercial. Kayrros is e.g. selling services: https://www.kayrros.com/ https://www.kayrros.com/ (though they only use public satellite data, but they have their own algorithms to analyze it) This is an interesting situation. Some companies in the space want to sell serices, with the oil and gas sector being a likely customer (thus huge conflict of interest flag).
- rq1 5y ago
  > "For years, every time we had data [on methane emissions] — we were flying over an area, we were driving around — we always found more emissions than we were supposed to see," he [the LSCE researcher] says. That means that the data used by the company you mentioned will likely underestimate it. So it's not commercially available yet. I don't know if EDF has plans to open or sell their data in the future.
ecdouvhr 5y ago
Yeah, just like how we started boycotting China when we found out about the human rights violations against their own majority population, and outright atrocities against their own people. At worst, these sattellite images will cause an outrage on Twitter until the mob finds something else to be angry about. People are too dependent on their product to do something that would actually hurt these businesses.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap. I am surprised there is so much hub-hub about the UA this time around, happily surprised for sure, but I kind of gave up.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    > Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap. Is this about MH-17 shot down over Ukraine? There's arrest warrants out for the people responsible at the moment; they know what happened and who was responsible.
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      I think that’s the point. It was 2014, a long time ago, and those people are still free. Russia is spoiling for a war in the region and clearly doesn’t care about the part they played.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  This is a pretty low value comment. The fact that we can do something about gas leaks has nothing to do with China. Also: the party owning the pipeline has a pretty strong incentive to stop those leaks, it costs them money.
  - ecdouvhr 5y ago
    China was the most blatant example I could think of, and it's a very current issue considering the ongoing Olympic games and the fact that much of the Western World outsources its production to China. There are plenty of other examples. Most equally valid.
Demiurge 5y ago
Check out www.carbonmapper.org This is already a thing using Airborne data: https://methane.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://methane.jpl.nasa.gov/ And California is already trying to regulate some of the emitters: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/methane/ab1496-research https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/methane/ab1496-rese... CarbonMapper is planning to launch 30 satellites in partnership with JPL and Planet for 30m resolution from space.

gostsamo 5y ago

You read the part of the article where they mentioned Russia and Turkmenistan, right? The executives there won't be impressed by a protest.

yoavm 5y ago
I am assuming some of those companies are selling their gas and oil in Europe? We would need to trace that and just stop buying until they fix it.
- mc32 5y ago
  Stop buying means not turning on the heater in winter… so go back to hearth and fireplace for heat to combat… pollution?
  - henearkr 5y ago
    I know many electric-only houses: you can heat yourself without methane.
    - mc32 5y ago
      That’s fine for a long ye strategy. But asking people who are fitted for gas to go electric? Politicians tend to make delusional promises which can never happen. Something like this is a long term thing it’s not… stop using gas now!
      - henearkr 5y ago
        I think that's the right time to ask people to make the change, on the contrary, as it's the middle of the gas crisis (through geopolitical reasons). Governments are trying hard to artificially keep the prices low, but the reality is that the market really really wants people to give up on fossil fuels.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      The Netherlands wants to push towards electrification - probably to reduce dependency on Russian gas - but the power grid cannot handle it, and it'll take years and billions to increase its capacity. I mean electric boilers, heating panels, ranges and car chargers will easily increase peak loads by 15-25 kilowatts per house, that's 2-4x as much as they currently pull. Do that times hundreds of thousands of houses and you see the issue.
      - henearkr 5y ago
        What you are right about is that both consumer and production endpoints transitions must be synchronized. But they should still happen very fast. The right conclusion is that now they need to buff up the power grid extremely quickly TOO (it needs not take such a long time, some choices like solar or wind are quite quick to install). Both the consumer endpoints and production endpoints have to change, of course. As for the billions required for the transition, since when absolute figures make for good decisions? What is required is a comparison with alternatives. And one sure thing is that the cost of a failed transition, of a climate catastrophe, or indirect consequences like wars, are tremendously more expensive.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Electric is an option, but we've already switched from coal to gas... which is the problem. And nuclear energy, while having no carbon emissions, has the problem that nobody wants it in their backyard. Plus, huge upfront investments and costs.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Actually, I would seriously consider putting a small-scale nuclear reactor in my backyard if it were possible. My neighbours might object, but since you said my backyard: I'm perfectly ok with that.
  - baud147258 5y ago
    Aren't fireplaces much more polluting when compared to burning gas for heating?
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      Plausibly better for the climate (it's not fossil carbon, it's much more recent carbon) but much much much worse for immediate human health, since it spews all sorts of nasty particulates out the chimney and also into the home. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/fireplaces-and-stoves-are-bigger-polluters-than-traffic https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/fireplac...
  - gefhfffh 5y ago
    Buying somewhere else, using alternatives, such as green gas or heat pumps ...and then never go back
    - gambiting 5y ago
      >>Buying somewhere else Where? And how? >>using alternatives, such as green gas You mean synthetic gas? There is absolutely no capacity to produce anywhere near enough to satisfy even a single percent of European needs. >>or heat pumps Heat pumps are not a universal solution, they don't work in all climates, or they require digging trenches or wells to actually be efficient - again, not possible everywhere and for everyone. And even if it was - with what money? Where I'm from in Poland I know lots of people who still heat their houses with coal, purely because gas is too expensive as it is. And you want to switch their source of heat to an even more expensive one? I'm sure they will be super happy to do that, sure.
      - gefhfffh 5y ago
        Pretty sure there exists more than one source of gas. You only need as much gas as is required to fill the gap that alternative gas providers and heat pumps can't provide to compensate the lost gas. Another option is to improve the houses such they leak much less heat. Money allocation could be managed through a variety of ways, such as EU funds
    - dirtyoldmick 5y ago
      Heat pumps suck in really cold climates. I highly recommend a natural gas water heater if you have a gas line. I have never run out of hot water.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - dmm 5y ago
    Calling for individual action is a deliberate strategy to shift responsibility from corporations.
- edf13 5y ago
  We have an energy (mostly gas related) crisis here in Europe. Turning off supplies is not an option
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  The days when Europe was the dominant oil and gas customer are long, long gone.
- belorn 5y ago
  We are currently in a situation where people are discussing if a military invasion is enough of a reason to stop buying gas. Germany in particular does not want to turn off the gas, and has invested a lot of money, infrastructure and political capital in order to use Russian gas in the next few decades.
  - yoavm 5y ago
    Ah cynical German could argue that Russia invading to Ukraine is none of their problems, but emitting methane sure is. To clarify however, I didn't mean to say that Europe is clearly going to stop buying from these sources, just that _there are other means_. Too often with the climate crisis, options are there, but the nature of how we humans organized ourselves seem to stand in the way of taking them. Thinking of this as "well there's nothing we can do because it's in Turkmenistan" might sometimes be just a way to clear our conscious while not doing anything.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>and just stop buying That's incredibly naive, if you excuse me saying so. 300 million people depend on Russian gas supplies, yes, most EU countries have emergency supplies for few weeks in case of a major disruption, but those are for emergencies - not for threats of "do X or else".
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    And those reserves (not even for emergencies, just to stabilize supply) have not been replenished since last year's severe winter, causing gas prices to spike in the past few months.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  Since Europe is in a gas shortage they aren't going to not buy it. However, they are in talks to impose a carbon border tax on imports. This would make producers that didn't have leaks have a price advantage over those that do.
wongarsu 5y ago
> The countries where bursts of methane happened most frequently included the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria. Lauvaux says they found relatively few such releases in some other countries with big gas industries, such as Saudi Arabia. Russia and Turkmenistan might not care, but what about the companies in Algeria and the United States? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  Drop Algeria as well. The only viable place remains the US and the lobby there is such that I'd be buying popcorn to watch how Texas will try to regulate the local industry.
  - rq1 5y ago
    Don't have such prejudices. Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they have quite few incentives to make the right call. Algeria for what I know is corrupt like hell and this undermines everything. Public policies if decided, won't have any impact. In the US the federal gvt can have quite a huge impact if the chambers follow. But you need indeed to convince a lot of people with conflicting interests.
    - yyyk 5y ago
      There are quite a few Russian analysts which believe Russia will gain from climate change (unblocked Northern route, more workable soil, lower heating expenditures). Don't expect any help from Russia on this.
      - rq1 5y ago
        No they won’t. The methane contained in their soils will just finish us. As if you were saying that you’d gain Alaska if you get rid of the permafrost. Yeah sure but you’ll lose all the rest. The biggest issue with global warming is that it’s a non linear phenomenon. There’s threshold effects involved followed by exponentially worsening situation until we reach a new equilibrium.

hannob 5y ago

A lot of this is already commercial. Kayrros is e.g. selling services: https://www.kayrros.com/ https://www.kayrros.com/ (though they only use public satellite data, but they have their own algorithms to analyze it) This is an interesting situation. Some companies in the space want to sell serices, with the oil and gas sector being a likely customer (thus huge conflict of interest flag).

rq1 5y ago
> "For years, every time we had data [on methane emissions] — we were flying over an area, we were driving around — we always found more emissions than we were supposed to see," he [the LSCE researcher] says. That means that the data used by the company you mentioned will likely underestimate it. So it's not commercially available yet. I don't know if EDF has plans to open or sell their data in the future.

ecdouvhr 5y ago

Yeah, just like how we started boycotting China when we found out about the human rights violations against their own majority population, and outright atrocities against their own people. At worst, these sattellite images will cause an outrage on Twitter until the mob finds something else to be angry about. People are too dependent on their product to do something that would actually hurt these businesses.

tluyben2 5y ago
Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap. I am surprised there is so much hub-hub about the UA this time around, happily surprised for sure, but I kind of gave up.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap. Is this about MH-17 shot down over Ukraine? There's arrest warrants out for the people responsible at the moment; they know what happened and who was responsible.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    I think that’s the point. It was 2014, a long time ago, and those people are still free. Russia is spoiling for a war in the region and clearly doesn’t care about the part they played.
jacquesm 5y ago
This is a pretty low value comment. The fact that we can do something about gas leaks has nothing to do with China. Also: the party owning the pipeline has a pretty strong incentive to stop those leaks, it costs them money.
- ecdouvhr 5y ago
  China was the most blatant example I could think of, and it's a very current issue considering the ongoing Olympic games and the fact that much of the Western World outsources its production to China. There are plenty of other examples. Most equally valid.

Demiurge 5y ago

Check out www.carbonmapper.org This is already a thing using Airborne data: https://methane.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://methane.jpl.nasa.gov/ And California is already trying to regulate some of the emitters: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/methane/ab1496-research https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/methane/ab1496-rese... CarbonMapper is planning to launch 30 satellites in partnership with JPL and Planet for 30m resolution from space.