Our gas emissions measured from space

Our gas emissions measured from space

Our gas emissions measured from space

Stéphane Germain, founder of GHGSat (Photo: with kind permission)

SCIENCE, RESEARCH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Stéphane Germain has been on the TIME100 climate list for several months, recognizing the 100 most influential leaders committed to climate change. GHGSat, the 120-employee company he founded and leads, operates the only commercial satellite constellation that monitors greenhouse gas emissions.

Of the twelve satellites currently in orbit, 11 measure methane emissions from more than 500,000 industrial sites around the world. The company, which has invested more than $50 million in research and development since its founding in 2011, launched a new satellite last year that also measures carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

“My engineering training allowed me to understand how to implement technologies developed by scientists to precisely measure methane emissions from industrial sites, but I had to work with them,” says Stéphane Germain, who initially spent two years validating your idea with potential customers. “When I found my first customers, Hydro-Québec and Suncor Energy, I managed to get financing and the story was over! » says the man who then teamed up with the universities of Waterloo and Toronto to develop his innovative technology and launch it into orbit via satellite.

An ultra-precise sensor

GHGSat's patented sensor is a spectrometer that precisely measures the intensity of light at frequencies corresponding to the presence of methane or CO2. “This allows us to detect and locate a leak or source with an accuracy of up to 25 meters, but also quantify the extent of the emissions. “We have a kind of photo covering an area of ​​about 12 km by 12 km, in which a million pixels each show us a gas concentration,” explains Stéphane Germain.

The company initially looked at methane because “its short-term impact is almost as large as CO2 and there was a clear commercial market for its emissions data, with those for CO2 being better known,” explains the company's CEO or the company tripled its sales every year. Its customers include large oil and gas companies such as Chevron, Shell and Exxon, but also mining companies, landfills, governments and organizations such as NASA and the European Space Agency.

An accelerating collaboration with universities

GHGSat has worked with American universities such as Harvard since its early years. “They are very strong in atmospheric science. We then increased scientific and research collaborations with universities,” explains Stéphane Germain.

Additionally, in December 2023, the company announced new projects with the Global Methane Hub and the Netherlands Space Research Institute (SRON) to reduce methane emissions from landfills. “We had already worked with SRON to leverage the capabilities of our two complementary satellites as part of a project that allowed us to validate our technologies and detect a leak in Central Asia.” We encouraged the site operator to do so repair, which meant a very significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” explains Stéphane Germain.

His company also works with L'École Polytechnique and the National Optical Institute in Quebec. The aim of this collaboration is to use artificial intelligence to accelerate the processing of the growing amounts of data from its satellites while keeping costs under control.

In the entrepreneur's environment: A new generation of sensors is intended to reduce their detection threshold by around five times. “We are in the process of evolving it to stay at the cutting edge of technology and continue to offer our customers the best commercial offering in the world,” says the man for whom corporate research must remain grounded. “Our challenge should always be to find a solution that meets our customers’ needs, not to achieve perfection.”