MONTREAL — The CEO of a Montreal-based firm that makes use of satellites to watch methane emissions says curiosity in his expertise continues to achieve new heights, whilst governments seem to waver on their local weather commitments.
Since 2016, Stéphane Germain’s GHGSat has launched 14 satellites that scan the skies to detect emissions from oil and gasoline services, coal mines, landfills and agricultural meals plots. Methane is chargeable for a couple of third of worldwide warming, in response to scientists.
GHGSat final month introduced a cope with ExxonMobil Corp. to watch emissions on the oil large’s services in Canada, america and Asia, and which has raised $47 million in fairness and debt financing to assist speed up its international growth.
Germain says the corporate has managed to proceed its progress regardless of the US withdrawal from greenhouse gasoline monitoring and a political class that seems to have cooled on local weather commitments. Amongst different actions, the Trump administration is taking steps to finish two NASA missions that monitor carbon dioxide and plant well being.
President Donald Trump’s price range request for fiscal 12 months 2026 doesn’t embody cash for Orbital Carbon Observatories, which might present exactly the place carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed and the way far crops are rising.
Regardless of the US authorities’s obvious decline in curiosity in local weather change, Germain says his purchasers, typically, are “enjoying the lengthy sport.”
“They perceive that within the medium to long run, their finish prospects actually care about local weather change and that they must be each the bottom price producer of oil or gasoline with the bottom carbon footprint as a way to win in the long run,” he stated in a current interview.
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He notes that corporations plan their capital expenditures over a few years, going “past any administration” and making an attempt to anticipate what rules will seem like sooner or later.
Whereas North American corporations stay necessary prospects, he stated they’re additionally not the one ones, including that Europe, Asia and Australia are “full steam forward” in relation to local weather.
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Germain says that every gasoline within the environment absorbs mild at particular wavelengths, “like a spectral fingerprint.” And by measuring this absorption, satellites can establish how a lot gasoline is within the air above a given industrial facility. GHGSat prospects embody governments, industrial issuers and different events akin to insurance coverage corporations.
He says the info can be utilized to mitigate safety dangers akin to leaks and monitor corporations’ carbon footprints. He stated GHGSat was additionally requested to assist seek for gasoline leaks following final 12 months’s lethal fires in California.
GHGSat stated this summer season it labored on quantifying methane emissions from decaying matter in palm oil lagoons in 12 nations.
Dave Danger, a methane measurement scientist and professor at St. Francis Xavier College in Nova Scotia, stated satellites are rising in reputation as a software for measuring methane emissions.
“There is a massive international patrol occurring proper now the place all of the satellites are mainly working collectively,” he stated. They’re particularly helpful in nations which can be starting their emissions monitoring journey, he stated, as a result of they usually have massive uncontrolled emissions.
Nevertheless, he notes that they do not work in all places. In nations like Canada, which already does a comparatively good job of limiting methane, emissions from the oil and gasoline trade are too low to be detected by satellites a whole bunch of kilometers away.
In the meantime, some nations with the best methane emissions are much less prone to need to pay for monitoring. There’s additionally much less adoption within the agricultural trade, he stated, which is a big emitter by cows, manure administration and rice cultivation.
Danger sees additional progress potential in satellite tv for pc monitoring within the waste sector, the place landfills ship methane into the environment by decomposing materials. Canada has launched a sequence of draft rules that will require landfills to regulate methane emissions and make sure that landfill gasoline restoration programs seize as a lot of the gasoline as attainable.
Each Danger and Germain word that lowering methane emissions from landfills tends to be low cost and even worthwhile. Methane is pure gasoline that may be captured and used as biofuel. “Increasingly more (municipalities) are realizing they’ll reap the benefits of this as a result of it’s another income for them,” Germain stated. “So it is very, very attention-grabbing. It is a enterprise and it is nice for the surroundings.”
Canada has additionally set a aim of lowering methane emissions from oil and gasoline by at the least 75% from 2012 ranges by 2030, outlined in its 2022 methane technique.
Whereas Germain says Canada has demonstrated a robust dedication to lowering methane, he acknowledges that polls present local weather has moved down the record of Canadians’ priorities.
Germain stated it is regular for worries to ebb and movement as folks fear about fast issues like wars, meals safety and looming recessions. However he’s optimistic concerning the future.
He imagines a time when each industrial facility on the earth might be monitored for carbon and methane nearly each day, and when meals packaging consists of not solely dietary data but additionally a measure of the carbon footprint that can inform client selections.
“There’s all the time this underlying concern about local weather change that we will have to regulate, and we will not simply preserve kicking the can down the highway sooner or later,” he stated.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Oct. 18, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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