Oakland, California: Nine organizations from around the world, along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, announced what they’re calling an unprecedented collaboration that will use artificial intelligence (AI), satellite image processing, machine learning, and other remote sensing technologies to monitor worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in unprecedented detail. The aim is to track human-caused emissions to specific sources in real time, independently and publicly. The combined project will be known as Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions). The first version of the service may be available as summer of 2021.
The group explains that, while climate scientists today have a detailed understanding of the total GHGs in the atmosphere, efforts to trace where those emissions come from have lagged far behind. Tracking GHG emissions from nearly every major human-emitting activity worldwide — such as power plants, factories, large ships, and more — is an enormously difficult undertaking, but the group believes that advanced AI and machine learning will now make it possible for the first time.
In many countries and sectors the standard is that emitters self-report their own emissions, then manually compile the results. Consequently, many governments, companies, and scientists must rely on data that can be years out of date and sometimes subject to deliberate under-reporting. The resulting data often provides only incomplete, high-level summary information at best.
The Keeling curve tracks the world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at a station atop Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The location is chosen to minimize the effect of local emissions, and is far enough away from the major sources to allow complete atmospheric mixing from the world’s sources so as to produce a representative sample of the Earth’s entire atmosphere. The jagged line is the product of annual variation between the northern and southern hemispheres.
“We as a society have an excellent, objective way of measuring the total emissions in the atmosphere, called the Keeling Curve (see graph). But we haven’t yet figured out any similar way of objectively tracking, in essentially real time, where those emissions are coming from,” explained Gavin McCormick, executive director of coalition member WattTime. “The Earth is like a medical patient suffering from a condition called climate change. Trying to fix it with only years-late, self-reported emissions data is like asking a doctor to fix a serious disease with no more information than a list of symptoms the patient had years ago. They’ll do their best. But there’s a reason hospitals use blood pressure monitors, stethoscopes — maybe an X-ray or MRI — to check what’s wrong with you right now. If we’re serious about stopping climate change, it’s time we gave climate ‘doctors’ the same kind of tools.”
The Climate TRACE coalition — which so far includes members from across three continents — offers to help. Together with climate leader and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the coalition currently includes nonprofits CarbonPlan, Carbon Tracker, Earthrise Alliance, Hudson Carbon, OceanMind, Rocky Mountain Institute, and WattTime; as well as tech companies Blue Sky Analytics and Hypervine. Each founding member offers particular technical capabilities in AI- or satellite-based monitoring in a specific industry, ranging from the power sector, to oil & gas, to agriculture and shipping. By sharing these techniques, the group has concluded it is likely possible to greatly augment existing processes and begin directly measuring nearly all GHG emissions data sources globally in great detail and real time.
“The world has reached a tipping point on the climate crisis. In order to achieve a zero-carbon future, we need a comprehensive accounting of where pollution is coming from,” said Vice President Al Gore. “We are excited that Climate TRACE holds the promise to revolutionize global efforts to measure and reduce emissions across every sector of society, creating a new era of unprecedented transparency and accountability. Our vision is to equip business, policy, and citizen leaders with an essential tool to fully realize the economic and job-creation opportunities of the Sustainability Revolution.”
The potential applications for such a system are numerous, for example:
● For scientists and technologists building emerging emissions-reducing technologies: the tool will accelerate private-sector innovation in advanced carbon optimization techniques in forestry, renewable energy, and power grid management.
● For sustainability teams at private-sector companies, investors, and entire industries: the tool will offer crucial visibility to more-easily and accurately meet emissions-reduction goals, direct sustainable investments (and divestments), and assess risk.
● For countries measuring emissions-reduction progress for the Paris Agreement commitments: the tool may be useful in independently verifying measurements, or supporting emissions monitoring by countries without the resources to produce such detailed, up-to-date inventories.
● For any organizations polluting illegally who might seek to keep their emissions hidden from public view: the tool will provide pioneering transparency and validation to make it easier for governments that have enacted environmental laws to immediately identify any activities that violate those laws.
The Climate TRACE coalition grew out of a collection of smaller global emissions-monitoring projects by individual organizations. In 2019, a group of nonprofits including US-based WattTime and UK-based Carbon Tracker teamed up to apply for Google.org’s AI Impact Challenge with a proposal to monitor all global power plant emissions from space. Google.org not only selected the project for a $1.7 million grant, but also sent a group of seven skilled data engineering and machine learning Fellows to work alongside WattTime and Carbon Tracker for six months to help bring the initiative to fruition.
After the announcement of the Google.org grant, the teams were surprised to immediately hear from more than 50 other organizations and scientists around the world offering to help. They began systematically investigating whether mixing and matching innovations from various groups could improve global emissions monitoring even further. Around the same time, Vice President Gore had been investigating ideas for a more-robust and reliable accounting of global emissions as countries strive to meet Paris Agreement targets and increase ambition to put the world on a sustainable pathway.
The teams learned that over the past few years many companies have achieved dramatic progress in individual advanced technologies that could help with emissions monitoring, such as improved AI algorithms and lower-cost satellites. But many of those breakthroughs have so far been sitting siloed in different organizations, the group says.
“Climate TRACE is an attempt to snap together various components many of our organizations have been building individually — algorithms, data sets, and analytical approaches — as if they were Lego bricks,” said McCormick. “Consider coalition member OceanMind. It had built amazing technology to monitor global shipping, but was applying it to other topics such as detecting illegal fishing. By taking the part of their software code that monitors ships, and mixing in others’ know-how about GHG emissions monitoring, it was surprisingly straightforward to extend their technology to also monitor emissions from global shipping. What’s been so inspiring about this initiative is that it’s such a collective effort. Everyone is laser-focused on how much environmental impact this joint tool could have, rather than who gets recognition for which individual building blocks.”
Climate TRACE has swiftly developed a very basic working prototype and is now focusing on iterating and improving the tool. Like many AI projects, the tool will continuously improve as the team adds more data and works out more sophisticated algorithms. The group is cautiously optimistic that it will release the first version in the summer of 2021.
The Climate TRACE coalition welcomes offers of collaboration from any organization interested in helping to develop or use a shared global emissions monitoring tool. For organizations and experts with related resources, specifically in the form of remote sensing, computer vision, data engineering, ground truth emissions data, platforms that could use better emissions data to drive impact, and funding, please visit www.climatetrace.org.