Nine organizations from around the world and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore announced a new initiative that will use artificial intelligence (AI), satellite image processing, machine learning, and other remote sensing technologies to monitor worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
This collaboration aims 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).
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 is a mission-driven organization with advanced 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 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 data engineering and machine learning Fellows to work alongside WattTime and Carbon Tracker for six months to help bring the initiative to fruition.
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
explained Gavin McCormick, executive director of coalition member WattTime.
Climate TRACE has 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.