When it comes to greenhouse gases, people tend to zero in on CO2, which is responsible for the majority of global warming. But there is methane, which has driven about 30% of climate change, according to the IEA. It’s a big enough threat that the US government is going to fine polluters $900 for every metric ton they release this year. By 2026, it will be $1,500 per metric ton.
Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, is a powerful greenhouse gas that causes 83 times more warming than a molecule of carbon dioxide. Leaks are one of the main sources, both from aging natural gas infrastructure and from oil and gas fields.
But detecting leaks of the odorless, colorless gas has been a challenge. The journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 words over-emissions, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Only the US has more than 4 million active and inactive oil and gas wells, any number of which may be leaking as you read this.
“The main issue why there are so many emissions is because there is no real world-scale measurement technology out there that can really work at the scale of the oil and gas industry,” Robert Huppertz, co-founder and CEO of Orbio Earthhe told TechCrunch.
And with the EPA’s new methane rule, there’s finally an economic incentive to develop one.
The company was able to observe a significant portion of estimated U.S. oil and gas methane emissions, the IEA said in a report released Wednesday. Orbio estimates that about 10 million metric tons of methane were released from onshore oil and gas exploration and production in 2023. If that rate continues this year, oil and gas companies are likely to be fined several billion dollars. In 2026, it could be much higher.
Orbio’s goal is that it will be cheaper to pay the startup to find these leaks so the oil companies can plug them. It is a business model that has also attracted the attention of investors. Orbio has raised a $4 million round from the European Space Agency, Initialized Capital and Y Combinator. The startup was part of the accelerator’s spring 2023 cohort.
There are two basic approaches to measuring methane emissions: bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up approach would likely require installing sensors at key points in the oil and gas infrastructure. would provide fairly accurate data, but would likely be very expensive to install. The top-down approach would use one or a few sensors that can survey large areas of the planet. the results would be less accurate, but the cost would be significantly lower.
Orbio Earth is an entrant into the emerging methane monitoring market and is taking the latter approach. Huppertz and co-founder Jack Angela have developed a suite of algorithms to detect methane emissions using freely available satellite data.
Although the satellite using Orbio, Sentinel-2, was not designed to detect the gas, the results are impressive: Researchers test different methane reporting techniques, both commercial and academic, found that the Orbio caught every leak they threw at it except one that was below 1 metric ton per hour.
Until last week’s successful launch of MethaneSAT, no satellite specialized in detecting methane. In fact, until just a few years ago, experts believed that more general-purpose remote sensing satellites like Sentinel-2 wouldn’t be able to pick enough signal from the noise to find methane leaks. This is because methane and water, including cloud cover, are difficult to distinguish.
To make the distinction, Orbio tracks the entire Earth’s surface, looking for anomalies over time. When one appears, determine if the anomaly is likely a methane release and if it is, if the source is an oil and gas facility. Orbio provides emissions data to end users within 48 hours, often less, Huppertz said. The startup processes 10 to 20 terabytes of data daily.
Orbio’s customers subscribe to its data product and analysis for a variety of reasons. Oil and gas companies may want to track their assets, while investors may want to assess the performance of their portfolios or benchmark their competitors. Thanks to the satellite data it uses, Orbio’s data spans back to 2016.
The startup is working to apply its algorithms to other satellite data and begin evaluating other greenhouse gases. “Natural gas is going to be very essential to the energy transition,” Huppertz said. “And so making sure that methane and natural gas stays inside the infrastructure and doesn’t leak into the atmosphere will always be a critical point until every last drop of natural gas is used.”
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect facility-based exemptions for methane fines.
