Climate Innovation Partnership Introduced in the UK
A new climate innovation partnership has been announced between the Satellite Applications Catapult and GHGSat to provide satellite data on domestic and international methane emissions for R&D in the UK. The company will also be opening an international analytics center co-located in London and Edinburgh.
"This new partnership will build on the UK’s strengths in Earth observation expertise and data analytics, catalyze additional investment into our growing space sector, and ultimately help protect our planet.”
Dr. Paul Bate, UK Space Agency
The climate innovation partnership will provide UK organizations with access to high-resolution methane emissions satellite data. GHGSat is also providing observation data directly to the UK Space Agency, Ordnance Survey and other government departments as part of the initial £5.5 million (≈$7 million) deal, funded by the UK Space Agency and delivered by the Satellite Applications Catapult.
GHGSat pioneered the monitoring of greenhouse gases from space at a resolution sufficient to attribute emissions directly to individual facilities. Users from academia, industry and the public sector will be able to access the new resource through the Satellite Applications Catapult. The emissions dataset will allow UK researchers and companies to unlock new applications for climate impact.
Climate Innovation Partnership will make New Data Available
"Satellites are getting smaller and more powerful, giving us an ideal vantage point from which to monitor global greenhouse gas emissions and inform decision-making on the path to Net Zero," said UK Space Agency’s CEO, Dr. Paul Bate. "GHGSat is an innovative company which has demonstrated the value of the data collected by its eight existing satellites. This new partnership will build on the UK’s strengths in Earth observation expertise and data analytics, catalyze additional investment into our growing space sector, and ultimately help protect our planet.”
Catapult CEO, Stuart Martin said, “This is innovation at its best — an innovative program that will itself stimulate innovation across the public and private sector. It is through such initiatives that we will solve the challenges of our time,” said Stuart Martin, Catapult CEO.
GHGSat’s new UK analytics center, announced in concert with the climate innovation partnership, will develop industrial greenhouse intelligence using data from the company’s current and future satellites. It will focus on developing products integrating emissions and climate finance information to improve the ‘e’ in ESG (Environment, Social and Governance).
(Source: GHGSat news release. Images provided courtesy IKSA and from file)