GHG Emissions Monitoring 

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Product Category

• Land use
• Land cover
• Natural Disaster
• Climate Change
• Coast Management 

• Marine
• Earth's Surface Motion

Financial Domains

• Investment management 
• Risk Analysis 
• Insurance management 
• Green finance

User requirements 

UN15: Need to monitor carbon intensity of portfolio assets.

UN26: Need to monitor GHG emissions of projects funded.

Description

Accurate and continuous monitoring of Green House Gases (GHG) such as Co2, No2, and CH4 is crucial for making informed decisions about green finance investments. It enables financial institutions to assess the environmental impact of projects, identify emission reduction opportunities, and prioritize funding for sustainable initiatives. Following the approval of loans and/or investments for projects supporting environmentally friendly activities, it is crucial to monitor these projects to ensure that the funds are effectively utilized to achieve their environmental objectives. EO data offers valuable oversight for specific types of projects. There are several validated and mature EO products (most of them use SWIR and TIR bands) that provide comprehensive monitoring of GHG emissions with global coverage and appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions. In this document, we will focus on products used to monitor three important GHGs which are Co2, No2, and CH4.

Spatial Coverage Target

Asset and Project level

Data Throughput

Rapid tasking 

Data availability

• High
• High

• Low
• Low

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Main processing steps

Data for GHG emissions can be easily accessed through many satellite-based products. These data can be used directly or with simple preprocessing.

Input data sources

Satellite-based products (Optical): GHG.

Sentinel-5P (TROPOMI):  Co2, No2, and CH4

Metop-A/B/C (IASI): Co2, No2, and CH4

GEOSAT-2: Co2 and CH4

OCO-2: Co2

OCO-3: Co2

Accessibility

Sentinel-5P (TROPOMI):  freely and publicly available from European Commission, ESA, Netherlands Space Office (NSO).

Metop-A/B/C (IASI):  freely and publicly available from EUMETSAT

GEOSAT-2:  freely and publicly available from JAXA, MOE Japan, National Institute for Environmental Studies of Japan (NIES).

OCO-2:  freely and publicly available from NASA.

OCO-3:  freely and publicly available from NASA.

Spatial resolution

Sentinel-5P (TROPOMI):  7 km x 3.5 km

Metop-A/B/C (IASI): 100 km

GEOSAT-2: 460 m

OCO-2: 2.25 km x 1.29 km

OCO-3: 2.25 km x 0.7 km

Frequency (Temporal resolution)

Sentinel-5P (TROPOMI):  Daily

Metop-A/B/C (IASI): Daily

GEOSAT-2: 2 days

OCO-2: 16 days

OCO-3: 1-3 days

Latency

N.A

Geographical scale coverage

Globally

Delivery/ output format

Data type: Raster

File format: GeoTIFF, NetCDF, HDF

Accuracies

Thematic accuracy: 80-90%

Spatial accuracy: 1.5-2 pixels of input data

Constraints and limitations

• Satellite sensors may have limitations in spatial resolution, making it challenging to capture emissions from small sources or accurately distinguish between localized emissions and background levels.
• Cloud presence
• Vertical sensitivity as satellite measurements generally provides information on total column concentrations of GHGs. While this is useful for many applications, it may not provide a complete understanding of vertical distributions, which are essential for certain scientific studies and policy decisions.
• Distinguishing between anthropogenic (human caused) GHG emissions and natural sources (e.g., wetlands, volcanic activity) can be complex.
• Low spatial resolution

User's level of knowledge and skills to extract information and perform further analysis on the EO products.

Skills: Essential

Knowledge: Essential