Stephane Germain

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

No Better Time for Earth Observation than Now

BY STEPHANE GERMAIN

CEO, GHGSat

Earth Observation (EO) had a bit of a coming of age in the last two years. All of a sudden, everyone could see with their own eyes the stark impact of the drop in human activity during lockdowns around the world, such as the reductions in greenhouse gases and pollutants like NO2 around cities or the sharp drop in maritime traffic. On our part, GHGSat, global leader in high-resolution remote-sensing of greenhouse gas from Space, observed changing patterns in CH4 emissions due to different operational patterns and supply chain issues to support repairs in the oil and gas industry.

The pandemic has undoubtedly affected our operations; like most companies, we had to learn to all work and collaborate remotely for extended periods of time. However, we managed to pull the necessary resources together and follow through with our plans. We launched two satellites during this period, and doubled the number of employees around the world.

Democratization of AI and ML There has never been a better time for EO than now. For example, several companies have cracked the code and managed to package powerful synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads, once the specialty of governments and Space agencies, into small packages. Innovative sensors to look at radio frequency (RF) signals on Earth are providing invaluable insights into human activity patterns.

However, the advent of analytics and the democratization of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are supercharging the EO datasets and extracting incredible insights. GHGSat had already recognized the power of analytics years ago and started combining our unique data with other streams of information to offer actionable insights to our customers.

Cooperation has always been a central pillar for success in the Space industry. This will continue, except now we also see an increase in mutually beneficial commercial collaborations between New Space companies. More and more countries are now realizing the important role they can play in the success of early entrants by providing anchor tenancies, that can be transformational as EO companies strive to grow.

Collaboration between New Space spacecraft and large agency satellites like those of the Copernicus EO Programme will be crucial going forward as the systems have complementary capabilities to maximize impact. The European Space Agency’s Third Party Mission Program is a great example of such a collaboration ecosystem.

EO to tackle climate change GHGSat was founded on the belief that small satellites could complement the regional and global scale greenhouse gas monitoring of large EO satellites with measurements of emissions directly from industrial sites.

Since GHGSat pioneered the capability in 2016, there have been multiple announcements of other systems promising some level of capability to look at GHG emissions.GHGSat’s technology is now available not only for private companies or regulators, but also for the international community to understand what emissions are on a global scale; the information will allow international collaborators and those developing international policies in setting new goals, to have the data they need to truly understand where we are starting from, and the goal we want to achieve together, in reducing methane globally.

The advent of analytics and the democratization of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms are supercharging the Earth Observation datasets and extracting incredible insights.