October 25, 2021 Blog by Rob Nicely

The Climate TRACE Coalition

One organization—The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)—is championing the move away from carbon-rich fossil fuels by focusing on the myriad organizations and industries that have the power to influence a systemic shift. In this series, we’ll highlight some of the ways RMI is making significant inroads in transforming our current practices into those that will achieve dramatic and lasting reductions in carbon emissions that lead to climate change. The second in our blog series focuses on the Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions) Coalition.

Launched in July 2020, Climate TRACE is a coalition created to make meaningful climate action faster and easier by mobilizing the global tech community to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with unprecedented detail and speed. Founding organizations include nonprofits CarbonPlan, Carbon Tracker, Earthrise Alliance, Hudson Carbon, OceanMind, Rocky Mountain Institute and WattTime; tech companies Blue Sky Analytics and Hypervine; as well as climate leader and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Climate TRACE is working to build a cohesive, technical solution to make humanity’s GHG emissions transparent, accessible and actionable for all. This cutting-edge initiative will use artificial intelligence (AI), satellite image processing, machine learning and other remote sensing technologies to monitor worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. The collaboration aims to track human-caused emissions to specific sources in real time—independently and publicly.

While climate scientists today have a detailed understanding of the total GHGs in the atmosphere, efforts to trace where those emissions come from have lagged far behind. Tracking GHG emissions from nearly every major human-emitting activity worldwide—such as power plants, factories, large ships and more—is an enormous and difficult undertaking, but advanced AI and machine learning will now make it possible for the first time.

In many countries and sectors the standard is that emitters self-report their own emissions, then manually compile the results. Consequently, many governments, companies and scientists must rely on data that can be years out of date and sometimes subject to deliberate under-reporting. The resulting data often provides only incomplete, high-level summary information at best.

“We cannot solve the climate crisis without trusted data that can inform global action,” said Ned Harvey, Managing Director, Rocky Mountain Institute. “This coalition is a critical step toward helping us see—and act on—the true picture of global GHG emissions. We are excited to integrate publicly available satellite data and present it in a way that makes swift action toward emissions reductions from the oil and gas sector possible.”

“The world has reached a tipping point on the climate crisis,” said former Vice President Al Gore. “In order to achieve a zero-carbon future, we need a comprehensive accounting of where pollution is coming from. We are excited that Climate TRACE holds the promise to revolutionize global efforts to measure and reduce emissions across every sector of society, creating a new era of unprecedented transparency and accountability. Our vision is to equip business, policy and citizen leaders with an essential tool to fully realize the economic and job-creation opportunities of the Sustainability Revolution.”

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.

“We as a society have an excellent, objective way of measuring the total emissions in the atmosphere, called the Keeling Curve, but we haven’t yet figured out any similar way of objectively tracking, in essentially real time, where those emissions are coming from,” explained Gavin McCormick, executive director of coalition member WattTime. “The Earth is like a medical patient suffering from a condition called climate change. Trying to fix it with only years-late, self-reported emissions data is like asking a doctor to fix a serious disease with no more information than a list of symptoms the patient had years ago. They’ll do their best. But there’s a reason that hospitals use blood pressure monitors, stethoscopes—maybe an X-ray or MRI—to check what’s wrong with you right now. If we’re serious about stopping climate change, it’s time we gave climate ‘doctors’ the same kind of tools.”

Climate TRACE has swiftly 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.

*NOTE: While we have included edits and some words of our own, much of this verbiage is repeated from a July 15, 2020 news release posted on RMI.org.

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