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Juliana Kim November 14, 2022
A new website backed by Al Gore tracks big polluters by name
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore
is a founding member of the nonprofit that made a tool to track big
polluters. Maansi
Srivastava/NPR
In the fight to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, one of the longstanding challenges has
been figuring out who is exactly producing them and how much.
Now, a new global tracker is helping to
make clear exactly where major greenhouse gas emissions are
originating. Created by the nonprofit Climate Trace,
the interactive map uses a
combination of satellites, sensors and machine learning to measure the
top polluters worldwide.
It observes how much greenhouse gases —
carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — are being emitted at
specific locations, such as power plants and oil refineries. Former
Vice President Al Gore, who is a founding member of the initiative,
said it is meant to serve as a more reliable and accurate alternative
to companies self-reporting their emissions estimates.
"Cheating is impossible with this
artificial intelligence method, because they would have to somehow
falsify multiple sets of data," he told NPR's Michel Martin on All
Things Considered.
Gore recently returned from Egypt where
world leaders have been convening to discuss the climate crisis at the
annual U.N. climate conference, also known as COP27.
He believes the tracker will help
countries stick to their pledges to reach net-zero greenhouse
emissions by 2050.
Climate Trace
wants to track nearly every big source of greenhouse emissions
The emissions tool employs over 300
satellites; sensors on land, planes and ships; as well as artificial
intelligence to build models of emission estimates.
Right now, it tracks about 72,000 of the
highest emitting greenhouse gas sources. That includes every power
plant, large ship and large plane in the entire world, Gore said.
And that's just the beginning. By next
year, Gore hopes to be tracking millions of major emitting sites.
"We will have essentially all of them,"
he said.
Gore said 75% of the world's greenhouse
emissions come from countries that have made pledges to become
carbon-neutral by 2050. "Now that they know exactly where it's coming
from, they have tools that will enable them to reduce their
emissions," he told NPR.
He added that the database, which is free
and accessible online, can help inform countries about how much
pollution is being emitted by the companies they are working with or
considering working with.
It is not enough for companies to
self-report, he said. For instance, Climate Trace found that the oil
and gas industry has been significantly underreporting its emissions.
"We found their emissions are three times
higher than they have been telling the United Nations," Gore said.
In the U.S. specifically, oil and gas
producers have underreported how much methane they've been releasing,
recent research suggests.
That doesn't mean companies were
intentionally cheating, Gore added. However, he said underreporting
prevents governments and the public from staying on track with their
net-zero pledge.
Six regional governments in Mexico,
Europe and Africa have already entered into working agreements for
using the tool, Gore said.
Gore remains
optimistic about the climate future
The world is generally off track from its
goal of cutting emissions that drive climate change, but Gore said
he's been impressed by recent efforts around the globe to address the
issue.
In the U.S., Gore pointed to the
Inflation Reduction Act, which includes over $360 billion to
tackle climate change and incentivizes consumers to make greener
choices. Gore described the law as "the biggest climate legislation in
the history of the world."
He also praised Australia for voting in a
new government that
pledged to shift away from coal and Brazil for
electing a new president who vowed to stop destroying the Amazon.
"So there's great danger, but there is
hope," Gore said. "If we can summon the will to act."
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