- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has rendered its final warning: The window of opportunity to secure a liveable future for all is rapidly closing,
- The good news? “There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now.”
- That clear path forward boils down to four main objectives, each of which takes a lot of data to achieve. That is exactly the kind of data that Kayrros is already generating.
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Obective #1: Deploy wind and solar power.
Kayrros Solar Monitor and Battery Storage Construction Monitor are
critical to track the deployment of renewable capacity, anticipate
delays and ease clean power integration into the grid.
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Objective #2: Cut methane emissions from
fossil-fuel production and waste. Kayrros Methane Watch is the only
platform today that systematically tracks man-made superemitters – the
low-hanging fruit of climate action. Kayrros is helping the UN
Environment Programme build its Methane Alert and Response System (MARS)
that will launch this year and will go a long way toward speeding up
abatement.
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Objective #3: Protect natural ecosystems that trap carbon.
That’s just what Kayrros Forest Carbon Monitor is made for — a tool
that helps protect forests, dramatically accelerate nature-based
solutions, weed out greenwashing, build trust in carbon offsets and help
developers and forest nations capture their fair share of value.
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Objective #4: Use energy efficiently at home,
in vehicles, and in industry. Here too Kayrros offers critical
technology, not least its Carbon In City that closely tracks our urban
footprints – a first step towards becoming more light-footed.
- What gets measured gets managed. Reaching the IPCC goals requires access to high-quality, independent data. We’re proud to produce such data and supply organisations such as UNEP and the International Energy Agency, and be at the heart of global initiatives like the One Forest Vision. For the first time, geospatial data technology gives mankind the means to bend the emissions curve. The window is closing, but hope is still alive.
Last warning
Figure SPM.7 from IPCC, 2023: Summary for Policymakers.
In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report.
A Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, (in press).
In its latest AR6 Synthesis Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that time is running out to avoid the most catastrophic effect of climate change.
- ‘We are walking when we should be sprinting,’ said its chair, Hoesung Lee. The report warns that only fast, radical, sustained emissions cuts will be acceptable if we’re to meet our climate goals.
- As worrisome as it may be, however, the report is also hopeful, as it outlines a series of concrete steps that it says must all be taken to bend the emissions curve and avoid the worse.
- All these measures, to be effective, require hard, trusted measurements. Exactly what Kayrros has made it its mission to produce.
- The MIT Technology Review boils down the long IPCC to-do list to four main goals. Kayrros is perfectly aligned with all of them.
- ‘We are walking when we should be sprinting,’ said its chair, Hoesung Lee. The report warns that only fast, radical, sustained emissions cuts will be acceptable if we’re to meet our climate goals.
Cut Methane
Figure: Map of methane emissions in 2022
Source: Kayrros Methane Watch, contains modified Copernicus data (2022)
Not surprisingly, one of the most important steps singled out by the IPCC is methane abatement. A no-brainer, given the warming power of methane and its huge contribution to climate change. Yet methane emissions had long escaped detection, making abatement elusive.
- That’s why Kayrros has built Methane Watch, the first global platform to systematically detect and measure methane super-emitters around the globe at high frequency.
- Today the transparency thus provided can help dramatically reduce our climate footprint. We reckon that eliminating just half of these super-emitters would cut GHG emissions by 2 Gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year.
- Kayrros Methane Watch is the only way today to account for the intermittency of super-emitters, the low-hanging fruits of climate action. We are proud to be working with the UN International Methane Emissions Observatory, the International Energy Agency and other private and public-sector partners and clients to make them a thing of the past.
- That’s why Kayrros has built Methane Watch, the first global platform to systematically detect and measure methane super-emitters around the globe at high frequency.
Protect ecosystems
Figure: Risk assessment, live monitoring and damage assessment of a wildfire in California (July 2022)
Source: Kayrros, Kayrros analysis. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2018-2022]; contains modified Copernicus Service information [2015-2019]; OpenStreetMap contributors; PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University, https://prism.oregonstate.edu, data created between 2018-2022, accessed in 2022; National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI); and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Protecting natural ecosystems that trap carbon is another top IPCC priority. Extreme weather events such as wildfires and floods threaten forests and other critical ecosystems with growing frequency. These natural disasters are increasingly violent and unpredictable.
- As conventional models prove powerless to foretell them, these events require new AI-assisted forecasting tools and realtime monitoring. So does our changing exposure to extreme-weather risk.
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Kayrros Wildfire Monitor and Flood Monitor are risk prevention tools that help build climate resilience and adaptation, reduce risk exposure, track extreme weather events in realtime when they do occur and speedily assess damages.
- Major insurance companies and fire departments work with us to deploy these tools at scale and help protect the ecosystems and natural resources that our life on earth depends on.
- As conventional models prove powerless to foretell them, these events require new AI-assisted forecasting tools and realtime monitoring. So does our changing exposure to extreme-weather risk.
Trap carbon
Figure: Example of Kayrros Carbon Stocks Map (10m resolution)
Source: Kayrros Forest Carbon Monitor, Satellite data: Sentinel 1,Sentinel 2, Training dataset: GEDI, Validation data: airborne Lidar, field data, public inventories
The protection of ecosystems is just half the battle. We also need to actively promote afforestation and reforestation, forest restauration and the buildout of natural carbon sinks that can offset carbon emissions.
- Trusted, accurate, timely, cost-efficient data are of the essence to provide transparency on forestry assets, speed up the development of carbon offsets, protect investors against fraudulent projects and greenwashing, help developers and forest nations extract value from their projects and natural endowments, and build the system of financial incentives needed to mobilize natural resources in the race to Net Zero.
- Kayrros state-of-the-art Forest Carbon Monitor achieves all of this. We track forests over time and geographies, measure the height of their canopy, the density of their foliage and the diversity of their species, and the amounts of carbon embedded in them.
- Kayrros reckons its biomass related products can help reduce about 11 Gigatons of CO2e/year.
Harness the sun
Figure: Kayrros forecast of incremental Texas solar power generation capacity vs. Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) projections
Source: Kayrros Solar Monitor
Decarbonizing the economy also means converting the global energy system to clean electricity.
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Data technologies can help in many ways accelerate renewable deployment and integration into the grid.
- Keeping track of the deployment of renewables is of critical importance, given the opacity of many projects.
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Kayrros Solar Monitor and Battery Storage Construction Monitor track the growth of clean power capacity day to day, and in so doing help improve the efficiency of investment in renewable energy.
- The transparency they provide also supports energy security by making it easier to integrate clean electricity into the grid, manage the variability of renewables, minimize supply disruptions and build confidence in the dependability of clean power.
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Data technologies can help in many ways accelerate renewable deployment and integration into the grid.
Be efficient
Figure: Carbon emission impact of a 1.5°C temperature change in public, residential and commercial buildings (ktCO2eq/inhabitants)
Source: CinCity
Using energy efficiently at home, in vehicles, and in industry, the last of the top priorities of the IPCC, is key to reducing energy consumption and associate emissions.
- Here too data technologies are crucial to prioritize climate policy measures, optimize their impact and communicate progress in a trusted way.
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Kayrros Industrial Activity Monitor and Carbon Monitor track activity levels from the most energy-intensive sectors and associated carbon emissions. These data help support growing carbon markets, drive energy efficiency and accelerate abatement.
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Carbon in City (CinCity), a Kayrros product developed in partnership with Nexqt. and La Javaness, tracks urban emissions in realtime and with unprecedented granularity, and evaluates the emission impact of various options. This is a precious tool for city manager and urban planners, builders and consumers, among others.
- Our data help reduce our greenhouse gas footprint: protect people, assets and ecosystems from physical climate risks; and monitor and facilitate the energy transition.
- All in all, we reckon Kayrros renewable and carbon products can help reduce 8 Gigatons of CO2e.
By the numbers
“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all” warns the latest IPCC report. Time is running out, but there is still hope that by using all the levers and resources available to us, we can avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Kayrros provides a good part of the solution in response to the IPCC’s “call for help”.
- Using multiple satellite constellations, other sources of input and AI, we have built a data toolkit that is a powerful enabler and accelerator of all the key life-saving measures outlined by the IPCC report.
- Our capacity to measure and understand our climate footprint is growing leaps and bounds. So is our ability to reduce it.
- At latest count, our data touch 21 Gigatons of CO2e.
And the best is still ahead.
