Quantifying Global Power Plant Carbon Dioxide Emissions With Imaging Spectroscopy

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions dominate uncertainties in the global carbon budget. Reporting programs, such as the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, have latencies of 12-24 months and may not keep pace with rapidly changing infrastructure, particularly in the developing world. Our work reveals that airborne and satellite imaging spectrometers provide 3 – 30 m spatial resolution and accurate quantification of CO2 emissions at the facility scale. Examples from 17 power plants across the United States demonstrate robust correlation and 21% agreement on average between our remotely sensed estimates and simultaneous in situ measured emissions. We highlight four examples in India, Poland, and South Korea, where we quantify significant carbon dioxide emissions from power plants where limited public emissions data exist. Leveraging previous work on methane (CH4) plume detection, we present a strategy to exploit joint CO2 and CH4 plume imaging to quantify carbon emissions across entire supply chains. We show an example of a coal operation, where we attribute 25% of greenhouse gas emissions to coal extraction (CH4) and the remaining 75% to energy generation (CO2). Satellites allow for quantification of emissions from the highest producing global power plants contributing at least 60% of global coal carbon dioxide emissions. Multiple revisits and coordinated targeting of these high emitting facilities by multiple spaceborne instruments will be key to reducing uncertainties in global anthropogenic CO2 emissions and supporting emissions mitigation strategies.