Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced a $25 million commitment in support of efforts to deploy remote-sensing technologies to detect and measure methane emissions.

Building on a partnership between Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carbon Mapper, Planet, the State of California, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, High Tide Foundation, and RMI, the Carbon Mapper Accelerator program will advance the deployment of technologies needed to effectively pinpoint, quantify, and diagnose sources of high-emission methane and carbon dioxide. To that end, the program will expand airborne mapping of methane super-emitters across the Americas, Europe, and Africa — providing timely open-source data to inform climate policy and action in advance of the 2023 deployment of a constellation of satellites. The funding also will enable Carbon Mapper to offer policy makers, agencies, businesses, and civil society early access to its data portal this fall and expand capabilities for the full satellite data portal by 2023. In addition, the partners will develop and test new technologies including advanced land and ocean data products that can support climate adaptation and conservation efforts as well as satellite data fusion with coordinated high-resolution imaging.

The initiative will provide support to the more than thirty national governments that have signed on to the Global Methane Pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Bloomberg Philanthropies was among the twenty funders that pledged $233 million this week in support of efforts to reduce global methane emissions, the single most effective way to slow global temperature rise.

"Methane is a major contributor to climate change, and if we can't measure it, we can't manage it," said Bloomberg Philanthropies founder Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN secretary-general's special envoy for climate ambition and solutions. "Accurate, localized data on the sources of methane emissions will allow us to make critical progress toward the goals of the Global Methane Pledge — and our latest announcement aims to help do just that. The accelerator program will give public and private sector leaders the information they need to take action and reduce methane pollution, starting right away."

(Photo credit: New York Public Library via Unsplash)