PASADENA, Calif. — In order to reduce methane emissions, you first have to find them.

It’s a challenge that has led to widespread underreported methane emissions and one the nonprofit CarbonMapper is taking on. 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said Riley Duren, CEO of CarbonMapper. “And that’s definitely true with methane emissions, because methane is odorless, it’s colorless, it’s tasteless.”

Not only is methane invisible, but the technology used to monitor it is also outdated, time-consuming and not as accurate as it could be. 

“Traditionally, with oil and gas, the technology that was used was an infrared camera that a person walks around the facility with,” Duren said. 

The situation is bleak for landfills where the problems are usually underground or where people simply cannot walk through the facility. 

The issue inspired the nonprofit CarbonMapper, where Duren uses his background in space exploration from working at NASA to take measuring methane to new heights. 

Equipping airplanes with remote sensing technology that uses infrared imaging to identify methane leaks across the country. They fly above oil and gas fields, landfills and other common places for methane emissions. Once identified, the race to reduce this greenhouse gas starts.

They take that data to the operator of the facility and show them the exact location causing the emission. For the most part, the operator has been able to stop the leak and prevent more methane from seeping out. It’s been done all across California and even in other countries. 

“In the case out of Sunshine Canyon, they identified areas where they need to improve the surface cover. And so, over a period of about 18 months, they were able to go in and completely redesign the surface cover. And when they did that, you could see the emissions come down dramatically,” Duren said.

Last November they launched a website where the information they have been collecting is now compiled into an interactive map that shows the location of the leaks they have found. It is now helping operators seal the leaks they may not have found for months before. 

This past December at the climate summit, COP28 in Dubai, the EPA passed stricter regulations around methane emissions coming from oil and gas facilities, which is where the EPA identified the main source of methane pollution. 

Still, groups advocating for reducing greenhouse gases, such as Industrious labs, are also hoping for stricter and uniform policies to mitigate methane emissions from landfills. 

In 2023, CarbonMapper found 124 plumes of methane gas leaking from California landfills within and near cities such as San Bernardino, Irvine, Brea, Corona and Simi Valley.

“California is the second-highest in the nation in methane emissions coming from landfills,” said Katherine Blauvelt, director of circular economy at Industrious labs. “So California is really well positioned to do a better job capturing those methane leaks and keeping the methane in the ground.”

Although the state has some of the strongest regulations, Blauvelt added that there needs to be a uniform effort across the country. 

“We really need the United States, the EPA, that holds the pen on regulations for all U.S. landfills to bring to the table solutions that will really bring down the unchecked methane emissions we’re seeing from landfills in California and across the country,” she said.

The technology, being developed by the Carbon Mapper Coalition which includes Carbon Mapper, NASA JPL, and Planet Labs, PBC, is also looking to level up, with plans to send two satellites into space with the remote sensing technology to track globally. The plan is to eventually have a whole system of satellites to monitor daily, and make unreported methane emissions a thing of the past. 

“What we’ve been demonstrating and others in this field have been demonstrating over the last several years is it’s no longer a technological challenge. The technology exists to do robust monitoring,” Duren said. 

Duren said he hopes that with the accurate information publicly available, people will make the changes needed to create an impact on greenhouse emissions.