I was reading an article this week that highlighted research done to study the effect the 2019-2020 Australian wildfires had on the world’s environment. The focus of the research was to study how ash particles fertilized phytoplankton feeding algal blooms thousands of miles downwind in the Southern Ocean.

That is an interesting topic, but what struck me was a comment made by one of the researchers: “The algal blooms triggered by Australian wildfires were so intense and extensive that the subsequent increase in photosynthesis may have temporarily offset a substantial fraction of the fires’ CO₂ emissions.” Though much study remains, it simplifies down to a mass balance problem — an engineer’s dream! Fire releases carbon during combustion, and iron in the ash fertilizes phytoplankton, causing exponential growth. This is photosynthesis and carbon uptake in a tidy little circle.

As industries commit to ever-greater environmental stewardship, reduced emissions, and even net-zero operations, this mass balance problem becomes increasingly important. Whether it’s a water company, a utility, an agricultural operation, the petroleum industry, the aviation sector, and even the government, there are two sides to the energy coin. On one side is the carbon addition to the atmosphere through consumption of energy and production of goods and services. To offset those emissions there needs to be carbon uptake of some kind.

Satelytics offers measurements to understand the mass balance and drive your ESG program.

• Satelytics’ detects and quantifies methane emissions. One of my utility sector accounts is excited about getting a system-wide leak volume measurement that could be used for reporting to their regulator. End-users within this company’s operations group use the same results to address leaks and prioritize their fieldwork. It doesn’t have to be just methane. There are opportunities to reduce emissions through minimizing liquids spills and loss of product, better land and vegetation management, and reduced consumption for routine activities by utilizing Satelytics’ methane measurements.

• Satelytics can also play an important role in the carbon uptake side of the ESG equation. Our suite of vegetation algorithms includes speciation, tree height, health, and density. These outputs are being used by our customers to calculate the CO₂ uptake of their vegetated land areas — the natural carbon cycle at work! Satelytics alerts on infrastructure threats include severity indices and lat/long coordinates that can optimize your team’s response and can even automate the initiation of work orders. This drives efficiency, minimizing carbon footprint. There is also risk reduction achieved by sending precious personnel only to situations requiring their expert attention, rather than sending them to look blindly for problems.

One set of data, multiple solutions, addressing both sides of the ESG equation — with Satelytics. Talk about tidy little circles!