Quantifying Asian Power Plant CO2 Emissions from Space

New and complementary methods for monitoring CO₂ emissions at all spatial scales can assist in climate change mitigation and the development of such capacity aligns with the objectives of the transparency framework of the Paris Agreement. In our earlier work, we presented the first estimates of CO₂ emissions from individual fossil fuel burning power plants from space, using Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) XCO₂ data. With OCO-2’s limited imaging capability, we fit observations to a vertically-integrated Gaussian plume model to derive emission and uncertainty estimates. The method was first demonstrated on US coal power plants, which have detailed emission data available from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), then it was applied to power plants in India and South Africa where CO₂ emissions have larger uncertainties. Here we extend our earlier work to present new estimates of Asian power plant CO₂ emissions. We also discuss limitations, lessons learned and studies with simulated data that are relevant to the design of a future constellation for anthropogenic CO₂ emission monitoring with implications for Asia.