Scouting Maine’s top greenhouse gas emitters by satellite

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New information from the nonprofit Local weather TRACE is shedding new mild on Maine and the world’s largest, and hardest to quantify, sources of planet-warming greenhouse gasoline emissions. At present we’re having a look at these numbers to get a way of how Maine’s greatest emitters stack up within the international context.

The New York Occasions describes Local weather TRACE as a “coalition of environmental teams, expertise corporations and tutorial scientists,” with funding sources together with Al Gore and Google. “Local weather TRACE says it may possibly produce emissions estimates which can be extra up-to-date than present ones, and that rely much less on data reported by governments about their very own nations’ emissions,” the NYT wrote. “It does this largely by mining satellite tv for pc imagery and different information to get a extra exact measure of particular person amenities’ manufacturing exercise, then estimating their emissions.”

The info, which consultants emphasize shouldn’t be but peer-reviewed, was lately up to date to cowl 2021. It now spans almost 80,000 direct and oblique emissions sources — not simply energy crops and drilling websites, however factories, landfills, farmland and extra.

The caveat, earlier than we discover the highest emissions sources listed for Maine, is that this information shouldn’t be but complete. For instance, Local weather TRACE’s map doesn’t present any of Maine’s fossil fuel-burning energy crops, which we all know from federal information are main sources of emissions. In keeping with the group’s methodology recordsdata, their information remains to be a patchwork — it might solely checklist the highest 500 emitters for some sectors, or solely amenities with sure varieties of obtainable information. I pulled federal information on Maine energy crops for comparability functions, and threw it along with Local weather TRACE in a spreadsheet you may discover.

Now, the worldwide context: Local weather TRACE exhibits the highest supply of emissions on the earth because the Permian Basin in Texas, dwelling to hundreds of oil and gasoline drilling operations which can be seeing file productiveness this yr. Different oil and gasoline fields in Russia, Iran, the U.S. and China cowl the highest 14 emitters within the 2021 information. Subsequent on the checklist, at fifteenth on the earth, is a metal plant in China.

Zooming in, we see the largest emissions supply in New England — which doesn’t produce its personal fossil fuels, however depends closely on importing them for heating, transportation and electrical energy — is Boston Logan Worldwide Airport, which triggered almost 830,000 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions in 2021. (CO2e, because it’s identified, is a method of normalizing and including up the warming results of various greenhouse gases.) Logan ranks 3,752th out of the world’s emissions sources — between a crop-growing space in China, and a refinery in Belarus.

Town of Boston itself doesn’t crack the highest 1,000. The info exhibits Boston’s 2021 emissions had been corresponding to these of Dallas-Fort Price Worldwide Airport (reportedly the second-busiest on the earth as of 2021), or Exxon’s Beaumont petrochemical refinery in Texas.

With that in thoughts, let’s go method down the checklist to the emissions sources for Maine. The most important emitter listed is Casella’s Pinetree Landfill in Hampden, ranked 7,510th globally, between the Adelaide, Australia airport and a copper mine in Peru. Local weather TRACE says Pinetree emitted greater than 260,000 tons of greenhouse gases in 2021. Landfills put out carbon and methane because the trash inside them — a lot of it plastic, which is manufactured from fossil fuels — decomposes.

The state’s many different, smaller landfills spherical out the checklist. For instance, Waste Administration’s Crossroads Landfill in Norridgewock is 4th amongst emitters listed in Maine and 10,670th globally, akin in its emissions to a big cargo or cruise ship. Local weather TRACE says Casella’s Juniper Ridge Landfill in Alton (the 15,568th-largest emitter listed globally) emits rather less than a coal mine in Indonesia.

The second-biggest emitter listed for Maine is Dragon Merchandise’ cement plant in Thomaston. The power required to make cement makes the business one of many largest polluters globally — if it was a rustic, it could be the third-biggest emitter on the earth, in response to Carbon Transient. The Thomaston plant ranks 8,798th on the earth total for its emissions, placing out greater than 152,000 tons of CO2e in 2021.

The opposite large function of the checklist is Maine’s airports, the place carbon-dense jet gas and gasoline or diesel for floor transportation are main emissions sources. The Portland Worldwide Jetport is listed third for Maine and 9,333rd on the earth, akin to a landfill in Malaysia or a coal mine in South Africa. The Bangor airport (the 11,936th-largest emitter on the earth, in response to Local weather TRACE) emits slightly greater than a selected dairy cattle feedlot in California.

I famous earlier that Local weather TRACE doesn’t checklist emissions for energy crops in Maine, so I went digging within the Power Info Administration‘s information mines for one thing to check. The EIA lists carbon emissions (not CO2e) for particular person electrical energy technology amenities by means of 2020, together with ones that feed the regional energy grid and that solely energy particular industrial amenities.

There are three of those energy crops in Maine that, in 2020, emitted extra carbon than the quantity of greenhouse gases Local weather TRACE says got here from Pinetree Landfill or the Dragon cement plant in 2021: the gas-fired Westbrook Power Heart, a grid-facing energy plant owned by Calpine; the Androscoggin Power Heart, which makes use of gasoline to energy the Pixelle paper mill in Jay that’s slated to shut subsequent yr; and the strong waste-burning Rumford Cogeneration Plant that powers the big ND Paper mill.

Two extra amenities rank above the Portland Jetport: ND Paper in Rumford once more, with the coal it burns when it doesn’t have sufficient trash to fulfill its power wants (many objects in EIA’s information are particular person burners or generators on the similar facility, and ND Paper seems but once more in a while the checklist with emissions from gasoline); and the gas-fired turbine that powers the Woodland Pulp paper mill in Baileyville.

Taken collectively, these datasets paint an image of large-scale Maine emissions that come primarily from landfilling, air journey and the paper and cement industries. And there may be one different lacking piece to think about, which even an modern evaluation like Local weather TRACE’s would wrestle to pin down: the various particular person gas-powered automobiles and vans, and residential oil, propane and wooden burners, that maintain Mainers heat and on the transfer. Transportation and heating oil are the main priorities within the state’s local weather plan. Because the world will get higher at analyzing its emissions sources, these coverage options could evolve and develop too.

To learn the complete version of this text, see Local weather Monitor: Scouting Maine’s high emitters by satellite tv for pc.

Annie Ropeik has been given the keys to the Local weather Monitor publication whereas its common creator, the Monitor’s environmental reporter Kate Cough, is on depart. Attain Annie with story concepts at: aropeik@gmail.com.