Harnessing Digitization to Reduce Emissions

This PTAC-hosted panel at COP29 featured Marc Godin of PTAC, Bryan Helfenbaum, Vice President of Clean Energy at Alberta Innovates, Scott Volk, Director of Emissions & Innovation at Tourmaline Oil Corp., Canada’s largest natural gas producer, Stéphane Germain, founder of GHGSat, and CRIN Director of Operations Glen McCrimmon.

The discussion focused on the question: How do we reduce emissions through tools such as software and artificial intelligence?

Some of the digitization and data examples for emissions detection cited by Tourmaline include the Emissions Testing Centre and an array of tech that Tourmaline deploys to measure emissions, including GHGSat, aircraft detection, and engineering calculations.

Helfenbaum said Alberta Innovates launched a program called DICE, Digital Innovation in Clean Energy, with its first projects announced in 2020. After two other iterations of the DICE program, 43 projects have been funded with only $9 million and another $27 million from partners and industry.

"It's pretty low capital intensity for a lot of these opportunities," he said. "You can go from TRL 3 to TRL 9 really, really rapidly with not a lot of money."

Germain explained that GHGSat has a fleet of its own satellites; there are 12 in orbit now that monitor greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities around the world.

The satellites are all about the data, but what really matters is what the data means, Germain said. The company works with its customers to decipher the data and translate it into emission rates, geolocated sources, attribution, etc, which allows them to alert the operators directly and work with them.

McCrimmon noted CRIN has funded, through the Strategic Innovation Fund, 67 projects across seven technical themes, including digital oil and gas.

"Digital sort of underpins all the rest of them," he said.