Montréal-based global emissions monitoring company GHGSat has received a $20 million CAD investment from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), making it the third time the government has committed capital to the company.
The announcement follows a federal government partnership with GHGSat, announced at the COP26 climate summit, where the entities pledged to contribute the first high-resolution dataset to the International Methane Emissions Observatory, a global independent hub for collecting and verifying methane emissions data.
GHGSat said that it will share its archive as well as provide new information collected by its satellites to the hub. IMEO will integrate the data with satellite emissions datasets to develop products for legislators and climate scientists to support their work in achieving emissions targets according to the Paris Agreement.
Launched in 2011 by Stephane Germain, GHGSat has the mission to become the “global reference” for remote sensing of greenhouse gas and air quality gas emissions from industrial sites using satellite technology. The satellites use spectrometer imaging to obtain high-resolution images of methane emissions.
By June 2016, the company revealed what it called the world’s first satellite capable of measuring greenhouse gas emissions from any industrial facility.
Since then, GHGSat has launched two satellites currently orbiting the planet 500 kilometres up in space. It plans to have 10 commercial satellites by the end of 2023.
According to GHGSat, it plans to use its new capital from SDTC to scale its fleet of satellites, with intentions to establish secure infrastructure to manage its growing number of satellites, and “transform its data into high-value information products and analytics.”
In September 2020, GHGSat raised $39.5 million CAD in what the startup called the first tranche of its Series B financing. The startup also received $3.3 million from SDTC in August 2019, when GHGSat said the funding was allocated towards a project that measures emissions of oil and gas facilities in British Columbia’s Montney region.
