Chinese Scientists Develop Breakthrough Satellite-Based Method to Accurately Monitor Carbon Emissions from Coal-Fired Power Plants

The Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made a significant breakthrough in satellite-based monitoring of carbon emissions from large coal-fired power plants.

Source: China News Service

The Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made a significant breakthrough in satellite-based monitoring of carbon emissions from large coal-fired power plants. According to a recent announcement, the research team led by Shi Yusheng at the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science and Digital Earth has developed an innovative remote sensing approach that enables, for the first time globally, high-precision, dynamic quantification and mapping of carbon dioxide emissions from these major industrial sources. The findings have been published in the international journal Journal of Cleaner Production.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest point source of carbon emissions worldwide, accounting for approximately 50% of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Accurate measurement of their emissions is essential for global carbon accounting and emissions inventories in the power sector. While satellite remote sensing has proven valuable for monitoring large emission sources, it still faces technical challenges—including background noise and errors caused by atmospheric instability—which can lead to emission estimation inaccuracies of up to 50%. These limitations have long been considered a critical gap in global carbon monitoring via satellite.

To address these challenges, the Chinese research team developed a series of algorithmic enhancements. They significantly improved the efficiency of background value identification and introduced a dynamic wind-direction correction algorithm to more accurately track emission plume trajectories. Additionally, they built a plume rise model based on a graded atmospheric stability response mechanism, allowing for more precise modeling of plume dynamics. This marks the first successful implementation of high-resolution, time-sensitive carbon dioxide mapping for large coal-fired power plants using satellite data.

The study demonstrates that the improved Gaussian plume model accurately quantified daily carbon dioxide emissions from 14 major coal-fired power plants around the world, ranging from 21,540 to 82,300 metric tons. The new method significantly improves inversion accuracy, representing a major step forward in the field of satellite-based carbon emission monitoring.

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