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Roads to Reservoirs: Expanding the Scope of Global Emissions Tracking

Key Takeaways
  • Road Transportation: APL has been leading efforts to monitor road transportation emissions for the last four years. This year, the Lab expanded efforts to also monitor non-greenhouse-gas pollutants that stem from brake wear, tire wear and exhaust.
  • Wastewater Treatment Plants: APL analyzed emissions from wastewater treatment plants around the world, and determined that investment in improving more rudimentary systems such as latrines and untreated wastewater could reduce annual methane emissions by nearly 30 tons per 10,000 people. This would equal the same annual methane emission reduction gained by taking 123 million cars off the road globally.
  • Anthropogenic Reservoirs and Lakes: Aquatic ecosystems, such as lakes and reservoirs, emit carbon dioxide and methane through the natural decomposition of organic matter. APL has begun using remote sensing data and data science to estimate emissions from 418 naturally regulated lakes and 6,766 artificial reservoirs.

In continued collaboration as a member of the coalition, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, has expanded its efforts to use artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to track emission sources around the world.

For the last four years, APL has led efforts to monitor road transportation emissions specifically, and has more recently increased efforts to monitor emissions from wastewater treatment plants and anthropogenic aquatic ecosystems such as lakes and reservoirs that have been built or altered by humans. The Laboratory is also producing much of Climate TRACE’s first asset-level, non-greenhouse-gas inventory.

“Our team is thrilled to be driving substantial improvements in the coalition’s data this year,” said Elizabeth Reilly, supervisor of APL’s Complex Systems Group and Climate TRACE project manager. “In addition to enhancing our models, we are significantly expanding asset coverage and launching our first monthly emissions estimates. This gets us closer to identifying where the greatest impact can be made toward emissions reduction and environmental sustainability.”