The Climate TRACE coalition is made up of nonprofits CarbonPlan, Earthrise Alliance, Energy and Clean Air Analytics (ECAA), Hudson Carbon, OceanMind, Rocky Mountain Institute, and WattTime; tech companies Blue Sky Analytics and Hypervine; as well as climate leader and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Climate TRACE grew out of a collection of smaller global emissions monitoring projects by individual organizations.

In 2019, a group of nonprofits including US-based WattTime and UK-based Carbon Tracker teamed up to apply for Google.org’s AI Impact Challenge with a proposal to monitor all global power plant emissions from space. Google.org not only selected the project for a $1.7 million grant, but also sent a group of seven skilled data engineering and machine learning Fellows to work alongside WattTime and Carbon Tracker for six months to help bring the initiative to fruition.

After the announcement of the Google.org grant, the teams were surprised to immediately hear from over 50 other organizations and scientists around the world offering to help. So they began systematically investigating: Could mixing and matching innovations from various groups improve global emissions monitoring even further? Among the new collaborators was Vice President Gore, who had long envisioned the possibility to improve global emissions monitoring through the deployment of satellites and other new technologies. Generation Investment Management LLP, of which Vice President Gore is Chairman and co-founder, provided a $3 million grant to help launch Climate TRACE.

An exact date has not been set, but the team hopes to release the first version of the tool in summer 2021.

No! Our work is only possible because of the progress that’s already been made in this space. We have no desire to reinvent the wheel or to supplant techniques that are already working well—only to build upon them.

The Climate TRACE coalition welcomes collaboration from any organization interested in helping to develop or use a shared global emissions monitoring tool. For organizations and experts with related resources, specifically in the form of remote sensing, computer vision, data engineering, ground truth emissions data, platforms that could use better emissions data to drive impact, and funding, please contact us and read more about our work.

The exact frequency and granularity of this tool is currently under consideration in order to ensure the tool is actionable for users of the data and to respect privacy and security concerns.

More specifically, for ground truth data providers, the level of disclosure is flexible. For those who do not want their data provided to the general public, the project team has the option to sign non-disclosure agreements and use strict data security controls to ensure that under no circumstances are those data ever released without the provider’s explicit consent. It is also possible to release data with restrictions. For example, it would be possible to release data to the public after one year, or in aggregated form.

You can read our full privacy policy here.

No. Climate TRACE will rely on data and images from satellites already in orbit. We will also use other remote sensing capabilities that are not in space, such as mobility data, drones, and land- and sea-based sensors. In almost all cases, we will use existing sensors.