This has been an exciting week for us at Spherical|Analytics. Following our recent launch of the Climate Action Engine with our strategic partners at Rocky Mountain Institute, our own Chris Rezendes was fortunate enough to participate in a NYC Climate Week Webinar entitled, Climate Intelligence for the Oil and Gas Industry.
The webinar, moderated by Deborah Gordon of the Watson Institute at Brown University and hosted by RMI, featured a strong line-up of industry experts:
Chathurika Gamage – Rocky Mountain Institute; Manager, Industry and Heavy Transport
Felicity Underhill – Origin Energy; General Manager for Future Fuels
Tony Cottone – Oxy Low Carbon Ventures; Senior Director for Strategy and Finance
Scobie Mackay – Macquarie; Managing Director for Commodities and Global Markets
Chris Rezendes – Spherical|Analytics; Chief Business Officer
RMI’s Taku Ide, Principal for Industry and Heavy Transport, fielded audience Q&A during the event.
Chris got the conversation started by defining for the audience the concept of Asset Grade Data, how it matters to monitoring methane emissions, and how S|A provides it through the Immutably platform.
“It’s about pedigree. It’s about provenance. It’s about veracity,” Chris described. “The decisions that we need to make today… are critical decisions that have more to do with productivity and profitability and as much to do with climate resilience, community resilience, and some other really important decisions that folks have to make to rebuild systems in more resilient modalities.”
Chris went on to state that AGD enables, “the asset owners and operators to disclose more data with lower risk. It enables their stakeholders and the scientific or regulatory or host or risk and finance communities to have their transparency goals met with less risk. It enables every party to take more responsibility, but not necessarily assume more liability. It’s about a collaborative environment where trust is the currency we enable… We can accelerate and scale these kinds of investment decisions and persist the new kinds of models that the folks at RMI, through the Climate Action Engine, are espousing.”
The panelists navigated through a number of topics to include how operators like Origin Energy and Oxy track and quantify their emissions today, the power of trusted data to driven actionable change, and the value of differentiated commodities like carbon-neutral or -offset oil and gas. Several key insights emerged from the webinar:
All decisions must be made with the 1.5 degree future in mind
Trusted data is the key to enabling stakeholders to make those decisions
Decarbonization opportunities exist in the entire value, not just upstream oil and gas operations
The importance of accurately communicating those findings to regulators and policymakers
The need for a standards-based approach to comprehensive decarbonization, supported by organizations like Rocky Mountain Institute
As new sensing technology becomes available, various new data streams and inputs will further illuminate the ground truth of emissions mitigation. Every year, new methane and greenhouse gas detecting satellites launch into the atmosphere while advanced Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial sensors are deployed into these operating environments. These new data streams will add to the already noisy world of data that exists presently.
The key to unlocking the insights this data affords will be through their synthesis in a platform like the Climate Action Engine. The industry as a whole has a role to play in the efforts towards decarbonization. Operators require trusted data to make operational changes and standards with which to assess their performance. Consumers demand better information about the origin of their product. Regulators need greater transparency to influence good, science-based policy. Financiers must know the data is trusted and, of increasing importance, climate resilience.
Underpinning all of that is the technology to bring it all together into a single common operating picture, enabling all of those outcomes. The Climate Action Engine from S|A and RMI intends to be that platform for global methane emissions.