Leading automobile and aerospace companies like Tesla, General Motors and Boeing are increasingly incorporating Climate TRACE systems that use satellites, machine learning and other observatory paradigms to decarbonise their international supply chain.
This new initiative called Climate TRACE, co-founded by former US Vice President Al Gore has developed a comprehensive database that tracks global greenhouse gas emissions down to individual polluters. This granular data is expected to help some of the world's largest companies to decarbonise their supply chains.
Climate TRACE uses advanced technologies such as machine learning and satellites to detect and monitor greenhouse gas emissions from over 350 million sources, including power plants, steel mills, and mining operations. By providing such detailed information, companies can now take proactive measures to build a low-emissions supply chain rather than relying on suppliers' self-reported emissions data. This is a significant step towards achieving a sustainable future and mitigating the impact of climate change.
Gore is sure of this sustainable discourse if the world wishes to move faster toward the Net Zero emission goal laid out by the Paris Agreement. He amplified: "We are here at this COP in particular because this is the year of the Global Stocktake. Climate TRACE is really the only independent, comprehensive source of accurate data on which a stocktake can be made."
Several prominent companies, including Tesla, Boeing, and General Motors, have recently partnered with Climate TRACE to gain access to data on steel and aluminium supplier emissions. According to Climate TRACE's co-founder, some companies have already reported finding cleaner manufacturing facilities that offer prices similar to those of their current suppliers and have the capacity to handle new customers.
While the coalition's initial focus is on steel and aluminium suppliers, they plan to expand their partnerships next year to include exploring emissions reduction potential within lumber, rice, cement, and beef suppliers. Climate TRACE also intends to catalogue air pollution in its inventory and publish inventories at a monthly or even weekly pace.
Although the group does not aim to be "the climate police," they are open to working with governments interested in levying tariffs on goods from polluting facilities. However, it is important to note that machine learning models can sometimes miss extreme sources of emissions or "infrequent but very consequential events," as pointed out by Mallory Barnes, an assistant professor at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs and a member of NASA's Carbon Monitoring System.
Climate TRACE has released its third inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, which reveals that the United Arab Emirates may have underestimated its own emissions by over 100 million tonnes. The coalition puts the country's emissions today at close to 400 million tonnes.
Climate TRACE provides confidence and uncertainty estimates for every asset in its database, and sectors in which infrequent events are a large percentage of their emissions receive high uncertainty and low confidence ratings. The inventory also reveals more considerable country-level insights.
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