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Supporting Carbon Markets

To address climate change it is increasingly important to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses (in particular methane and carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere. Countries have made binding commitments through the UNFCCC which are translated into national policies. Within Europe, policies such as the LULUCF Regulation and the Carbon Removals Certification Framework aim to ensure a net removal of carbon from the atmosphere. However, measuring carbon removal is still very challenging for the entities in charge of such tasks.

Earth Observation (EO) data have a key role to play here. By providing continuous monitoring over wide areas at different scales, EO can support the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of carbon removals. This is increasingly important in the frame of carbon markets such as the EU ETS.

However, there is still much debate about how EO data and services can best be integrated into this process. The capabilities of EO are not always clear to policymakers, inventory compilers, certification bodies, and other stakeholders in the carbon markets value chain, and adapting long-standing methodologies to integrate EO is difficult. On the other hand, the EO industry does not always take note of the latest policy-driven requirements or understand what is needed from other stakeholders in the domain. Efforts are ongoing to build connections across the domain, and the SEF team is contributing to these.

Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry

The EU LULUCF regulation seeks to ensure that land use practices contribute effectively to Europe’s climate goals. The use of EO within LULUCF is well recognised, and EO derived products (such as those from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service) are available. 

ESA has also supported development of other tools that can support LULUCF, including global land cover mapping, estimating the carbon content of soil, and monitoring of carbon stocks in critical habitats such as wetlands, peatlands and forests.

Figure: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 25 July 2023, the image shows tropical forest which has been cleared for logging in the state of Pará in Brazil. Credit ESA

Atmospheric Monitoring

As well as looking at carbon offsets, it is important to reduce the overall emissions into the atmosphere, and here too satellites such as Sentinel-5P play an important role. ESA’s World Emission project looks at how EO data can develop top-down estimates of emissions at a national or regional level, which can be compared to traditional bottom-up emissions inventories. Other ESA projects look at emissions from particular sectors, such as agriculture, or particular regions, such as Africa, or from point sources.

Figure: Nitrogen dioxide emissions over the Mediterranean. Source: here.

Blue Carbon

Although carbon storage in land biomass is well known there has been less attention paid to the equivalent in marine or coastal ecosystems, for example in seagrass, mangroves or salt marshes. ESA is currently sponsoring a project on Coastal Blue Carbon to develop new tools and methods for monitoring the carbon storage in coastal ecosystems, supporting key policies in this field.

Figure: Water and sediment from the Ebro River flowing into the ocean in Spain. Credit: Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission.

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