Two years of satellite-based carbon dioxide emission quantification at the world's largest coal-fired power plants

Cusworth, Daniel H.; Thorpe, Andrew K.; Miller, Charles E.; Ayasse, Alana K.; Jiorle, Ralph; Duren, Riley M.; Nassar, Ray; Mastrogiacomo, Jon-Paul; Nelson, Robert R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14577-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14577-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14577-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

Research article

|

24 Nov 2023

Research article |

| 24 Nov 2023

Two years of satellite-based carbon dioxide emission quantification at the world's largest coal-fired power plants

Daniel H. Cusworth, Andrew K. Thorpe, Charles E. Miller, Alana K. Ayasse, Ralph Jiorle, Riley M. Duren, Ray Nassar, Jon-Paul Mastrogiacomo, and Robert R. Nelson

Data sets

CO2 retrievals at global power plants using PRISMA satellite data Daniel Cusworth https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8083596

OCO-3 Level 2 geolocated XCO2 retrievals results, physical model, Retrospective Processing V10r, Greenbelt, MD, USA OCO Science Team https://doi.org/10.5067/D9S8ZOCHCADE

OCO-3 Level 2 bias-corrected XCO2 and other select fields from the full-physics retrieval aggregated as daily files, Retrospective processing v10.4r, Greenbelt, MD, USA OCO-2/OCO-3 Science Team https://doi.org/10.5067/970BCC4DHH24

Short summary

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from combustion sources are uncertain in many places across the globe. Satellites have the ability to detect and quantify emissions from large CO₂ point sources, including coal-fired power plants. In this study, we tasked two satellites to routinely observe CO₂ emissions at 30 coal-fired power plants between 2021 and 2022. These results present the largest dataset of space-based CO₂ emission estimates to date.