Annual carbon monoxide emissions measured from Europe’s 21 largest steel plants

The Dutch TROPOMI space instrument creates daily global maps of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere. Researchers from SRON and TNO have now measured CO emissions over a full year from the 21 largest European steel plants, including Tata Steel.

Three examples of CO plumes from steel plants, measured by the Dutch TROPOMI space instrument. The researchers have monitored the CO emissions from these and eighteen other steel plants over a full year.

Satellites are uniquely suited to measure emission sources around the world, consistently with the same instrument and in a transparent manner. This creates a level playing field for companies that have to comply with emission regulations. For example, future European space missions such as CO2M and TANGO will measure the most important greenhouse gas—CO₂—to verify compliance with the Paris climate agreement.

The Dutch TROPOMI instrument on ESA’s Sentinel-5p satellite measures emissions of the pollutant gas CO with daily global coverage. Companies in the EU with high CO emissions need to report those on an annual basis. Steel plants—the largest industrial CO emitters—are a good example. But companies use different methods for this, which are not always based on direct measurements.

A Dutch research team, including first author Gijs Leguijt (SRON/TNO), has now demonstrated that they can use satellites to consistently determine CO emissions from factories. They have used TROPOMI to map the CO emissions over all of 2019 from the twenty-one largest European steel plants. Together these are responsible for 77% of European and 7% of worldwide steel production. The satellite measurements confirm the reported values for the majority of the monitored plants.

‘Governments have been depending on companies reporting their own emissions,’ says Leguijt. ‘Measurements from space provide governments with new tools to estimate emissions from individual plants.’

Publication

Gijs Leguijt, Joannes D. Maasakkers, Hugo A. C. Denier van der Gon, Arjo J. Segers, Tobias Borsdorff, Ivar R. van der Velde, and Ilse Aben, ‘Comparing space-based to reported carbon monoxide emission estimates for Europe’s iron and steel plants’, Atmospheric chemistry and physics