Climate Trace (climatetrace.org)

Climate Trace harnesses satellites and other remote sensing technologies, together with contributions from the global tech community, to detect and map greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions tied to specific human economic activities. The initiative provides these independently generated emissions data publicly and at high temporal and spatial resolution, enabling faster identification of major emitters and emission patterns than traditional self-reported inventories allow. The States and Regions Remote Sensing Project (STARRS) showcases how cross-sector collaboration can scale and validate this approach, producing independent datasets for subnational actors. For the AI/ML community, Climate Trace is significant because it turns heterogeneous remote-sensing inputs into actionable, transparent emissions intelligence — a classic applied ML and data-fusion problem with direct policy and market implications. Technical impacts include improved measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) capabilities, richer labeled datasets for model training, and opportunities to refine source attribution, anomaly detection, and downscaling methods. Public access to high-detail emissions maps accelerates research, enables third-party audits, supports targeted mitigation strategies, and reshapes how regulators, researchers, and carbon markets hold emitters accountable.