Girl watercolour. Copyright: Katarzyna Bruniewska-Gierczak / 123RF Stock Photo

Have you ever wondered what the carbon footprint is of the space sector? Or how many tonnes of carbon dioxide are released for every satellite launched? Whilst Earth Observation as an industry stands up and offers solutions to monitoring changes in the climate, it can’t ignore the fact that to do this it has to launch satellites and this is not a carbon neutral activity, let alone all the meetings and conferences that people go to present their research on climate change from the data from these satellites.

To avoid accusations of hypocrisy, the whole industry needs to look to improve its environment contributions, and ESA has set out some targets for Europe as part of its Agenda 2025 program. In particular, ESA set it’s a target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 46% by 2030 compared to its 2019 baseline, and to continue towards contribute to the climate neutrality of Europe by 2030 as per the Paris Agreement objective of keeping temperature increase to within 1.5°C by 2100.

Carbon Footprint of Space Sector

The carbon footprint of the space industry isn’t easy to calculate, although there have been some interesting papers produced recently. Early this year, the paper ‘Ecospheric Life Cycle Impacts of Annual Global Space Activities’ by Wilson and Vasile et al, was published in the Science of Total Environment. It focused on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology using all space missions launched in 2018. The research discovered that in terms of GHG, 84.90% of the total emission in the life cycle impact assessment came from the building of spacecraft and launcher components and propellants, including their management, handling and storage, due primarily to the CO2 released during heat and electricity consumption.

The GHG Protocol developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is the most widely used standard approach for estimating carbon emission. It divides carbon emissions into three categories, known as Scope 1, 2 or 3. Where:

• Scope 1 are emissions directly produced by a company or organisation – This could be emissions from launch fuel, transporting equipment and employees in company vehicles, gas heaters, etc. Of course, it should be noted that some rocket fuels have zero carbon emissions such as liquid hydrogen.
• Scope 2 are emissions directly produced by a company or organisation’s direct energy use. For example, electricity use such as for office lighting, computing power or component manufacture.
• Scope 3 are emissions indirectly caused by a company or organisation’s activity. For example, a computer used by employee would have emissions associated with its manufacture and transportation, cloud computing has manufacture, transportation and running costs, employee commuting, business travel, waste management, use of business and technical services, general goods, etc.

This means that scope 3 is both the largest and most difficult to calculate, and often when companies talk about emissions reduction they focus on the easier aspects of Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Although some companies have gone further, with Microsoft aiming to be carbon neutral on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, and to reduce Scope 3 by half.

ESA Questionnaire

ESA itself discovered this challenge when they started work on their GHG reduction ambitions and found that the largest proportion of their GHG emissions came from its supply chain. To develop their understanding of the European space sectors carbon footprint, ESA has recently launched a questionnaire for all members of its supply chain to complete. They are looking for details on Scope 1 and 2, but only partial information on Scope 3. For downstream organisations like Pixalytics, the Scope 3 area will focus on use and processing of space data.

ESA is hoping all parts of the industry will join and the complete the questionnaire to help them get closer to understanding the carbon footprint of the European space sector, establish common reduction targets and develop a future roadmap for their delivery. Details of the questionnaire can be found here and is open until the end of July for completion. It would be great for all organisations involved in ESA activities to participate in this initiative.

We recognise that Pixalytics is also part of the problem, and whilst we can certainly do more, some of the things we trying to better is we’re reducing commuting by encouraging more hybrid working, encourage staff to attend conferences virtually and where they do have to go in person to use non flying options wherever reasonable. We know that we can do more, and it is something that we are thinking more about when we make decisions and look to the future. A recent example of this was ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Bonn. We ended up flying, but carbon offset, while other attendees went by Eurostar and this is something we’ll be trying to do for future European travel. As part of organising the Symposium, ESA had a strong focus on sustainability with a reduction on paper use as there were no printed proceedings, plantable badge holders, water bottles and refilling points.

As an industry we have to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.