Orbio Earth (YC S23)

Its a wrap Houston! Wrapping up a packed week at Methane Mitigation Summit Series America. We held our first workshop on methane & satellites took away some exciting learnings: 1) Trump might be able to weaken some of the methane regs in the US 🇺🇸, but the pressure on oil & gas to reduce emissions will continue through banks, news, public scrutiny and international markets (EU 🇪🇺). A lot of operators are aware that this is the right thing to do, and are committed to stay active 👏 2) There is amazing new data available to measure methane. The new Tanager satellite from Planet/Carbon Mapper is about to turn the entire industry upside down. 3) On a personal note, staying humble and focussing on building a really good product remains the only way to build lasting solutions that help people solve big problems. Lots of work to do for us here at Orbio Earth (YC S23). Thanks for the good chats, joining our workshop, coming by our booth Josh Ennis, PE Teresa Buckingham, CSP, SMS and many many more

In the build-up to 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁, we wanted to share a workshop spotlight 🔦 from this year's agenda: 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀: • Josh Ennis, PE, Director of Environmental and Energy Transition Policy at National Fuel Gas Company • Jack Angela, Co-Founder of Event Sponsor Orbio Earth (YC S23) As the EPA’s Super Emitter Program nears implementation, operators must adapt to evolving regulatory demands using cutting-edge technology. This session will introduce how the latest developments in satellite technology can support operators on regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency. For more information about the event and to view the full schedule, check out the online agenda here: https://lnkd.in/eY4DgED3 #MethaneMitigationSummit

What emission events are in-scope for the EPA super-emitter programme? Have been asked this a couple times over the past few weeks The aim of the rule is to prevent unplanned emission events If there is an event the EPA want to encourage a rapid response Normal operations aren't penalised Therefore it's key for operators to keep up to date operational information As emissions from planned activities will be picked up in the programme and require a response ✅ Super-Emitters that are exempt: Events that are temporary and controlled, therefore not needing a rapid response These are typically emissions from planned operations e.g. scheduled maintenance like blowdowns, well completions etc ❌ Super-Emitters that are not exempt: These events are abnormal or unintentional releases that require a rapid response The policy wonks may cringe at this but these emission events sit roughly in two categories Equipment malfunctions - operational failure of equipment or things like flares failing to combust (dropped in an image of an event we recently captured below, this is a big one) Fugitives - essentially unintentional releases of gas during normal operations (could relate to leaks from connectors or flanges) -- -> Would be good to hear what the main super-emitter types people are seeing

+++ Hiring a Founders Associate +++ Orbio Earth (YC S23)'s AI algorithms are helping the largest energy companies in the world to monitor and reduce methane emissions. I am beyond excited to be opening our first non-technical position for a Founders Associate to help scale our Sales and Marketing efforts. Hungry to dig deep and change the world? Come join us. https://lnkd.in/ee9Xpv5w

CH4 Connections is always a good way to top up on all the tech & regulatory updates in the sector (I think we can call it that now) The main takeaway for me was around how to create alignment on satellite data standards. There has been a huge amount of progress in the sector in recent years. So I now often get these questions: 'What are the detection limits of public satellites', 'why do model providers show different detections with the same dataset' etc Satellites have a huge amount of promise. But it is unclear whether they can match some of the technical claims being made. This highlighted the need for two things: -> How can we align on data standards for satellite data (K. Dana Chadwick did a great talk on this regarding the work at NIST). -> How can we scale up single blind testing of model providers, so we can verify some of the claims being made. This is important right now as the space is in a bit of a greyzone. One of the reasons satellite data is being bought is due to fears of the Waste Emission Charge/Super-emitter programme/Subpart W Combination. Yet many of the claims being made about the technology have not been tested robustly. Things operators can try to do for validation: -> Ask for proof of claims e.g. paper validating methods or an emission distribution curve highlighting detection sensitivity. -> Test the data, try and correlate it with airplanes or ground sensors (not ideal due to temporal mismatches but better than nothing). Aside from this it was also v cool to see the first images from MethaneSAT (congrats on the team for this milestone!).

Big News: Carbon Mapper's & Planet's Tanager-1 satellite detected its first methane emission event from space today, marking a major step-up of satellite's capabilities to see methane emissions from space. The Tanager constellation will be yet another powerful add to the existing range of satellites in Orbit that can monitor methane emissions, specifically due to its increased sensitivity and lower detection thresholds. Congratulations for years of hard work for the team around Riley Duren, Daniel Cusworth and many others 👏

Got another healthy dose of imposter syndrome this weekend. Always amazed by the brilliant people you meet at Y Combinator. Really is a gift that keeps on giving. (even if it makes you feel like a slight imposter sometimes 😂 ) Some highlights: 🥹 Focus on Vulnerability I've found the bravado in some startup circles pretty difficult to deal with in the past. The weekend was a reminder of the emphasis many (not all 😂) YC founders place on being vulnerable about issues they are facing. Startup life is a tough ride and we should be open about this. -- 🤓 Stay in the Details There was a great talk by the Scale ai founder Alexandr, demystifying founder mode. This varies for different companies at different stages. Common phrases coming up here were 'Stay in the Details', 'Do Too Much', 'Reduce Layers'. Others were referring to it as micromanagement but I think that phrase is too loaded. -- 👬 Value of Community Orbio are a fully remote team which has its benefits. But one of the major drawbacks I have found is the lack of network & community. It was great to see a bunch of old faces and hear about their wins & losses over the past year. (you know who you are Elyos Energy, Docsum, Trayd: Construction Payroll, Healthtech 1 😀) -- 🍔 Free Food I mean not really free but you catch my drift...

Some of you have been on the end of a Linkedin adding spree from me recently so I thought I would do an Orbio reintroduction post 🙂 Dropping in a snap from a trip to Houston with my co-founder Rob recently (both badly needing a haircut). We were in town meeting some of our existing and prospective clients and want to start sharing learnings that we snap up in the market. Change is happening quickly in the methane space and operators are witnessing 3 key aspects here: 1. New regulation coming in thick & fast (e.g. EPA Super Emitter Program, Waste Emission Charge) 2. Significantly improving methane monitoring technology, especially in the satellite space (New Sensors, but also better Models) 3. A remaining uncertainty around the details and implications of those regulations when combined with those new technologies (e.g. what does the world look like in 2025?) We have been at the methane thing for 3 years now. Not as long as many others but we feel like we can start adding to the conversation now. As a refresher we will be posting on: 🤖 Data trends: What we are seeing with the satellites we monitor 💹 Market trends: Problems we are coming across and regulatory updates 😃 General posting: Company updates (which you may not care about too much)

Wrapping up my first #ClimateWeekNYC! Some personal notes: - methane emissions remain top of agenda for a lot of people in energy & finance (but agriculture too!) - satellites are coming in big, with both many new sensors and extremely powerful new models for older sensors - 2025 will see a ton of changes for the energy industry, most notably on the way the world will have access to emissions transparency from satellites and how it decides to act on that - while a lot of focus is still on the US, this is a truly global problem and lots of clever people are starting to turn their heads and want to get ahead of the curve Thanks for some great discussions Jon-Erik Hvidsten Remme, Dr. Faye Gerard, Ulrike Schopp, Thomas Fox, Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, Chris Rathbun and many others (and thanks for being able to steal your slide here Spark Climate Solutions)

We had a great time last week attending S&P Global's CERAWeek, thanks again Paul Markwell for the invite. Here are our main learnings from the discussions we had last week: 📈 Conducting frequent surveys for super & ultra emitters is important to reduce error bars of emission totals and detect the fat-tails in methane inventories ⏳ With the introduction of the EPA super-emitter programme and increasing emphasis on reductions, there is a strong need for operators to receive methane detections from providers as real-time as possible 🛰 Additionally to detecting emissions, it is becoming more and more important to also detect when there were NO emissions detectable above a certain threshold Beyond this it was great to meet and reconnect with a variety of policymakers, practitioners and operators at the conference, and hear about some the really exciting work going on in the field. It was great meeting Peter Roos, Brian Redick, Arsineh Hecobian, TJ Conway, Melinda Truskowski, Alicia Smith, Matt Kolesar, Warwick King, Ben Silton, Juli Oliver, Matthew Babin, Sacha Abinader, Loan Tran, Philipp David, Trey Shaffer, Jessica Shumlich, Curtis Hughes, Spencer Cox, Kevin Birn, Kahina Abdeli-Galinier, Kristin Fejerskov Kragseth, Bob Dudley, Heather Jones, Emmanuel Corral, James Stock