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Japan is planning to provide data collected from its observation satellites that measure carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to developing countries. The purpose of this initiative is to assist these nations in reporting their emissions data to the secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are required to periodically submit reports on their greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2 and methane, to the convention’s secretariat. Typically, this information is based on a nation’s energy consumption and industrial statistics. However, many developing countries face challenges with their statistics’ credibility or lack the technology to accurately measure emissions.

To address this issue, the Japanese Ministry of Environment, along with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organizations, has been developing technology to estimate CO2 emissions. Japan launched the Ibuki observation satellite in 2009 and its successor, Ibuki-2, in 2018.

Since fiscal year 2018, the ministry has been collaborating with Chuo University on a feasibility test in Mongolia to improve the accuracy of CO2 emissions estimates. As the accuracy has now reached a practical level, the Mongolian government plans to include this data in its report to the convention’s secretariat.

Professor Masataka Watanabe from Chuo University emphasized the importance of using satellite data to ensure transparency in the emissions of each developing country. Japan aims to expand these efforts, starting with the Mongolia case. Furthermore, Japan has established agreements with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to provide them with satellite measurements, and Kyrgyzstan has also expressed interest in utilizing the data. In the future, India, one of the world’s major CO2 emitters, is also expected to receive data from Japan.

Japan plans to launch a new type of observation satellite with advanced sensors in fiscal year 2024 as a successor to Ibuki-2.

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