Google.org demonstrated a new platform on Thursday that, if implemented in conjunction with a proposed United Nations program, could provide a significant tool to combat climate change.
Its new "high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine" can process terabytes of information on thousands of Google servers while giving access to the results online.
The platform, which was demonstrated on Thursday at the International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would allow anyone using the tool to monitor whether or not trees were being chopped down in a given forest. It analyzes satellite images to show forest changes over a given time period.
Google.org's test platform of the software shows new deforestation in red, new degradation in orange, old deforestation in yellow, and intact forest in green for the time period between August 17 and September 15.
(Credit: Google.org)The platform could be used as a tool for countries to conform to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), a program proposed by the United Nations.
If REDD is implemented, it would require member nations to monitor the state of their forests and land use. It would offer money in exchange for those nations preventing people from cutting down forests deemed significant to curbing emissions. The aim of the program is to essentially make the trees worth more alive than loggers could make from chopping them down or than farmers could make from converting forestland into farmland.
The benefit of the program is based on the recommendations of several reports, most notably the "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change" report conducted by the U.K. government.
The Stern Review report's analysis on land use change (PDF) found that keeping forests intact is one of the most cost-effective ways to quickly cut annual world carbon emissions. The reticence in implementing REDD has been over how the program would be administered, and how forests would be accurately monitored in developing nations where technological resources are limited.
"We hope this technology will help stop the destruction of the world's rapidly-disappearing forests. Emissions from tropical deforestation are comparable to the emissions of all of the European Union, and are greater than those of all cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains worldwide," Google.org said on its blog.
Currently, the program is in a testing phase with plans from Google.org to "make it more broadly available over the next year." The organization also said it's willing to provide the platform as a "not-for-profit service," an indication that the satellite imagery may not be freely available to the general public, but restricted to scientists, governments, or environmental monitoring agencies.
Google Earth has been providing satellite imagery of forests over time, but an accurate way to quickly and sufficiently analyze the incoming raw satellite imagery data was not readily available, according to Google.org. This new platform provides that missing analysis, the group said.
The platform was developed in conjunction with Greg Asner, professor of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science and of the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University; and Carlos Souza, a geologist at Imazon, the Amazon Institute for the People and Environment.
Google is in discussions with Israeli geothermal company Ormat Technologies, a relationship that could lead to an investment, according to Haaretz.
The Israeli newspaper quoted an interview this past weekend with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who praised Ormat and the other Israeli companies working in alternative energy. Google co-founder Larry Page also visited an Ormat geothermal plant in Nevada, the newspaper reported.
An Ormat geothermal power plant in Nevada.
(Credit: Ormat Technologies)Brin refused to say whether there are any imminent deals with Israeli energy companies.
Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-energy companies. Last week, it was one of the investors in solar thermal power-plant designer and operator Bright Source Energy, which raised $115 million.
Executives at Google have been clear that so-called enhanced geothermal is on the list of technologies they see as cost effective, compared with fossil fuel energy.
The idea behind enhanced, or engineered, geothermal systems is to inject water underground to enhance the permeability of rock, allowing for the release and capture of more heat.
Ormat is working on an enhanced geothermal project organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, which says that these advanced techniques can dramatically increase geothermal potential--by 40 times.
Hat tip to VentureBeat.
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