GHGSat followed up a flurry of business activity in recent weeks with an announcement of $47 million in new financing on Monday (Sept. 15).
The Montreal-based company, which searches for emissions of methane and other forms of greenhouse gas using satellites, said the money would be used to “fuel its rapid global expansion, and the continued evolution of its groundbreaking satellite technology and analytics services.”
Equity portions of the funding were provided by new investor Yaletown Partners, alongside existing investors Fonds de solidarité FTQ and BDC Capital. The debt portions were led by the National Bank of Canada with support from Export Development Canada (EDC).
“The confidence from our investors, demonstrated through this new financing, underscores the growing global demand for emissions monitoring,” Stéphane Germain, CEO of GHGSat, said in a company statement announcing the financing.
“At GHGSat, we are laser-focused on building the most operationally useful technology on the market, coupled with advanced analytics capabilities that transform raw data into emissions intelligence.”
Since 2011, including the new funding, GHGSat has raised $173 million CAD in equity and debt financing. The new financing also follows a “significant” commitment by ExxonMobil Corp. earlier in September to use GHGSat’s satellites for methane monitoring to find methane sources in Canada, the United States, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
GHGSat’s 14 satellites, all launched since 2016, are optimized to find methane leaks as small as 100 kg/hr – the scale of individual equipment pieces. The company has been able to mitigate more than 20 megatons CO2E of methane since it began operations, according to company documentation. (GHGSat says that is the equivalent of annual emissions from more than 4.6 million cars, although those figures do not specify vehicle types.)
Earlier this summer, GHGSat sent its 13th and 14th satellites to space – named Pierre (C-12) and Valmay (C-13) after children of employees, following long-standing company tradition. These flew aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-14 rideshare mission in June, allowing GHGSat to improve its monitoring and revisit abilities. GHGSat plans to have 21 satellites in orbit by 2026.
GHGSat aims to differentiate itself from other companies not only with a high revisit rate, but with the sensitive detectors on board its satellites. Removing greenhouse gases such as methane has environmental benefits as well as allowing companies to increase yields and to comply with export policies relating to environmental standards, officials have said previously.
Editor’s note: In a previous version of the story we had quoted ExxonMobil as saying “The new financing also follows a ‘significant investment’ (financial terms were not shared) by ExxonMobil” and have changed that to “The new financing also follows a ‘significant’ commitment by ExxonMobil”. GHGSat wanted to clarify that ExxonMobil has not invested in GHGSat even though their wording suggested it.