What fuels landfill fires and is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20year period? The answer is methane. While it is an excellent fuel for kitchen stoves, CNG vehicles, and power plants, it is also busy burning the planet. Methane is generated naturally by decomposing organic matter. The same prehistoric processes that created natural gas reserves are now at work within landfills. Managing methane means not just cleaner cities but also a significant step toward our climate ambitions.
Around 15% of India’s methane emissions are from the waste sector. Unlike the agriculture or energy sectors, which require complex, longterm reforms, waste management offers immediate gains through targeted action. Crucially, the policy frameworks and incentives are already in place through national programmes such as the Swachh Bharat Mission.
Targeted action is only possible if we know exactly where the hotspots are, but tracking an invisible gas is difficult. Historically, we have relied on models that estimate emissions by tracking incoming waste volumes and applying baseline assumptions. However, this approach depends on accurate, recurring data, which is often scarce in developing countries. Because such data are aggregated at the regional or national levels and updated infrequently, it makes pinpointing individual sources nearly impossible.
The alternative is physical monitoring, which is even more challenging in the Indian context. Groundlevel detection requires expensive equipment, regular maintenance, and constant oversight, making it logistically and technically difficult to scale.
As technology advances, satellites are stepping into this gap. This data broadly fall into two categories: regional measurements that monitor methane over a few kilometers (frequent and useful for national trends), and fineresolution detection that can pinpoint hotspots down to a few square meters (critical for targeted action).