Early last year, a microwave-oven-sized satellite hurtling along at more than seven kilometres per second detected a massive methane leak from a coal mine in southwest Siberia. The owner of that satellite was GHGSat, a Montreal-based company that works at the intersection of space and climate change. While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention when it comes to greenhouse gases, GHGSat focuses on methane – an extremely potent gas that has been responsible for an estimated 30% of the world’s warming to date.
This week, Diana Fox Carney speaks to Stephane Germain, the CEO of GHGSat, about his childhood dreams of space and the challenges of scaling up as a Canadian cleantech company. "It was a wonderful place to start our business. Where it becomes a challenge is for growth capital [and] for really scaling to a global basis, Canada frankly is a bit of a backwater," he says. Fox Carney also talked with Clea Kolster, the head of science and a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, about how GHGSat fits into the larger cleantech picture.
Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Find earlier episodes here, here and here.
