Today, we are excited to announce a major milestone, with the closing of our $4M seed round, with backing from Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, the European Space Agency, Leap Forward Ventures and angels JJ Fliegelman and Liz Wessel. 

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Orbio uses satellite imagery to track methane emissions from the oil & gas industry. We sell the data to oil & gas, and financial companies that want to invest in the best performing energy assets. Orbio was started by Rob Huppertz, who has a background in satellites from his time at Nasa Harvest, and Jack Angela who has a background in methane from some project work with Shell. 

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Until today, oil & gas companies use generic emission factors to calculate and report their methane emissions which has led to huge underreporting of emissions, by up to 70% according to the IEA. This hasn’t been an issue until today where, as a result of the Global Methane Pledge, regulations are being introduced globally that is triggering a global need for accurate methane emissions data.

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This is being driven by regulation from the US in the form of the super-emitter programme & IRA methane fee, and the EU’s Methane Strategy. This is alongside increasing scrutiny and pressure from  public. This is presenting new pressures on oil & gas and financial companies when trying to assess emission related risks from energy asset portfolios. 

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Orbio is tackling this by analyzing satellite imagery to track methane from every oil & gas facility globally, in real-time. In doing so they can help oil & gas and financial companies:

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1. Time constrain large super-emitter events on sites that could be identified by the public
2. Enhance emission inventory management
3. Benchmark portfolio leaders and laggards

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Orbio is able to deliver this through its processing capabilities which were ranked #1 against other companies in the space in a recent study with Stanford University. This is the first step towards helping companies use reliable, measurement-informed data to move away existing static excel sheets.

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"Although methane is much shorter-lived than carbon dioxide, it has 35X the heat trapping potential - making it a very urgent and critical piece to solve as part of the larger climate change puzzle," says Kim-Mai Cutler, partner at Initialized Capital who led the round. "Orbio Earth has demonstrated a much more accurate approach to detection so that leaks can be quickly accounted for and addressed.”

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With this funding, Orbio is planning on scaling existing models to lower detection thresholds, increase temporal frequency and expand on it's emission risk focused product suite.

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