Monitoring Carbon Emissions From Space

 Carbon emission treaties have basically been on the honor system, but do they have to be?
Could power plannt emissions be tracked from space? The short answer is probably, to some degree, with more help.
 Researchers have shown that observations by Earth-orbiting instruments can be used to estimate carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from individual power plants. NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, which was launched in July 2014, was designed to monitor the movement of CO₂ in and out of ecosystems worldwide. Despite the satellite’s generally broad focus, its sensors are able to measure CO₂ concentrations in the air to within about 1 part per million in areas covering 3 square kilometers or less. When the team combined OCO-2 data from selected passes over certain power plants in the United States with computer models of how emissions plumes would disperse, its estimates of those plants’ emissions were within 17% of actual emissions those facilities reported for those days.
The question then becomes, does that help?