Can AI Help the Energy Industry Plug Costly Methane Leaks? with Ryan Sullivan of Bridger Photonics
Description
What if the most powerful climate intervention isn’t policy, but precision?
Deep Dhillon sits down with Ryan Sullivan of Bridger Photonics to unpack how AI, physics, and aerial sensing are being used to hunt down methane leaks that can cost operators dearly and accelerate climate impact. Ryan explains how methane detection has matured over the past decade, and why Bridger’s approach (laser-based lidar tuned to methane) can identify the specific valve, tank, or piece of equipment responsible.
They walk through the full pipeline: scanning swaths over infrastructure, reconstructing plumes from point-cloud data, applying supervised learning trained on ~15 years of labeled leak history, and then having expert analysts validate results with tooling that overlays plume density, wind conditions, and site geography. Then the two zoom out to the uncomfortable questions, like why Bridger refuses to play watchdog, how trust and data ownership shape the market, and what the “north star” looks like; near-real-time detection, autonomous flight patterns, and predictive maintenance that catches failures before they happen.
Learn more about Ryan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sullivar/
and Bridger Photonics here: https://www.bridgerphotonics.com/
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United States
