Project Canary

Project Canary is a privately held environmental technology company based in Denver, Colorado. The company develops continuous methane monitoring hardware and a software platform that is used for measuring, quantifying and reporting greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production, midstream pipelines, natural gas utilities and other industrial facilities.^[1]

The company's products combine fixed laser-based point sensors with a hardware-agnostic analytics platform, which also ingests data from third-party sensors, aerial surveys, satellites and operational systems.^[2][3]

Its wholly-owned subsidiary Aeris Technologies is a California-based manufacturer of laser-absorption gas analyzers, acquired by Project Canary in 2022.^[4]

Project Canary was founded in 2019 in Denver by William Foiles and Chris Romer. Initial focus of the company was on continuous methane emissions monitoring for oil and gas operators.^[5][6]

In August 2020 the company merged with Independent Energy Standards, an environmental assessment firm. After the merger Project Canary's services were expanded to include site-level emissions ratings.^[7][8]

A month later, in September 2020, Project Canary was chosen for the first class of the Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator — a program run together with Alabama Power that is focused on energy technology startups.^{[9][10][11][12]}

In April 2021 the company closed a $10 million Series A round, which was led by Quantum Energy Partners, Global Reserve Group and Energy Impact Partners.^{[13][14][15][16]}

In February 2022 a Series B round of $111 million was raised, bringing total disclosed funding to $121 million. The round was led by Insight Partners with participation of Brookfield Growth, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and others. Insight Partners has also received a board seat as part of the deal.^[17][18][19]

The next month the company acquired Aeris Technologies, manufacturer of laser-based gas analyzers and leak detection systems from Hayward, California. The acquisition expanded Project Canary's capabilities — the company became able to detect additional greenhouse gases such as ethane, nitrous oxide, formaldehyde, ethylene oxide and benzene.^[20][21][22]

During 2023 Project Canary moved from hardware-centric model to a hardware-agnostic software platform, which integrates emissions data from ground-based sensors, aerial surveys, satellite measurements and other operational systems.^[23]

In February 2024 the company and Colorado State University's Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC) announced a partnership for validation of Project Canary's forward dispersion simulator — a modeling tool used to improve accuracy of emissions source attribution.^[24][25]

Later in the same year, in June 2024, the company launched Canary Carbon Portal — an emissions accounting software designed to help energy companies manage enterprise-level greenhouse gas data and reporting. At the same time a partnership with reservoir-engineering software company Tachyus was also announced, to integrate emissions forecasting and regulatory reporting workflows.^[26][27][28]

In April 2025 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a formal approval letter, accepting Project Canary's Canary X continuous methane monitoring system as an Alternative Test Method (MATM-010) for fugitive emissions screening under the New Source Performance Standards.^[29]

Also in April, three technology integrations into the analytics platform were disclosed: a partnership with UK's QLM Technology to add quantum-lidar methane cameras,^[30] a partnership with New Zealand-based Aeroqual for integration of the AQS1 air-quality sensor,^[31] and a partnership with Sniffer Robotics — an EPA-approved drone surface-emissions monitoring vendor — focused on landfill methane quantification.^[32]

In September Project Canary reported growing adoption of its operational intelligence platform among U.S. energy companies and also announced plans to start international pilot programs later in the year.^[33][34]

In November 2025 three peer-reviewed studies were published by the company in scientific journals, examining methane detection and quantification at more than 120 oil and gas sites.^[35][36] One of these studies, done together with collaborators from Colorado State University, reported methane measurement error rates of less than 4% over a 28-day testing period.^[37]

In February 2026 the company released an analysis of about 24.7 million 15-minute emission rate estimates, collected from 940 upstream production sites across seven U.S. basins. The analysis found that short-duration intermittent events contribute a disproportionately large share of total measured methane emissions.^[38][39]

Project Canary runs a software-as-a-service platform which aggregates emissions data from several measurement technologies — fixed continuous monitoring systems, aerial surveys, satellite imagery, and handheld and mobile detection equipment — into one unified system for operational decision-making and regulatory reporting.^[40][41][42]

Among the reported product lines are the Canary X continuous methane monitoring system, the Canary Carbon Portal (enterprise emissions accounting application), and also Canary RECON and Canary PICO — respectively a vehicle-mounted mobile detection system and a handheld investigation instrument.^[43]

According to company disclosures and industry coverage, the platform is designed to support compliance with U.S. EPA Subpart W and Subparts OOOOb/c, the United Nations Environment Programme OGMP 2.0 framework, and U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration pipeline safety regulations.^[44][45]