Phoning in the Founders

I had the opportunity to sit down with our very own Bear Givhan, the co-founder and CEO of Earthview. 

It's always good to take a second to look back at the beginning of a company to remember where and why you started in the first place. The idea for Earthview came from frustrations with existing methods for surveying oil and gas infrastructure for natural gas leaks and limitations associated with these methods. The current methods were inefficient, expensive and intermittent. 

There had to be a better way, so in 2019, Earthview was founded. 

Tell me a little bit about the methane emissions issue and how you came up with your solution at Earthview? 

My experience with methane emissions started right after I graduated from the University of Colorado, I was working as a research pilot flying an aircraft with greenhouse detection gear. Through that job, I was able to literally see where methane emissions were coming from, what the values look like, and how massive of an issue this was. Methane is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and I knew that this needed to be addressed. When I began flying over the oil patches, it became very apparent that flying around at 100 feet trying to find these methane leaks was not the most efficient way to locate and detect methane leaks. 

I started noodling and asking some questions like, “If we have thousands of production facilities, are there more leaks based on volume of production?” I was looking for anything that would give clues to where and when the most methane leaks occurred. Basically, we found that it’s completely random. The only viable solution is to monitor the facilities all the time. We knew that it had to be cost effective enough to allow it to scale. So that's Earthviews solution, a precise,  cost-effective, 24/7, emissions monitoring system. 

You saw that there was a massive problem and you were off to the races. What was your Eureka moment when you were trying to solve this problem and then all of a sudden you said that's what I want to go after…was it one moment or was it a series of discoveries you made? 

It was an overwhelming sense of urgency, that if I dont go for this I will miss this opportunity to solve a really massive and important problem. I knew I had the right background to really tackle the methane monitoring problem head on. With my previous work as a research pilot, I was able to get a glimpse into where this is going. 

This sense of urgency to help operators continues to push me everyday. We are out here doing the real work that's moving the needle on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every leak that we catch is methane that has not been emitted to the atmosphere. There is a real sense of responsibility with this kind of work and I'm extremely proud to be a part of it.

The idea that you're going to sell environmental technology that measures emissions is kind of crazy, but in the last few years, it has become top of mind. What is the general reaction that you are seeing from oil and gas companies?

Within each of these organizations, we are selling to three different groups. They all have different reasons for wanting  to utilize this technology.

We have the boots on the ground group, these are the men and women out in the field doing the work. They are the workers that will be utilizing our BluBird device and customer dashboard daily to detect and locate leaks at their facility. 

Jake Smith, Earthview Field Representative, and Bear Givhan after a successful installation at a facility!

The Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) are the people who are utilizing the historical data to build the ports and create a safer and cleaner environment for everyone.

The last group is the C-suite, they are the ones who are setting the climate goals. 

You can't get to net zero if you don't know where you are today. You need to measure to understand what your emissions are. A net zero pledge without knowing where you start is quite frankly, a bogus pledge. We are there to help all three of these different sectors in each of these companies. We have seen a very positive reaction to our Blubird continuous monitoring solution so far and are excited to keep pushing the envelope on this! 

What is a word that describes you well that describes why you're going to be able to get this done? 

Stubborn. I know first-hand that methane monitoring is a really important issue and it's a really complicated one to solve. We are building a brand new product for an industry that is notoriously slow to adapt to new technology. This is also around a pretty touchy subject, emissions are not something that the gas industry has historically acknowledged or done much about. I am excited with the traction we are getting and more and more people are seeing that continuous monitoring is the best solution.

If you want to learn more about Earthview and how we are solving the methane emissions monitoring problem, please visit our website at Earthview.io.