Please join the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the Colorado School of Mines – Payne Institute for Public Policy for the International Energy Workshop (IEW) on Tuesday, June 13 – Friday, June 15, 2023 in Golden, Colorado.  

A (non-exclusive) list of potential conference topics is:

• Reaching net-zero emissions: modelling the clean energy transition; sectoral and economy-wide modelling and analysis of transition pathways for demand and supply sectors
• Multisectoral net zero carbon analyses: modelling and analysis that provides critical new insights to the intersection between and among energy sectors such as power, fuels, chemical,mobility
• Managing power system transitions: addressing flexibility and system aspects for the integration of variable renewables and electrified end-uses; market design; integrated modelling looking at future energy systems and dealing with short-term issues
• Clean energy infrastructure: supporting infrastructure to enable decarbonization, including electrical transmission, EV charging, hydrogen distribution and dispensing, manufacturing and supply chains transformations
• Technology insights: role of technologies in the energy transitions (e.g. CCUS and negative emission technologies, hydrogen, nuclear, energy efficiency, synthetic fuels)
• Energy access and transition for communities and cities: assessing sustainability development in urban and rural communities in developing and developed countries
• Energy security: efforts to make climate change mitigation compatible with increasing domestic and regional energy independence (e.g. in response to recent geopolitical developments)
• Socioeconomic analysis of the energy transition: employment, skills, health, investments,consumer bills, social acceptance and resistance, integrating behaviour in energy models such as sufficiency
• Circular economy: supply chains, materials extraction, recycling/reuse of critical materials
• Climate and energy systems: bridging the gap between climate and energy modelling, andreflecting extreme events for resilient clean energy systems

Please join the University of Denver Department of Geography and the Environment as they welcome Dr. Tilottama Ghosh, Research Associate, Earth Observation Group, Payne Institute for Public Policy, presenting Earth Observations Group’s Data Gems from the Night on Thursday, February 23, 2023 from 4:00pm – 5:00pm MT at the University of Denver.  

The history of satellite remote sensing using nighttime lights can be traced back to the U.S. Airforce Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), which began flying polar orbiting satellites in the 1970’s. The Operational Linescan System (OLS), onboard the DMSP, is an oscillating scan radiometer with low-light visible and thermal infrared imaging capabilities which first flew on DMSP satellites in 1976. At night the OLS uses a Photo Multiplier Tube (PMT) to intensify the visible band signal. The purpose of this intensification is to observe moonlit clouds. The light intensification enables observation of faint sources of visible- near infrared emissions present at night on the earth’s surface including cities, towns, villages, gas flares, heavily lit fishing boats and fires. In 1992, NOAA established a digital archive for DMSP data at the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The Earth Observation Group (EOG) was formed in 1994 and since then has dedicated its efforts to making global nighttime light data products for use by the scientific community and policy makers. Many of the inadequacies of DMSP data were addressed with the NASA/NOAA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) day/night band (DNB), which opened a new era in nighttime light studies. EOG continues to produce the daily, monthly, and annual DNB VIIRS Nightlight (VNL) composites. Besides VNL, the other two global products which EOG generates are – VIIRS Nightfire (VNF), which are multispectral detections of fire, flares, and other IR emitters, and VIIRS Boat Detection (VBD), which are offshore detection of lights based on type and intensity.

Wine and Cheese following Colloquium at 5:15pm.

Please join S&P Global and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Payne Institute Director Dr. Morgan Bazilian presenting in multiple sessions at CERA week being held in Houston, TX from March 6-10, 2023.

Please join the Power Systems Engineering Research Center and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Dr. Quihua Huang, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines, presenting a webinar titled Convergence of AI, Physics, Computing, and Control for Intelligent Power System Control on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 from 11:00am – 12:00PM MT.  

With increased uncertainties and rapidly changing operational conditions in power systems, existing stability control methods and operation paradigms have outstanding issues in terms of either speed, adaptiveness, or scalability. Recent years have seen notable progress in AI and learning-based control methods such as deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for solving challenging control and decision-making problems across many domains such as games, robotics and power systems. However, existing methods still have scalability, adaptability, and security issues. To address these challenges, an integrated framework based on the idea of Convergence of AI, Physics, Computing, and Control is developed. Based on this framework, scalable, physics-informed DRL algorithms and high-performance computational tools are developed to achieve efficient training of DRL agents for intelligent stability control for large-scale power systems. The developed methods have been tested and demonstrated with large-scale power systems. Finally, this presentation will discuss the potential of this framework, when combined with new hardware and software platform, for transforming the grid operation and control from the control rooms to the grid edge.

Dr. Qiuhua Huang is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of Colorado School of Mines. Prior to this, he was a Principal Power System Engineer at Utilidata Inc and a Staff Power System Research Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, in 2016, B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2009 and 2012, respectively. He is the recipient of the 2019 IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Prize Paper Award, 2018 R&D 100 Award and best conference paper awards in IEEE PES General Meeting in 2020 and 2018. He serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. His research interests include power system modeling, simulation and control, fusion and application of AI/machine learning and advanced computing technologies for digitizing and transforming power and energy systems.

Please join the Colorado School of Mines Chemistry, Materials Science Program and the Payne Institute for Public Policy as we welcome Faculty Fellow Professor Mike McGuirk, Department of Chemistry Materials Science Program, presenting the Next Generation of Porous Crystals on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 5:00PM MT in the Coorstek Atrium.  Free refreshments will be served.

The manner of bonding between atoms or molecules influences the properties of materials. Perhaps no material family is more emblematic of this than porous crystals, wherein modes of connectivity give rise to discrete subclasses with unique collections of properties. However, established classes often have offsetting advantages and disadvantages for a given application. There is no universally applicable material, and the discovery of alternative ways to connect molecules is highly desirable. Our group has shown that chalcogen bonding, a recently recognized inter-molecular force, is a viable mode of connectivity in low-density porous crystals. We have shown that chalcogen bonding can template high-energy lattice structures and how crystal growth conditions can be rationalized to obtain molecularly programmed porous chalcogen-bonded organic frameworks (ChOFs). These results are the first evidence that this type of bonding can be used to advance the diversity of porous crystalline materials.

For more information, contact Mike McGuirk: cmmcguirk@mines.edu

Please join the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Fellow Cullen Hendrix, Senior Fellow PIIE, presenting a virtual seminar titled Challenging China’s Critical Mineral Dominance on Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Critical minerals—like lithium, nickel, copper, and cobalt—used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and other renewable energy technologies will face surging demand in the coming decades as governments transition to greener economies. But China’s oversized influence in mineral supply chains has left them vulnerable to disruption. Discussants will consider how to make critical mineral supply chains more resilient and evaluate the need for a new raw material alliance.

HOST

Cecilia Malmström
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)

GUESTS

Cullen Hendrix,
Senior Fellow, PIIE

Pär Weihed
Pro Vice Chancellor and Professor in Ore Geology, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden