Please join Colorado School of Mines, the Payne Institute for Public Policy, and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe (SUIT) for the 2nd Annual Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty Symposium (NAMES), May 20-21, 2025 in Ignacio, Colorado.

The event will bring together tribal leaders, federal and state government, industry, and academia to discuss and share thoughts on how to support decision making and energy and mining development and finance in Indian country. This approach will be founded on tribal sovereignty as its core principle. 

Over two days there will be an opportunity to take a site visit to cutting-edge developments in natural gas, CCS, and methane emissions on Southern Ute lands, and to deliberate on key issues of energy and mineral security, project development and financing, improving Indian engagement throughout projects, and workforce development and education.

The Symposium will be hosted at the Sky Ute Casino Resort in Ignacio, Colorado. 

REGISTER: There is a nominal registration fee of $130 to attend the NAMES Symposium. Register at https://mines.eventsair.com/24pi1002a/namesreg/Site/Register.

SPONSOR: If you or your organization wish to financially support the inaugural NAMES Symposium, sponsorship opportunities are found at https://mines.eventsair.com/24pi1002a/namessponsor.

LODGING: The Sky Ute Casino Resort has rooms available for the event. Attached is information to help you reserve a room at the Sky Ute Casino Resort as well as alternate lodging in the region.  Hotel options.

We look forward to seeing you in May in Ignacio, Colorado.

SYMPOSIUM SPONSORS

Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as experts in the field present at the Accelerated Methane Reduction Symposium:  Harnessing Natural Gas to Achieve Energy Security & Climate Goals on Thursday, March 6 and Friday, March 7, 2025 in Golden, CO. 

America’s allies and trading partners have turned to U.S.-produced natural gas as a source of geopolitical stability and as a cleaner alternative to gas from other countries with lesser environmental standards.

At the same time, the science of detecting, quantifying and reducing fugitive methane and other greenhouse gases is rapidly advancing at the Colorado School of Mines and partner institutions.

In March, the Payne Institute for Public Policy will convene experts and stakeholders to explore how the latest science and other innovations are being used to:

• Track the progress of fugitive methane reduction initiatives
• Compare the emissions profile of U.S. natural gas to other sources in global energy markets
• Strengthen U.S. energy security and stabilize global energy markets; and
• Accelerate the pace of fugitive methane reductions in the U.S. and abroad.

This will be our 3rd annual symposium exploring these subjects as part of the recently renamed Payne Institute Accelerated Methane Reduction Initiative.

Please join the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines as they welcome Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Lori Tungstall presenting Technological Strategies to Decarbonize the Concrete Industry on Friday, January 24, 2025.

Worldwide, every year cement and concrete production accounts for as much as 9% of all human CO2 emissions. This is roughly equivalent to the emissions generated from all passenger vehicles on the globe. Numerous stakeholders, ranging from cement producers to government agencies, have made public commitments to achieving net zero concrete by 2050, causing an unprecedented surge in low-carbon concrete innovation. This talk will discuss emerging and existing technologies available to the concrete industry, focusing on how the technology works, the level of carbon reduction that can be achieved, and barriers to marketplace entry.

Please join Economist Impact and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Brad Handler, presenting Financing Carbon Capture: Beyond Project Finance at the Carbon Capture Summit on Thursday, February 2025 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Carbon capture offers the opportunity to speed up the green transition. Developing large-scale industrial projects, or expanding DAC and BECCS, faster, will reduce emissions and keep 1.5°C within reach. Overcoming funding, engineering, and policy obstacles will lead to success. In 2025, we will hold our first event on this topic to cut through the hype while bringing businesses, investors, and policymakers together to accelerate CCUS market development.

Please join the SPE Decarbonization Congress and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Director Brad Handler, presenting CCUS and Low Carbon Strategies at the Accelerating Decarbonization of E&P Operations​ Conference on Thursday, February 4, 2025 in Houston, TX.

Join us for a pivotal congress dedicated to tackling the challenge of reducing 5.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in the Exploration and Production (E&P) sector of the Oil and Gas industry. This event aims to forge powerful connections among global and regional operational leaders, alongside emerging sustainability experts, fostering a collaborative environment to spearhead impactful environmental strategies.

Throughout this congress, participants will have the opportunity to exchange best practices and innovative approaches to decarbonization. We are committed to facilitating meaningful dialogues between suppliers, service companies, and operators, creating a unique platform where practical solutions and advancements in sustainability are shared and developed.

The themes of the congress include:

Upstream and midstream: The global oil and gas industry is responsible for generating over 5 gigatons of CO2e emissions annually. Routine and non-routine flaring, artificial lift, and processing facilities are among the top emitters in this sector. Stimulation operations contribute significantly to fuel, water, and chemical consumption. By deploying sustainable technologies, these emissions could be reduced or eliminated. In the first session, we will focus on key themes including quantification, reporting, modeling, and regulatory drivers. In the second session, the emphasis will be on flaring, venting, energy efficiency, operating efficiency, and electrification.

Methane: Methane is the single most significant source of emissions in the exploration and production space, and it requires our attention. As a potent greenhouse gas, addressing methane leaks and venting not only improves operational efficiency but also opens the door to additional energy resources. In this session, we will delve into all aspects of methane emissions in the exploration and production sector, including monitoring, modeling, cold venting, fugitive emissions, and gas-to-X technologies.

Emerging low carbon solutions for core applications: Oil and gas exploration and production entail energy-intensive operations. Processes such as artificial lift, stimulation, drilling, separation, and compression demand substantial energy inputs. At present, hydrocarbon-based fuels dominate our energy landscape within the industry. However, transitioning to more sustainable energy sources holds the promise of reducing the emission intensity associated with every barrel produced. In our upcoming session, we will delve into emerging low-carbon solutions, including hydrogen, geothermal energy, carbon capture and sequestration, and advanced storage/battery technologies. Additionally, we’ll explore the power of collaboration among operators, service providers, universities, and government entities.

Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Cully Cavness, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer, Crusoe, presenting a hybrid seminar titled An Energy-First Approach to Scaling AI Infrastructure on Thursday, January 16, 2025 in Golden, CO.

Crusoe is the industry’s first vertically integrated, purpose-built AI infrastructure provider. We take an energy-first approach to providing reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally aligned AI infrastructure. We harness large-scale clean energy, build AI-optimized data centers, and simplify the development of AI solutions.

Cully Cavness is the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer of Crusoe. He works at the intersection of Crusoe’s energy and data center activities spanning hundreds of megawatts of power production, data center and cloud computing operations. Prior to co-founding Crusoe in 2018, Cully served in leadership and management positions in the upstream oil & gas industry and geothermal energy industry as well as in energy investment banking. Cully was named as a 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year by EY, has authored multiple issued patents, and has won awards for leadership as well as environmental and technology innovation.

Please join the Mines Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department as they welcome Dr. Anna Hodshire, Research Scientist, Colorado State University’s METEC, presenting Emissions Measurements are Not Drag and Drop (Yet): Reconciling Short-term Emissions Measurements with Annual Inventory Averages on Monday, November 18, 2024, in Golden, CO.

Emissions inventories of atmospheric pollutants such as greenhouse gases (GHGs) are used to identify emissions reduction targets, inform regulatory and policy action, and as inputs to broader chemistry and climate models. Methane is a potent but relatively short-lived GHG with an atmospheric lifetime of ~12 years, making it an attractive target for immediate emission reductions for climate action. Methane emissions from oil and gas (O&G) operations contribute to approximately 1/3 of global methane emissions. Since methane emissions from O&G are due to a combination of intentional engineering designs and unintentional engineering failures, reducing O&G methane emissions is the lowest hanging fruit for methane emissions reductions.

Emissions inventories of methane from O&G operations underpin regulatory and business decisions made around which engineering designs and failures to target for emissions reductions but measurement campaigns over the last decade indicate that methane emissions inventories do not match emissions realities. Most often, studies find that emissions inventories likely underpredict total methane emissions from O&G. The CSU Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center (METEC) group is heavily involved in several areas of improving methane emissions inventories and measurements, from measurement validation to field campaigns and statistical scaling for understanding region-wide emissions. I will highlight a few key projects and tools from METEC, with an emphasis on how we can combine “next-generation” measurements with “old-school” statistical modeling to improve emissions inventories.

Dr. Anna Hodshire is a Research Scientist at Colorado State University’s Energy Institute with the Methane Emissions Technologies Evaluation Center (METEC). Current projects include coordinating field campaigns for top down/bottom down surveys and basin-wide surveys of oil and gas emissions of methane. Prior to joining METEC, Dr. Hodshire worked at small companies focused on measuring properties of atmospheric aerosols for health and climate applications. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.

Please the Ansell Lecture Seminar Series at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Dr. John Speer presenting An American Perspective on Green Steel on Thursday, November 7, 2024 in Golden, CO.

The global steel industry is intensely focused on decarbonization and production of green steel. In Shanghai, China in October, the Global Low-Carbon Metallurgy Innovation Forum 2024 was held in conjunction with the 9th Baosteel Biennial Academic Conference, hosted by BaoWu, the world’s largest steel producer. The plenary opening session included presentations related to sustainability by leaders representing worldsteel, JFE Steel (Japan), ArcelorMittal, and Professor Speer, who spoke on the topic Development and Challenges of Green Steel in North America. A modified form of this presentation will be provided in the MME Departmental Seminar, including some background, highlights of private and public efforts in the USA to reduce carbon emissions of the steel industry, and some activities of the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center at Mines to support these objectives.

John Speer is the American Bureau of Shipping Professor of Metallurgy at Colorado School of Mines, and Director of the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center (ASPPRC). He received a B.S. degree from Lehigh University in 1980, and a D.Phil. in Physical Metallurgy from the University of Oxford, UK in 1983, and served in various positions at the Homer Research Laboratories of Bethlehem Steel Corporation until he became a Professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Colorado School of Mines in 1997.  John also served as Mines Associate Vice-President for Research. He is a Fellow of ASM International, an International Fellow of the Chinese Society for Metals, a Distinguished Member of AIST and an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering. John served as President of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers and is currently an officer of AIST, the Association for Iron and Steel Technology.

Please join Benchmark Minerals Week as they welcome Dr. Morgan Bazilian presenting US Policy Dialogue: Critical Minerals & National Security on Tuesday, November 12, 2024 in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles, CA.  

Join us in this session to hear about the Importance of building a Secure Critical Mineral Supply Chain for National Security.

Since 2016, Benchmark Week has been the leading gathering for the world’s lithium-ion battery supply chain and the wider energy transition.

This year, multiple content streams held simultaneously over three days will provide broader context of the opportunities and challenges facing clean energy supply chains, with in depth expert presentations & discussions alongside unrivalled networking, all hosted by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.