Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Maris Densmore, Director, Industrial Solutions, American Carbon Registry – Winrock International and Staci Taruscio, CEO, Rebellion Energy Solutions, presenting a virtual seminar titled Prioritizing Sustainability: The ACR Methodology Putting Methane Emissions Reductions through Orphan Well Plugging Within Reach on Wednesday, May 24, 2023.

The ACR Methodology for Quantifying, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verifying GHG Emissions Reductions from Plugging Orphaned Oil and Gas Wells is designed to provide a clear framework for prioritizing and plugging orphan wells across Canada and the US. Through the monetization of methane emissions reductions, this methodology helps fund the costs of plugging abandoned wells, while promoting sustainable practices. The methodology will provide a standardized approach to measuring and verifying emissions reductions, ensuring that GHG reductions are accurately quantified and reported to stakeholders. With project application already underway, this methodology allows project proponents and carbon credit buyers to prioritize the environmental benefits of plugging orphan wells and make a significant contribution to reducing GHG emissions, mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Maris Densmore, ACR Director of Industrial Solutions, Maris has 20 years of experience in the climate, environmental protection, and energy sectors is responsible for implementing new strategic opportunities to harness the power of markets for high impact emission reduction and removals actions including geologic storage of carbon and high-GWP gas emissions abatement.  Maris is a licensed geologist and has extensive field experience in both environmental and oil and gas operations.  

Staci Taruscio is the CEO of Rebellion Energy Solutions, bringing nearly 20 years of experience in field operations, reservoir engineering, and project management in the oil and gas industry across the United States and Canada. With a Petroleum Engineering degree and an MBA, Staci is a proven leader in upstream E&P, having successfully built two private operating companies. She now focuses on plug and abandonment work, converting legacy wells from liability to asset in collaboration with NGOs, policymakers, operators, private investors, and scientists to uncover hidden value, standardize processes and develop tech. Staci has contributed to federal guidance on environmental issues and is a founding board member of Fellow Environmental Partners, a national non-profit dedicated to meaningful collaboration in the abandoned and orphaned well space.

Please join the 2023 IEEE Green Technologies Conference and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Payne Institute Director Dr. Morgan Bazilian presenting a Keynote titled Energy System Security, Policy, and Investment on Wednesday, April 19 in Denver.  

The energy landscape is changing rapidly. That includes a renewed focus on energy security, and a redrawn map of geopolitics. It is now time to better understand these dynamics and how they inform policy and investment decisions.

Please join Garfield County, Colorado Mesa University Unconventional Energy Center, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Director, Payne Institute presenting a keynote at the Energy and Environment Symposium, Oil and Gas Education for Local Government on Wednesday, April 12 and Thursday, April 13, 2023 in New Castle, Co.

This two-day event is tailored to meet the needs of municipal and county officials tasked with navigating planning, social, fiscal, regulatory and environmental issues related to oil and gas development. In 2022, 250 local government staff and elected officials from across Colorado participated.

On the heels of SB19-181 the local and state regulatory landscape for oil and gas development has been completely overhauled and ever-changing. We will have a freshed agenda posted soon for your review for 2023 so please register now to join us April 12 & 13, 2023, in New Castle, CO.

Event topics

• How COGCC Mission Change Rulemaking has transformed oil & gas regulation
• What to expect from upcoming and recent COGCC and AQCC oil & gas rulemakings
• What local governments are doing to understand cumulative impacts during the well pad site selection process
• Field trip to an active oil and gas site
• Latest technology to reduce nuisance impacts to communities during oil & gas development
• County and state mineral revenue projections
• Air quality monitoring strategies suitable for local governments
• New regulatory landscape for local versus state control of oil & gas development
• Local economic impacts of oil and gas during price and production surges and slumps
• Local economic impact of Colorado’s increasing oil and gas regulatory cost burden
• The shifting federal land, mineral, and environmental regulatory/policy landscape
• State agency alphabet soup: Executive Director updates and Q&A from COGCC, DOLA, CDPHE, APCD, DNR
• Industry Innovations: Best mitigation practices local governments can require to minimize nuisance impacts
• Ample informal networking opportunities throughout the two days to engage your colleagues, industry and regulators

Wall Street’s fundamental purpose is to aggregate funding for large projects with systemic societal benefits. Solutions to climate change and enabling production of critical minerals fit solidly in this purview, however challenges abound. GoGreen Investments is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) designed to help private companies navigate these challenges and successfully raise funds necessary to advance their business models.

GoGreen Investments are taking Lifezone Metals public on the NYSE. Lifezone is a modern metals company with the aim of creating value across the battery metals supply chain of mining, processing, and recycling. Their proprietary hydromet technology has the potential to reduce emissions in nickel production, with the opportunity to cost-effectively provide responsibly sourced cleaner metals to global battery markets.

John Dowd is CEO GoGreen Investments, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) designed to help private companies with solutions to climate change successfully raise funds on Wall Street. John has over 30 years of energy and commodity investing experience. He received 6 Lipper awards for best risk-adjusted performance in the energy sector, including awards for the decades ending 2016 and 2018, and outperformed the average energy-focused mutual fund every year from 2009-2019 according to Morningstar. While at Fidelity, he participated in approximately 10,000 meetings with management teams throughout the natural resources sector. Previously, he researched energy companies and the drivers of energy cycles for 11 years as a sell-side analyst at Sanford Bernstein and provided expert testimony to Congress twice. John has a deep understanding of what resonates with investors.

Govind Friedland, COO GoGreen Investments. Govind has 20+ years in energy metals, mineral exploration, project development, specializing in assembling management teams, raising capital via private-public equity and unconventional sources of capital. He has experience executing regional geophysical and mineral exploration programs and is a graduate of Colorado School of Mines. Govind is from a mutigenerational mining family which founded the Ivanhoe Group of Companies. His experience includes emerging markets, China, Africa, Middle East and the Americas, and extensive M&A expertise in these jurisdictions though numerous business development, executive and director positions for public companies. Govind is a founder, financier, company builder and a project developer. He is Founder and Executive Chairman of GoviEx Uranium Inc.

Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Heidi Gill, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Urban Solution Group, presenting a hybrid presentation titled Increasing Regulations – How Operational and Human Data are Colliding to Meet the New Requirements on Wednesday, April 19, 2023 in Brown Hall or via Zoom.  Free lunch will be provided.

Topics to be presented include:

• Colorado has just undergone a massive regulatory overhaul in the oil and natural gas industry. Industry is working tirelessly on how to evolve process, planning and development to meet these new regulations.
• Public opinion and perception are now written into regulations like never before. Any business would struggle to achieve 100% public support in any sector. With oil and natural gas development being such a polarized topic, how can operators successfully navigate passionate public opposition through the permitting and execution phases of development?
• Learn how quantifying the human component is moving the needle on these passionate discussions and public debates.

Heidi Gill serves as CEO of Urban Solution Group. She founded Urban in 2017 to bridge the gap between oil and gas development and social compatibility. Focusing on comprehensive mitigation plans and products, Heidi designed and filed a patent on a new type of sound wall that helps mitigate impacts to surround communities during oil and gas operations. She spearheaded the capital raise to fund the manufacturing of her patented sound walls and now has over six miles of wall on the market which is enough inventory to be on 20-25 locations at once. Her most recent endeavor has been developing NavPlanIQ. A first of its kind, cloud-based energy specific software for long term planning and execution of energy locations with a high focus on regulatory, compliance, noise monitoring and modeling, comprehensive mitigation and stakeholder engagement and grievance management.

​Prior to founding Urban, Heidi worked for Anadarko Petroleum where she oversaw all mitigation related activities with her primary focus on drilling, completions and production facilities. Heidi graduated from University of Oregon with bachelor’s degree in public relations and communications.

​Heidi was awarded the Denver Business Journal’s 2020 Outstanding Women in Business for the Energy category along with being selected as one of their 2019 40 Under 40. She was awarded the Society of Petroleum Engineers 2019 Steward of the Industry Award. In 2018 she was awarded the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s 2018 Emerging Leader Award and recognized by the Denver Business Journal as one of Denver’s 2018 Top Women in Energy.

Please join the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines as we welcome Ross Bhappu, Partner, Head of Private Equity Mature Funds, Resource Capital Funds, presenting a hybrid seminar titled Financing the Energy Transition Metal Requirements on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 in Alderson Hall, room 134, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO.  

Future demand for metals and minerals required to achieve the energy transition is increasing at unprecedented rates. Current projected supply growth for many metals is expected to be inadequate to meet this projected demand. While some governments are committing to support the sector, the magnitude of capital required will necessitate a collaborative approach from numerous sources. This presentation will explore the expected capital needs and provide a view of what will be required to fund this extraordinary capital intensive transition.

Ross Bhappu has been with Resource Capital Funds since the beginning of its second fund in 2001. He holds a Ph.D. in Mineral Economics from the Colorado School of Mines and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Arizona. Ross’ experience in the mining industry includes working for both major and junior mining companies in operational, business development and management roles.

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.