Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Director Christopher Elvidge writes about a landfill burning in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan as seen through the VIIRS Nightfire satellite imaging systems as part of their global monitoring program. April 13, 2023.
Payne Institute Fellow Greer Gosnell and Daire McCoy write about how the sustainable energy transition, governments and innovators are encouraging households to adopt smart technologies that allow for increased flexibility in energy grids. This research contributes experimental evidence regarding the import of oft-cited market failures by studying the case of a relatively new technology – the smart electricity meter – in the context of an unprecedented UK-wide government-led public participation campaign. March 1, 2023.
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ebru Bozdag contributes to this article, and explains that the primary reason for earthquakes is the relative movement of tectonic plates at the surface. The Earth, very roughly, has four major layers. From surface to the center: crust, mantle, outer and inner cores. The crust is broken into rigid tectonic plates, which float on top of the mantle due to the convection currents in the mantle. As the plates move relative to each other, earthquakes happen at plate boundaries. But we also observe some seismic activity inside tectonic plates as well. Another reason for earthquakes is related to mantle plumes and associated volcanic activities which can occur inside tectonic plates, she explained, such as the type of earthquakes seen in Hawaii, which is located almost in the middle of the Pacific Plate. February 28, 2023.
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian contributed to this article about how Moscow bet its energy shipments to Europe would stifle the opposition to its invasion of Ukraine. Instead, it sparked a backlash that has dramatically altered global trade. Instead, a flow of American energy has given the United States a growing role in the continent’s economy, while pushing Russia to the side. February 23, 2023.
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jihye Kim contributes to this article and gives her take on steel production that doesn’t use fossil fuels. She finds the strategy very innovative and promising, but also acknowledges there are a few disadvantages. In the end, she says different strategies are needed to decarbonize steel and that multiple techniques can be used at the same time. February 9, 2023
Payne Institute Fellow Steve Griffiths, writes about how the cement and concrete industry serves as the foundation for modern infrastructure. Hence, it has a massive global impact on both energy demand and carbon emissions and so is a key focus of industrial decarbonization efforts. The relationship between cement and concrete production and societal development is made more apparent as a result of the limited degree of international trading of these products. 2/3/2023.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Director Christopher Elvidge, Research Associate Tilottama Ghosh and Mikhail Zhizhin, and student researcher Elijah Mt.Castle write about how as the Russia-Ukraine war approaches the 1 year mark the electrical grid in Ukraine has taken devastating damage. Russia has hit more than 200 targets in the electrical infrastructure. This has left millions of Ukrainian citizens without power in the cold winter months. In the early days of the war Russia captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Russia has now militarized the facility installing several Grad rocket launchers around the dry storage for spent nuclear fuel. Protective structures were erected to defend the launchers, but these structures violate international nuclear and radiation safety regulations. January 10, 2023.
Payne Institute Fellow Cullen Hendrix and Director Morgan Bazilian write this commentary on how in March, the London Metals Exchange suspended nickel trading after prices spiked over 250% in two days. Much of the spike occurred in an 18-minute window. The nickel debacle highlights one of the underappreciated financial challenges that green-energy transitions will bring: Markets for many critical minerals are small, thin, and opaque. Markets with these structures are prone to failures such as cornering, natural disaster- and geopolitically-induced supply disruptions, and murky, inefficient price discovery processes. December 17, 2022.
Payne Institute Fellow Alex Gilbert is featured on this news show about a fusion energy breakthrough that could be an inflection point for clean fuel technology. The Department of Energy is expected to announce a major development regarding fusion energy on Tuesday December 13th, and Alex Gilbert, discusses the significance of this potential discovery. He further explains how scientists have produced net energy gain using fusion and how nuclear fusion power could be the key to clean energy. December 12, 2022.
Payne Institute Fellow Liam Denning writes this opinion piece about how President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron want the same things. Therein lies the problem. There are two, interlocking gripes from the French (and European) side. The first can be illustrated by the fact that, as the two leaders spoke, benchmark European natural gas was trading above $40 per million BTU while the US equivalent was under $7. The second concerns the Inflation Reduction Act. The rebranding of Biden’s signature climate package as not being anything to do with climate also glossed over the fact that it is essentially protectionist industrial policy. December 2, 2022.