Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributes to this article about the latest concerns of the La Sal Complex, a Uranium mine 32 miles southeast of Moab. The mine has been opened and closed and opened again over the years. The price of uranium has increased recently, and so has uranium production in Utah. The mining and processing of uranium have ignited old concerns. April 7, 2024.
Payne Institute Sustainable Finance Lab Program Manager Brad Handler writes about how a set of entrepreneurs in the U.S. are considering how carbon finance and the Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM) can be harnessed in new ways to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Their target: oil and natural gas wells. These entrepreneurs are looking across the “lifecycle” of a well or a whole oilfield and, in the process, targeting different GHGs. April 5, 2024.
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian contributed to this article about how the US government has changed their narrative on the energy transition over the years. Climate activists have been steadfast been criticizing the government for underselling the odds of an energy transition. April 3, 2024.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Senior Research Associate Christopher D. Elvidge, Research Associate Mikhail Zhizhin, Director Morgan Bazilian, Ashley Pipkin, Sharolyn Anderson, and William S. Kowalik write about how alternating current can result in flickering—or pulsing—in the brightness of light emitted by luminaires. However, evidence indicates that many organisms perceive flicker with non-visual photoreceptors present on the retinas. April 2, 2024.
Payne Institute Fellow Alex Gilbert and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how hundreds of former political and military leaders are calling for the US Senate to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the impetus being to open up deep sea mining to supply critical minerals needed for clean energy and military technologies. Deep seabed resources include highly valued minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and rare earths. April 2, 2024.
Payne Institute CCUS Program Manager Anna Littlefield contributed to this article about how as Colorado aims to achieve 100% net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, leaders of key state agencies argue that they can’t meet that goal without employing carbon-capture-and-sequestration techniques in hard-to-decarbonize sectors. Ensuring the state has tools to allow and regulate such operations as fossil-fuel usage continues for the foreseeable future is a “strategic step to expediting the process.” April 1, 2024.
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Adrienne Marshall is on this podcast discussing how U.S. hydropower production was down 11% from the year before and dipped to a 22-year low last year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. To make up for the hydro deficit, the U.S. bought natural gas power, which emits more carbon than hydro does, as well as some solar energy. March 28, 2024.
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Research Associate Mikhail Zhizhin writes about how the impact of the war in Ukraine on nighttime light intensity using satellite data. Nighttime light observations from Suomi NPP satellite (2012-2024) covering Ukraine and surrounding areas were analyzed. March 27, 2024.
Payne Institute Student Researcher William Daniels, Faculty Fellow Dorit Hammerling, and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how reducing methane emissions is a key component of short-term climate action. Empirical data and transparent models are key pillars of emission reduction efforts. Payne Institute researchers William Daniels, Meng Jia, and Dorit Hammerling have developed a completely open-source analytical framework for detecting single-source methane emissions, determining the source location, and estimating an emission rate using data from continuous monitoring systems (CMS). March 27, 2024.
Payne Institute Fellow Liam Denning writes about how one measure of success for President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda is that $6 billion of funding for new projects doesn’t even sound like that much anymore. The conditional grants announced this week for 33 projects aimed at decarbonizing industrial processes are equivalent to perhaps 1% of the headline clean-energy budgets of the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. March 26, 2024.