Energy Finance Lab
Integrating Financial Insight into Decision-Making and Advancing Ideas to Foster More Capital Investment into the Energy Transition
Integrating Financial Insight into Decision-Making and Advancing Ideas to Foster More Capital Investment into the Energy Transition
Energy Finance Lab
Reference Corner
Restoring energy resilience and security while decarbonizing the global economy are generational challenges that will cost Trillions of dollars. Public capital can realistically provide only a very small portion. Instead, the public sector needs to create vibrant enabling environments for private investment; there is also ample room for the private sector to act on its own.
The Energy Finance Lab’s mission is to support the initiatives of the Payne Institute, with a guiding principle to foster market-based solutions to unlock private investment. Among other recent research, the EFL is exploring government interventions for critical mineral development, systems to track and financialize carbon footprint and fugitive methane emissions, and the use of carbon markets to fund climate mitigation activities such as plugging oil & gas wells and carbon capture & storage. The Lab also provides explainers across commodity, carbon and energy markets for the benefit of policy makers and other stakeholders.
The Energy Finance Lab Collaborates with these Payne Inititatives
Accelerated Methane Reduction
Low Carbon Energy Technologies
Critical Minerals
Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty
Supply Chain Transparency
RESEARCH
The Tokenization of Environmental Attributes of Natural Gas 5/8/2026
The Tokenization of Environmental Attributes of Natural Gas
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Program Director Brad Handler addressed attendees at the Enverus’ EVOLVE conference in Houston, TX on creating digital tokens based on the environmental attributes of low fugitive methane-emissions natural gas. The talk reviews the creation of such tokens, their use in facilitating transacting in low emissions gas, and efforts to turn these tokens into a tradable asset. May 8, 2026.
Tracking and Transacting Clean Natural Gas: Operationalizing Environmental Attribute Tokens 4/7/2026
Tracking and Transacting Clean Natural Gas: Operationalizing Environmental Attribute Tokens
Payne Institute Student Researcher Liam O’Byrne and Energy Finance Lab Program Director Brad Handler write about how there is an emerging need for companies to track and disclose the carbon intensity of the natural gas and other fossil fuel-based products they buy. For producers of these fuels, documenting carbon intensity, at least at scale, requires systems that standardize, which the financial services industry can leverage to create new markets. April 7, 2026.
Tin Demand Is Booming; Opportunities and Risks for Small Communities in Indonesia 3/25/2026
Tin Demand Is Booming; Opportunities and Risks for Small Communities in Indonesia
Payne Institute Student Researchers Andrew Bauman and Jason Gustely, Faculty Fellow Ian Lange, and Energy Finance Lab Program Director Brad Handler write about how artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM) in Indonesia, who provide as much as 12% of global supply, have a significant opportunity to benefit from the strong tin demand. March 25, 2026.
Kern County conference highlights dangers of abandoned oil wells 3/24/2026
Kern County conference highlights dangers of abandoned oil wells
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Program Director Brad Handler is featured on this news show discussing solutions to plug millions of orphaned wells that leak harmful greenhouse gases and contaminate groundwater across the country. March 24, 2026.
Critical Minerals Are a Tricky Business. What Could Help. 3/9/2026
Critical Minerals Are a Tricky Business. What Could Help.
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Program Director Brad Handler, Student Researcher Andrew Baughman, Faculty Fellow Ian Lange, and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how the U.S. government is finally getting serious about safeguarding its supply of critical minerals. March 9, 2026.
Indonesia Nickel Stakeholder Feedback Sheds Additional Light on Challenges for ASM 3/4/2026
Indonesia Nickel Stakeholder Feedback Sheds Additional Light on Challenges for ASM
Matt Lee, Payne Institute Critical Minerals Program Manager Clarkson Kamurai, and Sustainable Finance Lab Director Brad Handler write about how ASM presents both opportunities and risks in Indonesia. Looking at ASM companies’ limited capability and pointed to how even informal ASM is integrated into larger local actors’ planning. March 4, 2026.
Variety is Not Enough. Why Can Diversification No Longer Guarantee Energy Security? 2/20/2026
Variety is Not Enough. Why Can Diversification No Longer Guarantee Energy Security?
Payne Institute Fellow Andrei Covatariu and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how energy has, once again, been discussed less as a commodity and more as a component of industrial and geopolitical power. In this environment, the meaning of energy security extends beyond fuel diversification to encompass broader questions of economic resilience and systemic stability. February 20, 2026.
Strategic Intervention to Rebuild Semiconductor Minerals Capacity in the West 2/12/2026
Strategic Intervention to Rebuild Semiconductor Minerals Capacity in the West
Payne Institute Student Researcher Shane Sethi, Jonah Allen, and Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange write about how semiconductors are the foundational components of modern technology; integrated circuits (ICs), which are complex layers of interconnected semiconductors, now dominate global semiconductor trade and underpin most high-value electronics. Recent efforts to address supply chain vulnerabilities and rebuild domestic manufacturing depend on a stable and secure supply of critical components. February 12, 2026.
Tokenizing EAC’s for LNG 11/11/2025
Tokenizing EAC’s for LNG
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Director Brad Handler on a podcast discussing systems developing to track and trade environmental attributes like methane. Topics include the emerging demand for reliable Carbon Intensity (CI), the standards for reporting that CI, and how tokenizing environmental attributes can make them useful for commodity traders and the financial community. November 11, 2025.
How the Voluntary Carbon Market Can Fund Orphan Well Remediation 11/7/2025
How the Voluntary Carbon Market Can Fund Orphan Well Remediation
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Director Brad Handler writes about how there are an estimated 1 million wells in the U.S., most drilled in a pre-regulatory era, that are orphaned and have either never been plugged or not to current standards that also emit collectively a lot of methane. States are left to plug and handle any necessary remediation. Born out of this burden is the idea to use the Voluntary Carbon Markets, or VCM, to raise funds to plug these wells. November 7, 2025.
