Filtered News
AI’s Power Problem Could Launch a Nuclear Renaissance 11/7/2025
AI’s Power Problem Could Launch a Nuclear Renaissance
Brandon N. Owens and Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian write about how AI’s growth has outpaced America’s power grid. Nuclear energy could be the key to powering the AI era—if policy, permitting, and planning can keep pace. November 7, 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.
Chile’s lithium exceptionalism: Strategic legacies and the contested future of the Salar de Maricunga 11/6/2025
Chile’s lithium exceptionalism: Strategic legacies and the contested future of the Salar de Maricunga
Vlado Vivoda, Natalie Ralph, Asmaa Khadim, Nigel Wight, and Payne Institute Director Morgan D. Bazilian write about how Chile’s approach, governed under an exceptional legal regime, created during the Cold War to safeguard potential nuclear applications, represents a case of lithium exceptionalism: a uniquely Chilean configuration shaped by historical legal restrictions, renewed state ambition, and intensifying global competition. November 6, 2025.
Rare Earths Are Hot. Not All of the Government’s New Buys Will Thrive. 11/5/2025
Rare Earths Are Hot. Not All of the Government’s New Buys Will Thrive.
Payne Institute Energy Finance Lab Director Brad Handler, Student Researcher Andrew Bauman, Faculty Fellow Ian Lange, and Morgan Bazilian write about how the Trump administration struck more deals this week with domestic rare earths companies with a $1.4 billion stake in Vulcan Elements and its supply partner, ReElement Technologies. November 5, 2024.
One of the country’s few rare earth processing plants opens in Exeter 10/30/2025
One of the country’s few rare earth processing plants opens in Exeter
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributed to this article about how the Phoenix Tailings facility in New Hampshire puts the state on a growing map. Across the country, processing operations are popping up with the same goal: to provide an onshore alternative to rare earth metal refining now almost exclusively provided by China. October 30, 2025.
China’s rare earth export delay offers US a chance to weaken Beijing’s grip on the market 10/30/2025
China’s rare earth export delay offers US a chance to weaken Beijing’s grip on the market
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributed to this article about how China’s promise to delay its newest restrictions on the export of the rare earths that are crucial to many high-tech products for one year as part of a trade agreement President Donald Trump secured creates an opportunity for the U.S. and its allies to bolster their own production and processing capabilities. October 30, 2025.
IceSpec: An ice-core hyperspectral imaging framework 10/29/2025
IceSpec: An ice-core hyperspectral imaging framework
Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Senior Research Associate Mikhail Zhizhin and research associates write about how IceSpec, a novel hyperspectral line-scan imaging system for ice cores, nondestructively captures light-scattering features via dark-field illumination. Its calibrated visible and near-infrared spectral data enhance analysis and archiving, advancing research on stratigraphic impurities, ice dynamics and paleoclimate. October 29, 2025.
The Hidden Mineral Reserve: How U.S. Mine Tailings Could Cut Imports and Reduce Toxic Waste 10/27/2025
The Hidden Mineral Reserve: How U.S. Mine Tailings Could Cut Imports and Reduce Toxic Waste
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Elizabeth Holley contributed to this article about how US mine tailings hide critical minerals for EV batteries and defence. Recovery could cut imports, reduce toxic waste and strengthen clean-energy supply chains. October 27, 2025.
Rising AI Demand Is Fueling Higher Electricity Bills 10/22/2025
Rising AI Demand Is Fueling Higher Electricity Bills
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian and Brandon N. Owens write about how as data centers multiply due to AI demand, volatility is socialized onto consumers while stability is privatized by corporate giants. October 22, 2025.
Call it a silver squeeze 10/21/2025
Call it a silver squeeze
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributes to this podcast about how silver hit an all-time high last week. Helping fuel that rally is a physical shortage. October 21, 2025.
US and Australia agree to partner to break up China’s dominance of rare earths 10/21/2025
US and Australia agree to partner to break up China’s dominance of rare earths
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange contributed to this article about how the Trump administration took another step in its bid to find new sources of critical minerals and rare earth metals to reduce the country’s dependence on China by signing an agreement with Australia. October 21, 2025.
Solving the US military’s gallium dilemma requires turning trash into treasure 10/15/2025
Solving the US military’s gallium dilemma requires turning trash into treasure
Payne Institute Communications Associate Macdonald Amoah, Director Morgan D. Bazilian, Fellow Lt. Col. Jahara “Franky” Matisek, and Col. Katrina Schweiker write about how China announced export licensing for gallium and germanium, sharply restricting flows and creating immediate friction across global supply chains. Even though gallium has an outsized yet overlooked strategic value, United States produces no domestic gallium. October 15, 2025.
2025 Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit scheduled for Oct. 28-29 in Little Rock 10/14/2025
2025 Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit scheduled for Oct. 28-29 in Little Rock
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian is giving a Keynote at the upcoming 2025 Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit in Little Rock, AR on October 28, 2025. The summit is a premier gathering of industry leaders, policymakers, statewide stakeholders, and investors focused on the global lithium economy and highlighting Arkansas’ role in the growing sector. October 14, 2025.
Moore Foundation funds Mines professor to pursue innovative concrete research 10/13/2025
Moore Foundation funds Mines professor to pursue innovative concrete research
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Lori Tunstall is featured in this article about garbage that could be transformed into carbon-sequestering biochar and used to replace a portion of the cement — the second-largest industrial source of CO2 emissions — in concrete building materials? October 13, 2025.
Moore Foundation Funds Colorado Mines to Advance Biochar Concrete: A Path to Reducing Cement by 50% 10/13/2025
Moore Foundation Funds Colorado Mines to Advance Biochar Concrete: A Path to Reducing Cement by 50%
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Dr. Lori Tunstall, of Colorado School of Mines, received $1 million from the Moore Foundation to research using municipal solid waste to create biochar. This biochar replaces up to 50% of cement in concrete, aiming to drastically reduce carbon emissions from both construction and landfills. October 13, 2025.
Planning, Policies, and Governance: The Importance of Strategy When it Comes to Climate Finance for Small Island Developing States 10/13/2025
Planning, Policies, and Governance: The Importance of Strategy When it Comes to Climate Finance for Small Island Developing States
Daniel Flores, Julia Eichhorn, Payne Institute Fellow Jamal Saghir, and Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vasquez write about how ramping up climate finance flows for adaptation is critical to addressing the irreversible impacts of climate change, but this alone will not be enough to protect (SIDS). This commentary presents an overview of the status of strategic adaptation document submissions across SIDS and the overall level of environments for adaptation investments. October 13, 2025.
Small Costs for Large Gains: Climate Resilience in Small Island Developing States 10/13/2025
Small Costs for Large Gains: Climate Resilience in Small Island Developing States
Payne Institute Fellow Jamal Saghir and Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vasquez write about how Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are increasingly affected by the growing impacts of climate hazards, including tropical cyclones, storm surges, increases in temperature, heatwaves, droughts, coastal and riverine flooding, changing precipitation patterns, and sea level rise among others. Until now, international adaptation and mitigation efforts have paid insufficient attention to these vulnerable island nations. October 13, 2025.
Four things to know about the Trump administration buying a lithium mine 10/10/2025
Four things to know about the Trump administration buying a lithium mine
Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Ian Lange is on the news discussing in recent weeks, the U.S. has taken ownership stakes in four major corporations, and more may be to come, marking a new approach in how the government kickstarts industries. October 10, 2025.
Quantum Sensing and the Future of Warfare: Five Essential Reforms to Stay Competitive 10/9/2025
Quantum Sensing and the Future of Warfare: Five Essential Reforms to Stay Competitive
Payne Institute Fellow Jahara Matisek, Katrina Schweiker, and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how quantum sensing is primed for a breakout that will radically change both conventional and nuclear warfare, requiring essential reforms for the Department of Defense (recently renamed to the Department of War) to maintain a competitive advantage. October 9, 2025.
Trends and 2025 insights on the rise of electric vehicles in the USA 10/9/2025
Trends and 2025 insights on the rise of electric vehicles in the USA
Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian and other researchers write about how plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) are reshaping the transportation energy landscape, providing a practical alternative to petroleum fuels for a growing number of applications. October 9, 2025.