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Google just backed carbon capture tech for data center energy providers. Will other tech giants follow? 12/4/2025

Google just backed carbon capture tech for data center energy providers. Will other tech giants follow?

Payne Institute Low Carbon Technologies Program Manager Anna Littlefield, Accelerated Methane Reduction Director Simon Lomax, and Director Morgan Bazilian write about how the fast-growing electricity demands of data centers could be a game-changer for carbon capture technology in the power sector.  December 4, 2025.

Scaling carbon capture and storage (CCS) to gigaton capacity: A multi-dimensional and critical review 12/2/2025

Scaling carbon capture and storage (CCS) to gigaton capacity: A multi-dimensional and critical review

Benjamin Mitterrutzner, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Brage Rugstad Knudsen, Payne Institute Director Morgan D. Bazilian, Jinsoo Kim, Simon Roussanaly, Asgeir Tomasgard, and Fellow Steven Griffiths provide a comprehensive review of CCS technologies, from capture to storage, across key sectors, and maps the evolution of global CCS deployment; looking at cost-effective mitigation and policy, regulatory and market actions needed. December 2, 2025.

U.S. policymakers turn to Mines for trusted expertise on critical minerals 12/1/2025

U.S. policymakers turn to Mines for trusted expertise on critical minerals

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Elizabeth Holley and Director Morgan Bazilian contribute to this article about how when Congress and federal agencies grapple with how to secure and strengthen critical mineral supply chains, meet increasing energy demands, build new and repair existing infrastructure and more, they are increasingly turning to Mines for trusted expertise and actionable, data-driven solutions.  December 1, 2025.  

Winter storms blanket the East, while the US West is wondering: Where’s the snow? 12/1/2025

Winter storms blanket the East, while the US West is wondering: Where’s the snow?

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Adrienne Marshall writes about how the snowpack was far below normal across most of the West on Dec. 1, 2025. Denver didn’t see its first measurable snowfall until Nov. 29 – more than a month past normal, and one of its latest first-snow dates on record.  But a late start isn’t necessarily reason to worry about the snow season ahead.  December 1, 2025.

Review of Long-Term Patterns in Nighttime VIIRS Detections of Lights, Boats and Offshore Lights, Fires, and Flares in S.E. Asia: 2012-2023 11/23/2025

Review of Long-Term Patterns in Nighttime VIIRS Detections of Lights, Boats and Offshore Lights, Fires, and Flares in S.E. Asia: 2012-2023

Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Director Christopher Elvidge, Research Associates Tillotama Ghosh and Mikhail Zhizhin, and Director Morgan Bazilian write about the comprehensive multi-year composite research completed by the group for South East Asia using VNL, VBD, and VNF products.  November 23, 2025.

Mines researcher receives Schmidt Family Foundation funding to explore mine water treatment 11/21/2025

Mines researcher receives Schmidt Family Foundation funding to explore mine water treatment

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Amir Riahi was awarded $100,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation for a six-month project investigating a new approach to treating the water that collects in mines. Riahi will use the Schmidt funding to study how gentle but powerful vibrations can help biochar capture metals and other contaminants from mine water more effectively.  November 21, 2025. 

Operationalizing the National Defense Industrial Strategy for great power competition 11/18/2025

Operationalizing the National Defense Industrial Strategy for great power competition

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian and Fellow Lt. Col. Jahara “Franky” Matisek write about how actions by Moscow and Beijing to secure their own mineral supply chains signal that despite the growing prominence of digital-age economies in the 21st century, economic and military capabilities are still constrained by industrial capacity.  The United States, by contrast, remains an innovator without a foundation.  November 18, 2025.

Supply-chain delays, rising equipment prices threaten electricity grid 11/14/2025

Supply-chain delays, rising equipment prices threaten electricity grid

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian and Kyri Baker write about how the crisis facing the U.S. power grid that can’t be solved simply by building more power lines, approving new power generation, or changing out grid software.  Supply-chain bottlenecks are taking years to clear, delaying projects, inflating costs and threatening reliability.  November 14, 2025.

Argentina’s Copper Opportunity 11/13/2025

Argentina’s Copper Opportunity

Payne Institute Critical Minerals Research Associate Isabel Guajardo writes about how Argentina stands at a pivotal juncture in its mining trajectory. With 76 copper projects officially recognized by the government across eight of the country’s 24 provinces, the nation is gradually emerging as a new player in the global copper market.  November 13, 2025.

From Criticality to Bankability: A Structural Taxonomy for Strategic Minerals 11/12/2025

From Criticality to Bankability: A Structural Taxonomy for Strategic Minerals

Kruthika A. Bala and Payne Institute Senior Research Fellow Robert J. Johnston introduce the Critical Metals, Minerals, and Materials (CM3) taxonomy, a structural–financial model for assessing mineral bankability. Unlike conventional criticality frameworks that focus on geological scarcity or import dependence, CM3 identifies the economic and institutional conditions that determine whether projects can attract private investment.  November 12, 2025.

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.

Data Centers at Risk: The Fragile Core of American Power

Data Centers at Risk: The Fragile Core of American Power

Payne Institute Communications Associate Macdonald Amoah, Director Morgan Bazilian, Fellow Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek, and Col. Katrina Schweiker write about how when the supply chains for data centers and industry falter, compute slows, translating into degraded command-and-control capabilities for the US military.  November 11, 2025.

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.

Is AI blowing up our electricity prices? An expert weighs in. 11/7/2025

Is AI blowing up our electricity prices? An expert weighs in.

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian contributed to this article about how Colorado and other states are seeing massive data center growth, and big buyers may squeeze out consumers.  “Electricity demand is no longer predictable — it is algorithmically spiked and AI-governed. Policy is lagging. Capital is stampeding.   November 7, 2025.

The Payne Institute experts are regional, national, and international leaders in applied research in natural resources, energy, and the environment. Our team is involved in a wide variety of research projects in these fields, and are committed to sharing these results with academic and professional audiences.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed are those of the author alone and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, viewpoints, or official policies of the Payne Institute or Colorado School of Mines.