Research

The Fifth National Climate Assessment 11/14/2023

The Fifth National Climate Assessment

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian was one of the contributing authors of the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States.  However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.  November 14, 2023.

How can Colorado attack “forever chemicals” tainting military soil? School of Mines is leading the way to find out. 11/13/2023

How can Colorado attack “forever chemicals” tainting military soil? School of Mines is leading the way to find out.

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins contributes to this article about how nine different techniques for getting PFAS out of toxic dirt will be tested next year at Schriever Space Force Base near Colorado Springs.  Even the environmental watchdogs cataloging the depressing toll of “forever chemicals” throughout the food chain say they are encouraged by the School of Mines test.  November 13, 2023.  

Project to test technologies to clean up contaminated materials set to start at Colorado Springs-area military base 11/10/2023

Project to test technologies to clean up contaminated materials set to start at Colorado Springs-area military base

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins contributes to this article about how a project headed by the Colorado School of Mines to test the best clean up methods for PFAS-contaminated materials is set to begin next summer on Schriever Space Force Base.  According to Christopher Higgins, a School of Mines professor working on the Department of Defense-funded project, those working on the project will be testing six different PFAS clean up technologies on soils they say the base has set aside for testing in an effort to see which is the most effective on a larger scale.  November 10, 2023.

WHAT IF AMERICA’S MINERAL-INTENSIVE MILITARY RUNS OUT OF MINERALS? 11/10/2023

WHAT IF AMERICA’S MINERAL-INTENSIVE MILITARY RUNS OUT OF MINERALS?

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian, Macdonald Amoah, Gregory Wischer, and Juliet Akamboe write about how minerals still undergird warfighting technology, including defense platforms and munitions.  Like previous junctions in human history, the current period will be defined by minerals and the warfighting technology that they enable. November 10, 2023.

How Cutting Methane Emissions Became Good For Business 11/09/2023

How Cutting Methane Emissions Became Good For Business

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian, Sustainable Finance Lab Program Manager Brad Handler, and Responsible Gas Program Manager Simon Lomax write about how methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and fast reductions will help stabilize the climate more than any other action we can take in the short term. November 9, 2023.

Tabares-Velasco awarded two DOE grants for work toward energy efficiency at any income level 11/7/2023

Tabares-Velasco awarded two DOE grants for work toward energy efficiency at any income level

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Paulo Tabares-Velasco is featured in this article about receiving funding from the DOE Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) program, for two projects specifically aimed at making energy efficiency, electrification and resiliency possibility for communities in Colorado: a home battery energy storage system for retrofitted housing in in Colorado and a new heat pump water heater with latent heat storage in low-income housing.  November 7, 2023.

Colleges and companies collaborate to study PFAS soil purification methods at Schriever SFB 11/1/2023

Colleges and companies collaborate to study PFAS soil purification methods at Schriever SFB

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins contributes to this article about how a team of scientists at the Colorado School of Mines alongside other major universities will be testing out soil purification technologies at Schriever Space Force Base.  It’s an international effort to defeat what is commonly known as “Forever Chemicals.”  The three universities and five companies, both foreign and domestic, are testing technologies to get these chemicals out of soils. The work is funded by the Department of Defense.  November 1, 2023.

Critical mineral demand estimates for low-carbon technologies: What do they tell us and how can they evolve? 10/31/2023

Critical mineral demand estimates for low-carbon technologies: What do they tell us and how can they evolve?

Mines Student Researcher Jordy Lee Calderon, Faculty Fellows Nicole Smith and Elizabeth Holley, and Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian write about how the transition to low-carbon energy systems will increase demand for a range of critical minerals and metals. As a result, several quantitative demand models have been developed to help understand the projected scale of growth and if, and to what extent, material shortages may become an obstacle to the deployment of clean energy technologies. October 31, 2023.

TAKING THE FIGHT TO FOREVER CHEMICALS 10/16/2023

TAKING THE FIGHT TO FOREVER CHEMICALS

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins is featured in an article about how Mines launched a broad-based research initiative earlier this year to advance scientific understanding of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, and develop practical engineering solutions to address these so-called “forever chemicals,” one of the largest-scale environmental and public health challenges facing the U.S. today. October 16, 2023

Uncovering the Effects of the Southwest Monsoon on Fishing Activity in the Indian Ocean with VIIRS Boat Detection Data 10/12/2023

Uncovering the Effects of the Southwest Monsoon on Fishing Activity in the Indian Ocean with VIIRS Boat Detection Data

Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Researchers Namrata Chatterjee, Tilottama Ghosh, Christopher D Elvidge, Mikhail Zhizhin, and Tamara Sparks write about how the VIIRS Boat Detection (VBD) product offers real-time insights into the movements of fishing vessels. This study highlights the utility of VIIRS boat detection data in monitoring fishing activity and its response to seasonal and regulatory influences in the Indian Ocean, ultimately contributing to more effective fisheries management and conservation efforts. October 12, 2023.  

Payne Institute report assesses supply chain variables for critical minerals 9/29/2023

Payne Institute report assesses supply chain variables for critical minerals

The Payne Institute for Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines released The State of Critical Minerals Report 2023. The analysis examines how the increasing demand for the critical minerals necessary to power a green economy will impact global communities, markets, national security, and geopolitics.  The United States Geological Survey suggests that lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite are the metals needed to power electric vehicles. Alternatively, arsenic, gallium, germanium, indium, and tellurium are essential to constructing solar panels. September 29, 2023.

PAYNE INSTITUTE TO CONVENE TALKS ON DIFFERENTIATED GAS VERIFICATION STANDARDS IN COLLABORATION WITH EEMDL RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP 9/28/2023

PAYNE INSTITUTE TO CONVENE TALKS ON DIFFERENTIATED GAS VERIFICATION STANDARDS IN COLLABORATION WITH EEMDL RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP

As part of its ongoing work with the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL), the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines is commencing a new stakeholder dialogue focused on the independent verification of standards and other governance issues in the rapidly evolving differentiated gas market.  EEMDL was established in early 2023 to improve the accuracy of greenhouse gas measurement and accounting across global energy supply chains, starting with methane emissions. September 28, 2023.

Payne Institute for Public Policy Releases First Annual State of Critical Minerals Report

Payne Institute for Public Policy Releases First Annual State of Critical Minerals Report

The Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines released today its first annual State of Critical Minerals Report on the growing demand for critical minerals and their impact on energy transitions, communities, markets, national security and geopolitics.  The energy transition—and increased demand for electric cars, solar panels and other low-carbon technologies—is reliant on critical minerals. Many of these minerals, however, are mined and processed in adversarial nations or countries with low environmental, labor and human rights standards. In fact, of the 50 minerals identified on the U.S. Geological Survey Critical Minerals List, the U.S. is 100 percent reliant on imports for 12 and more than 50 percent dependent for 31.  September 26, 2023.

THE STATE OF CRITICAL MINERALS REPORT 2023 9/26/2023

THE STATE OF CRITICAL MINERALS REPORT 2023

The Payne Institute for Public Policy and the Colorado School of Mines has released our inaugural annual State of Critical Minerals Report. The report is aimed at contributing to the important discourse on critical minerals and how to harness them in a more sustainable manner as a catalyst to the energy transition and by extension, climate action. It explores various parts of the critical minerals value chain and the interplay of these segments in driving a successful minerals industry.  The report covers geopolitics and what that means for national security, the demand and supply dynamics of critical minerals markets, financial markets and investments, the future of sustainable mining and the environment, and social governance (ESG) factors confronting the industry.  September 26, 2023.  

Contemporary ice sheet thinning drives subglacial groundwater exfiltration with potential feedbacks on glacier flow 8/18/2023

Contemporary ice sheet thinning drives subglacial groundwater exfiltration with potential feedbacks on glacier flow

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Matthew Siegfried and Alexander A. Robel, Shi J. Sim, Colin Meyer, and Mines alum Chloe D. Gustafson write about how groundwater-laden sedimentary aquifers are extensive beneath large portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. A reduction in the mechanical loading of aquifers is known to lead to groundwater exfiltration, a discharge of groundwater from the aquifer. Here, we provide a simple expression predicting exfiltration rates under a thinning ice sheet.   August 18, 2023. 

Critical Minerals Outlooks Comparison 8/15/2023

Critical Minerals Outlooks Comparison

Payne Institute Research Associate Juliet Akamboe, student researchers Ebenezer Manful-Sam, Felix Ayaburi, Director Morgan Bazilian and IEF’s Mason Hamilton write a critical minerals report about how with the acceleration of energy transitions, clean energy technologies have rapidly emerged as the segment with the fastest growth in demand in critical minerals supply chains and markets.  Highlighting key insights for critical minerals decisionmakers, the report analyses eleven publicly available reports from eight agencies and organizations across different geographies, spanning from 2019 to 2023.  August 15, 2023.

Accelerating Coal Plant Retirement at Scale 8/1/2023

Accelerating Coal Plant Retirement at Scale

Deb Chattopadhyay, Payne Institute Program Manager Brad Handler, and Chandrasekar Govindarajalu write about how coal plants in some countries are actively being retired ahead of their planned closure dates, there is yet to be sufficient clarity on which business model(s) might help to achieve this at scale.  Policy-based and market-led closures, buyout of coal plants, auctioning them off, repurposing them, and swapping coal assets with renewables have all been tried in different parts of the world. They make an assessment of various proposed financial and business models to retire coal fired power plants early and which model or combination of models might work best for “at-scale” closure. August 1, 2023.  

The Economics of Natural Gas Flaring and Methane Emissions in US Shale: An Agenda for Research and Policy 7/26/2023

The Economics of Natural Gas Flaring and Methane Emissions in US Shale: An Agenda for Research and Policy

Mark Agerton, Payne Faculty Fellow Ben Gilbert, and Gregory B. Upton Jr. write about how natural gas flaring and methane emissions (F&M) are linked environmental issues for US shale oil and gas operations. Flaring refers to burning natural gas when regulatory, infrastructure, and market constraints make it infeasible to capture it when drilling for oil. In this paper, we lay out an agenda for researchers and policy makers. We describe why F&M are linked, both physically and in terms of policy. July 26, 2023.

Lights on the Water? Accumulating VIIRS boat detection grids in Southeast Asia spanning 2012–2021 7/26/2023

Lights on the Water? Accumulating VIIRS boat detection grids in Southeast Asia spanning 2012–2021

Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Christopher D. Elvidge, Tilottama Ghosh, Namrata Chatterjee, and Mikhail Zhizhin write about how it has been known since the 1970s that heavily lit fishing boats can be detected with nighttime visible low-light imaging data collected by polar-orbiting meteorological sensors (Croft, 1979). The two-sensor series having low-light imaging capabilities include the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) and the NASA/NOAA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).  The VIIRS sensor provides key improvements (Elvidge et al., 2013) in low-light imaging from 2012 to the present and the pixel resolution (742 m × 742 m) is finer and has in-flight calibration to radiance units.  The VBD data were produced in near real-time and the nightly record extends back to April 2012 in Asia. In addition to the nightly product, the EOG also made monthly and annual summary grids.  Starting on page 33. July 26, 2023.

ACCOUNTING FOR NON-MARKETED CAPITAL 7/25/2023

ACCOUNTING FOR NON-MARKETED CAPITAL

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Graham Davis and Robert Cairns write about how intangible capital is a key input to production that is distinct from tangible capital. Most forms of tangible and intangible capital have observable, pecuniary values. Their complement is non-marketed capital. This paper studies non-marketed capital from the points of view of an investor contemplating investing in a project and of a manager running the project. At the point of investment, an apparent positive net present value is realized through the marshalling of non-marketed capital.  July 25, 2023.

Transitional dynamics from mercury to cyanide-based processing in artisanal and small-scale gold mining: Social, economic, geochemical, and environmental considerations 7/21/2023

Transitional dynamics from mercury to cyanide-based processing in artisanal and small-scale gold mining: Social, economic, geochemical, and environmental considerations

Payne Institute Research Associate Aaron Malone and Faculty Fellow Nicole Smith and others examine the environmental issues around artisanal gold mining, in particular highlighting often-overlooked problems that are occurring as more of the sector incorporates cyanide processing. The common sense among policy makers and the international community is that anything that decreases use of mercury is an improvement – but what we show is that the current transition phase, with mercury and cyanide use overlapping, actually makes environmental problems worse. In this regard, it is important not to be complacent or imagine that artisanal gold mining’s environmental problems will fix themselves. July 21, 2023.

Mining Profile – Ghana 7/13/2023

Mining Profile – Ghana

The Payne Institute looks at the current mining profile of Ghana, in the first of a series of informational snapshots of mining around the world.  July 13, 2023.

Sonnenberg recognized with RMS AAPG Robert J. Weimer Lifetime Contribution Award 7/12/2023

Sonnenberg recognized with RMS AAPG Robert J. Weimer Lifetime Contribution Award

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Stephen Sonnenberg was awarded the RMS AAPG Robert J. Weimer Lifetime Contribution Award for contributions to the practice of geosciences and petroleum geology in the Rocky Mountain region.  Sonnenberg’s research focuses on unconventional reservoirs, sequence stratigraphy, tectonic influence on sedimentation, and petroleum geology.  July 12, 2023.

Characterization work aims to address cost of green hydrogen technologies 7/10/2023

Characterization work aims to address cost of green hydrogen technologies

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Svitlana Pylypenko is featured in this article about how the appeal of green hydrogen is clear, but before hydrogen fuel cell and electrolyzer technologies can be adopted on a commercial scale, questions of cost, durability and performance still need to be addressed.  Including looking for answers to questions of cost, durability and performance at the microscopic — and even nano — scale.  July 10, 2023.

Payne Institute Responsible Gas Initiative Report 6/30/2023

Payne Institute Responsible Gas Initiative Report

In early March 2023, the Payne Institute for Public Policy convened the inaugural Responsible Gas Symposium in Golden, Colorado. This report summarizes some of the major themes of discussion and lessons learned during and after the symposium, amid increasingly urgent domestic and international efforts to reduce methane emissions from all sectors of the economy, including the oil and natural gas industry.  June 30, 2023.

Can CSR strategy mediate conflict over extraction? Evidence from two mines in Peru 6/19/2023

Can CSR strategy mediate conflict over extraction? Evidence from two mines in Peru

Payne Institute Advisory Board member Deborah Avant, Devin Finn, and Tricia D. Olsen write about how corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies can shape political contexts to mediate or exacerbate the resource curse. Using a relational pragmatic approach—one that recognizes actors are dynamic and focuses on the interactions that shape how they see their interests—we develop expectations about two ideal type CSR strategies: transformational and transactional and their relational implications. June 19, 2023.

Electric regionalism: Path dependence, development, and the African power pools 6/7/2023

Electric regionalism: Path dependence, development, and the African power pools

Payne Faculty Fellow Kathleen Hancock writes about how low access, unreliable supply, and high- cost electricity have hampered many African states’ ability to grow their economies. Even high- income states, like South Africa, are increasingly challenged to provide reliable electricity. To help address this shortfall, African states belong to five regional power pools: organizations that link together electricity grids of member states and cre-ate markets to buy and sell electricity across borders.  June 7, 2023.

Analyzing a deadly confrontation to understand the roots of conflict in artisanal and small-scale mining: A case study from Arequipa, Peru 6/7/2023

Analyzing a deadly confrontation to understand the roots of conflict in artisanal and small-scale mining: A case study from Arequipa, Peru

Payne Institute Research Associate Aaron Malone, Faculty Fellow Nicole M. Smith, Eliseo Zeballos Zeballos, Rolando Quispe Aquino, Ubaldo Tapia Huamaní, Jerónimo Miguel Gutiérrez Soncco, Guido Salas, Zacarias Madariaga Coaquira, Jose Herrera Bedoya write about how conflicts around large-scale mining are common and widely researched, but artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) features sparingly in the mining conflict literature, despite the prevalence of ASM conflicts. This paper examines ASM conflicts, focusing on a central case study from Arequipa, Peru, where violence between rival ASM groups and a mining company resulted in 15 deaths between 2020 and 2022. June 7, 2023.

Colorado (CDPHE/AQD) Rule Making Verifying Methane Emissions Reporting 6/5/2023

Colorado (CDPHE/AQD) Rule Making Verifying Methane Emissions Reporting

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jim Crompton, and Student Researchers Ebenezer Manful-Sam, Wyatt Lindsey and Pierluigi Nichilo write about how reducing greenhouse gases, especially methane emissions, from oil and gas production activities is one of the major themes of regulatory actions both at state, provincial and federal levels in North America as part of society’s path for addressing climate change. One of the biggest barriers for methane reduction is not financial or technology, but rather a lack of rigorous and transparent data. In 2021, Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission adopted a rule that limits how much greenhouse gas can be emitted per barrel of oil and gas produced.  June 5, 2023.

Colorado School of Mines and Carbon America awarded $32.6M from U.S. Department of Energy CarbonSAFE Initiative 5/19/2023

Colorado School of Mines and Carbon America awarded $32.6M from U.S. Department of Energy CarbonSAFE Initiative

Mines Director of Global Energy Future Initiative – Integrated CCUS Initiative Manika Prasad is part of a team of Mines researchers that received funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support the development of a regional CO2 storage hub in concert with local stakeholders. Colorado School of Mines, Carbon America and Los Alamos National Laboratory have been awarded $32.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative to advance the development of a potential carbon storage hub for the Pueblo, Colorado area.  May 19, 2023.

Colorado gets $32 million to create carbon-stuffing hub underground at Pueblo 5/18/2023

Colorado gets $32 million to create carbon-stuffing hub underground at Pueblo

The Colorado School of Mines Global Energy Future Integrated CCUS Initiative received $32 million from the federal Department of Energy to study and develop a carbon sequestration hub in southern Colorado, considered a key to meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals in coming years.  The hub will be located in the Pueblo area, where massive carbon emissions from two power plants and cement kiln, among other major carbon producers, may need to be stuffed underground to meet state and U.S. climate change targets. The large DOE grant gives School of Mines and partners — including Los Alamos National Laboratory — financing to define and drill test sites, and set the boundaries for a carbon sink in the Lyons Sandstone formation thousands of feet beneath Pueblo County.  May 18, 2023.  

Colorado School of Mines researcher helps validate new approach for “forever chemical” blood testing 5/16/2023

Colorado School of Mines researcher helps validate new approach for “forever chemical” blood testing 

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins is featured in this article about how a study shows that self-collected blood samples had similar PFAS detection frequencies to traditional blood draws.  In addition to being more accessible, the self-collected whole-blood samples may even offer a more comprehensive picture of the PFAS in our blood, including compounds such as FOSA.  May 16, 2023.

Self-Collection Blood Test for PFASs: Comparing Volumetric Microsamplers with a Traditional Serum Approach 5/15/2023

Self-Collection Blood Test for PFASs: Comparing Volumetric Microsamplers with a Traditional Serum Approach

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins is a co-author on this paper about how a remote sampling approach was developed at Eurofins for quantifying per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in whole blood samples collected using volumetric absorptive microsamplers (VAMSs), which allow for self-collection of blood using a finger prick. This study compares PFAS exposure measured by self-collection of blood using VAMSs to the standard venous serum approach.   May 15, 2023.

How can we decarbonize the metals industry? Mines researchers are working toward the answers. 5/3/2023

How can we decarbonize the metals industry? Mines researchers are working toward the answers

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow John Speer is featured in this article about how in the U.S. and around the world, there’s a push to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the metals industry.  Decarbonization in the metals industry has already begun in the United States, and we’re one of the cleanest steel industries in the world.  May 3, 2023.

Applying Post-Quantum Cryptography – Survey and Application of Machine Learning 4/26/23

Applying Post-Quantum Cryptography – Survey and Application of Machine Learning

Payne Institute student researcher Mack Osborne writes about how quantum computing poses a considerable threat in the world of cyber security. Policy makers are largely unprepared for a post-quantum world, significantly due to a lack of understanding and awareness. The goal of this paper is to improve understanding and provide a new and effective way to analyze post-quantum cryptography, for researchers and security engineers alike.  April 26, 2023.

Decarbonizing the cement and concrete industry: A systematic review of socio-technical systems, technological innovations, and policy options 4/23/2023

Decarbonizing the cement and concrete industry: A systematic review of socio-technical systems, technological innovations, and policy options

Payne Institute Fellow Steve Griffiths, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Dylan D. Furszyfer Del Rio, Aoife M. Foley, Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian, Jinsoo Kim, and Joao M. Uratani write about how although concrete has become an essential and ubiquitous construction material for modern society, its use has significant environmental impacts. This paper describes the CCI’s sociotechnical system and energy and environmental impacts, highlights barriers and opportunities for CCI decarbonization, outlines technologies and policies to mitigate negative CCI impacts, and proposes gaps and future agendas for CCI decarbonization research.  April 23, 2023.

Colorado School of Mines partners with Aquagga to commercialize PFAS destruction technology 4/11/2023

Colorado School of Mines partners with Aquagga to commercialize PFAS destruction technology

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Chris Higgins is featured in this article about how Mines researchers developed HALT-PFAS.  This promising technology for the destruction of so-called “forever chemicals” developed by Colorado School of Mines researchers has been licensed by a cleantech startup that aims to use the Mines-patented process to halt the growing environmental and public health challenge posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.  April 11, 2023. 

Mines professor demystifying social responsibility in engineering 4/5/2023

Mines professor demystifying social responsibility in engineering

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jessica Smith is featured in this article about how working engineers manage the social and public accountability dimensions of their careers.  Working engineers solve technical problems on a daily basis—that’s a big part of why many choose to go into the field in the first place. But they also regularly grapple with sometimes less obvious questions that deal with the social, environmental, economic, cultural and ethical facets of their work. April 5, 2023.

Six bold steps towards net-zero industry 3/30/2023

Six bold steps towards net-zero industry

Benjamin K. Sovacool, Payne Institute Director Morgan D. Bazilian, Jinsoo Kim, and Fellow Steven Griffiths write about how the rapid and deep decarbonization of global industry is key to reaching climate policy targets, yet it remains an incredibly difficult challenge. They propose six bold steps for accelerating progress on achieving net-zero industrial carbon emissions by mid-century with a focus on lessons learned and emerging analysis from both the Global North and Global South, the latter of which we consider as low or middle income countries primarily located in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  March 30, 2023.

Samples from Front Range oil and gas wells detect seeping natural gas, benzene and other chemicals 3/22/2023

Samples from Front Range oil and gas wells detect seeping natural gas, benzene and other chemicals

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Jennifer Miskimins contributes to this article about Colorado regulators say the subset of wells tested were known to be troubled, and many have already been plugged and abandoned. Natural gas and chemicals may be seeping through compromised barriers in northeastern Colorado oil and gas wells, according to a federal study, but state regulators and other researchers caution that analysis may overstate the problem.  March 22, 2023.

The Regulation of CO2 Pipelines and Ensuring Public Safety 3/15/2023

The Regulation of CO2 Pipelines and Ensuring Public Safety

Payne Institute CCUS Program Manager Anna Littlefield and student researcher Dwi Nuraini Siregar write that the 45Q tax credit is anticipated to play an important role in accelerating the expansion of the CO2 pipeline network in the United States by providing a financial incentive for businesses to invest in carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies and supporting infrastructure.The Inflation Reduction Act’s amplification of this credit has already increased the number of CCUS projects. March 15, 2023.

Colorado School of Mines part of multi-university team selected by DoD for social science research 3/13/2023

Colorado School of Mines part of multi-university team selected by DoD for social science research

Payne Institute Director Morgan Bazilian and Faculty Fellow Mark Deinert will be contributing to research on critical minerals, battery technology, and reducing dependence on hostile suppliers in the clean energy supply chain along with Payne Institute Fellow Professor Joshua Busby, LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas, Austin and Professor Emily Holland, U.S. Naval War College.  March 13, 2023.  

The life and death of a subglacial lake in West Antarctica 3/9/2023

The life and death of a subglacial lake in West Antarctica

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Matthew Siegfried and others write this paper that looks at the last 50 years, and the discovery and initial investigation of subglacial lakes in Antarctica have highlighted the paleoglaciological information that may be recorded in sediments at their beds. In December 2018, we accessed Mercer Subglacial Lake, West Antarctica, and recovered the first in situ subglacial lake-sediment record—120 mm of finely laminated mud. We combined geophysical observations, image analysis, and quantitative stratigraphy techniques to estimate long-term mean lake sedimentation. March 9, 2023

First-ever layered lake-sediment sample extracted from subglacial Antarctica 3/9/2023

First-ever layered lake-sediment sample extracted from subglacial Antarctica

Payne Institute Faculty Fellow Matthew Siegfried is part of a NSF-funded project Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA), that have extracted a layered lake-sediment sample that gives important details into past dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheet and its cold, dark ecosystems. Their findings from analysis of the sediment sample, give important insight into the larger dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheet and its history, including when the ice sheet was smaller than its current size. March 9, 2023

Addressing the Need for Accurate and Comparable Greenhouse Gas Data: The COMET Framework

Addressing the Need for Accurate and Comparable Greenhouse Gas Data: The COMET Framework

Former Payne Institute Program Manager Jordy Lee Calderon writes about how the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency (COMET) began as a collaboration between the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), RMI (formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute), and the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN Climate Change). Its objective is to advance accurate and transparent greenhouse gas accounting through a harmonized set of principles, standards, and reporting requirements. March 2, 2023.

 

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.