The skylines of the future will be made of wood

Shiling Pei, professor of civil and environmental engineering, says that a timber building designed with a "rocking wall" made out of timber performed well when tested on a large shake table.
April 10, 2026

Waterlogged and contaminated: In rural Florida, locals suspect a mining company is to blame for their flooding troubles

Ron Cohen, emeritus associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, is quoted about radium showing up in flood waters. Cohen said exposure to low levels of radium happens to everyone, but exposure to high levels of radium will cause cancer.
September 4, 2025

US mines are literally throwing away critical minerals

Elizabeth Holley, associate professor of mining engineering, led a study that looked at the potential of harvesting critical minerals from the waste streams at current U.S. mining operations. The study found that the U.S. could get most of the critical minerals in requires through this strategy.
August 21, 2025

Trade-offs of the green transition: Is mining critical minerals better than extracting fossil fuels?

Raphael Deberdt, a postdoctoral researcher in mining engineering, explains how the current economic system incentivizes resource extraction over reuse and reduction of resource consumption.
March 26, 2025

A new frontier in the voluntary carbon market: Old, leaky oil wells

Brad Handler, program director of the Energy Finance Lab​ at the Payne Institute for Public Policy, discusses the methodologies used for methane emissions and how they may change in the future in this article.
January 16, 2025

Ignoring Indigenous rights is making the green transition more expensive

Rick Tallman, a program manager at Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty who has spent more than two decades working on financing and consulting for clean energy projects, calls the Osage Nation ruling a ....
February 2, 2024

How a clean energy future is colliding with mining’s dark past

“It’s very hard to open up a mine in the United States. No one wants a mine in their backyard,” said Jordy Lee, a program manager at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.
September 22, 2022