An American Mine Still Has Millions of Tons of Copper, If Companies Can Get to It

Corby Anderson, Harrison Western Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, discusses the history of treating calcopyrite to make copper.
April 2, 2025

Hydrogen Tax Credit Rules Must Sync With Biden’s Climate Agenda

Morgan Bazilian, Greg Clough and Simon Lomax of the Payne Institute for Public Policy wrote this opinion piece about the disconnect in U.S. hydrogen policy.
April 10, 2024

Soaring Denver-Area Rents Spur $200 Million Student Housing Bond

“We are located in the west side of Denver and it’s very, very expensive,” said Kristen Volpi, vice president and chief financial officer at the Colorado School of Mines. “Students are unable to find private apartments that they can afford, so they ....
March 13, 2024

Bezos Eyes SpaceX Rival as Critical New Rocket Is Finally Ready

ULA was formed by Boeing and Lockheed in 2006. The pioneering venture had “a virtual monopoly on U.S. government launches” in those early years, said George Sowers, the company’s former chief scientist.
January 4, 2024

Commodities: The pros and cons of getting cobalt from Idaho

Elizabeth Holley, associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines, appeared on BNN Bloomberg to discuss the prospects of cobalt mining in the U.S. amid heightened demand for EV batteries.
June 22, 2023

How a 10-Story Wood Building Survived More Than 100 Earthquakes

After a half hour, inspectors deem the building safe to enter. On the third floor, Shiling Pei, the TallWood Project’s principal investigator, examines the walls and floor. “This is exactly the results that we’re looking for, which is no structural ....
June 5, 2023

SpaceX Bets Steel Plates Will Keep Launchpad From Blowing Up

“It’s sort of astonishing to me that they didn’t use the practices that the launch industry has perfected for decades,” said George Sowers, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines who previously worked for Martin ....
May 9, 2023

Starship Launch Ushers In a New Space Economy

“There’s just really not a business case to bring precious metals back to Earth,” George Sowers, a professor in the Space Resources program at the Colorado School of Mines, told me in a recent conversation. Instead, Sowers, and a growing number of ....
April 20, 2023

Russia Is Keeping Unsold Gas Underground Rather Than Flaring It

The amount of gas observed being flared -- burned off into the atmosphere -- at Gazprom’s key production area in the Yamal peninsula between Aug. 10 and Sept. 21 averaged 1.18 million cubic meters a day, according to Bloomberg calculations based on ....
September 28, 2022

Automakers Blitz Congress to Fix an EV Tax Credit They Can’t Use

The processing of critical minerals typically used in EV batteries, such as lithium, nickel cobalt, and manganese, is done almost exclusively in China, Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, said in an ....
August 3, 2022