This coming Monday morning, the President of the United States will sign into law a transformational infrastructure bill and jobs act, worth $1.2 trillion dollars. Reports on what specific projects will contain and how much money will be in those budgets are developing, but the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act contains a $65 billion budget for the power grid, including clean energy funding, as well as $21 billion for the environment – cleaning up sites such as brownfields and abandoned mines. And the passing of this infrastructure bill is predicated on another piece of legislation – the Build Back Better Act, a $1.75 trillion investment in social programs, including $40 billion for higher education and workforce development.
The expertise contained within the Mines/NREL Nexus will certainly be valuable to these two bills. But, even more is happening. The new Net Zero World Initiative has resulted from the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), wrapping up today in Glasgow, Scotland. Through this Initiative, countries are committing record levels of determination and resources towards fighting climate change, the USA included. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is at the forefront of implementing these programs.
The benefits of a long-standing and close relationship
The DOE’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the Colorado School of Mines sit just five miles apart in Golden, and contain between them unique expertise, research, relationships and collaboration benefitting from such close proximity. Teams of people from both institutions have been working together for decades, researching and reporting results, advising industry and teaching generations of leaders in the areas important to solving some of the world’s biggest challenges.
And at the local level, Gov. Polis announced in October a land swap that will result in a Global Energy Park, called “Glo Park”, a new regional epicenter for renewable energy development. This development site sits adjacent to NREL, just down the street from Mines. Nexus co-director, Ryan Richards is on the planning committee for Glo Park.
All of this makes for exciting times for Nexus, and both institutions. Browse our website to read more about the important work happening here and come back to our news page often for continued announcements as developments unfold.