Phytoremediation and phytoextraction in Sub-Saharan Africa: Addressing economic and social challenges.

Mining and mineral processing continues to be a source of lasting environmental problems in many developing economies. Phytoremediation has proven to be a viable strategy to remediate contaminated lands and limit environmental damage, but it has not been widely implemented partially due to social and economic challenges. However, by encouraging phytoremediation with a focus on phytoextraction, it may be possible to rehabilitate contaminated lands while simultaneously providing economic support to local communities. This can be achieved by the sale of phytoextracted metals to fund large-scale phytoremediation, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. To this end, this paper provides a conceptual approach for phytoremediation-based mineral recovery and explores the social and economic challenges related to large-scale deployment. The viability of the approach is explored and future work on phytoremediation implementation is defined with the goal of advancing research and collaboration.

Just transitions: Histories and futures in a post-COVID world.

The energy landscape is changing dramatically. Communities are being impacted in different ways. Positive impacts include reductions in air pollution and new tax revenues from renewables. Negative impacts include lost jobs and foregone tax revenues after closure of large fossil fuels generation facilities and coal mines. The contours of this transition have been further altered by recent events such as the global oil market crash and the COVID-19 pandemic. While economic and social issues can be addressed through thoughtful policy design, the pace of change, and the extent to which communities have a say in what comes next, matter. Though the technical issues of transitions are well-researched, the socio-economic aspects of the energy transition remain both emergent and essential to an equitable transition to a low-carbon energy system. This article provides an overview of the history and current status of just transitions.

Can Distributed Nuclear Power Address Energy Resilience and Energy Poverty?

Alex Gilbert is a Project Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, where he oversees technical and regulatory work on commercializing advanced reactors. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Payne Institute, where he conducts research on energy markets, climate policy, and outer space resources governance, and Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Alex has a Master of Energy Regulation and Law and Certificate in Climate Law from Vermont Law School and a BA in Environmental Studies and International Relations from Lake Forest College. Dr. Morgan Bazilian is the Director of the Payne Institute and a Professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, he was lead energy specialist at the World Bank. He has over two decades of experience in the energy sector and is regarded as a leading expert in international affairs, policy, and investment. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Bazilian has testified before the U.S. Senate and the Irish Oireachtas on issues of energy security.

Terrorism, geopolitics, and oil security: Using remote sensing to estimate oil production of the Islamic State.

As the world's most traded commodity, oil production is typically well monitored and analyzed. It also has established links to geopolitics, international relations, and security. Despite this attention, the illicit production, refining, and trade of oil and derivative products occur all over the world and provide significant revenues outside of the oversight and regulation of governments. A prominent manifestation of this phenomenon is how terrorist and insurgent organizations-including the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL/ISIS or Daesh-use oil as a revenue source. Understanding the spatial and temporal variation in production can help determine the scale of operations, technical capacity, and revenue streams. This information, in turn, can inform both security and reconstruction strategies. To this end, we use satellite multi-spectral imaging and ground-truth pre-war output data to effectively construct a real-time census of oil production in areas controlled by the ISIL terrorist group. More broadly, remotely measuring the activity of extractive industries in conflict-affected areas without reliable administrative data can support a broad range of public policy and decisions and military operations.