New Mexico Tech enters the newest age of energy exploration with a long tradition of research towards understanding and more effectively harnessing renewable methods for creating energy. As the United States explores new means of energy, New Mexico Tech continues to be a trailblazer at the forefront in all areas of energy research and exploration.

New Mexico Tech has a long history in energy research, and has created and utilized its many research centers for discovering better ways of fueling our world. Since 1977 the Petroleum Recovery Research Center (PRRC) has been investigating more efficient methods of finding and taking carbon-based fuels from the Earth. Sharing its technology with industry, the PRRC's mission has been to assist others in better and improved petroleum recovery. Now the PRRC is the lead organization for the southwest partnership on carbon sequestration funded by the Department of Energy. The PRRC is using it's knowledge in extraction to develop methods to return carbon the subsurface.

Another NMT Research Center, the Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis (ICASA), is investigating how price changing occurs in the wholesale energy market, a topic of utmost importance as the global price spike in gasoline demonstrated in 2008. Researchers at ICASA have created the Power Trader, a simulator to better understand price fluctuations in the energy market and the societal factors that cause them.

Quickly establishing itself as an important research center on the national level is the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy (NMCEP) located in Hobbs, NM. The NMCEP's mission is to become a community-centered response to the challenge of national energy security in the United States. Instead of energy leaders trekking to Washington D.C. to discuss local energy policies, the NMCEP will become an outlet for encouraging and facilitating discussions at a local level. To this end the NMCEP has already produced two important and timely energy conferences that combined have drawn audiences of over 800 regional and national leaders in various fields of energy production, research and policy (see a complete list of all NMT Research Organizations).

New Mexico Tech's most valuable resource is the collection of expert researchers carrying out important studies within these and other centers affiliated with NMT. Throughout the school, research faculty are exploring new ideas that are sure to shape future growth in renewable energy policy, generation and transmission, and interests range from research in hydrothermal energy to solar energy (see a complete list of researchers and their interests). Even students are carrying on important work in renewable energy, such as the project for creating a reduced cost heliostat.

As the focus of the energy industry narrows on renewable energy, there is little doubt that the gaze will fall squarely on New Mexico Tech. Research excellence is a tradition at NMT, and one which will continue into the new age of renewable energy.