Believe it or not, the UK is currently experiencing ‘full-employment.’  That is, while 4.7 percent of working age people are officially unemployed, most are what economists used to call ‘frictional’ – they are moving between jobs or moving between work and education. At face value, this is good news.  Indeed, …

Back in the days when climate change was far off in the future, small countries like Wales could be used as a measure of the damage humans were doing to the planet.  In the 1980s we were regularly treated to headlines along the lines of “An area of forest the …

Here’s some “great news:” California now generates so much solar energy that electricity prices have gone negative.  According to Ian Johnston at the Independent: “In March, during the hours of 8am to 2pm, system average hourly prices were frequently at or below $0 per megawatt-hour.” Similar stories regularly hit the …

Legacy infrastructure remains the key advantage for fossil fuel technologies.  This is true in electricity generation, where pre-existing coal and gas power stations can supply electricity at a cheaper price than can be achieved when renewables and especially nuclear are built from scratch.  The same is true for vehicles.  One …

Getting beaten up and thrown off the plane by a bunch of goons is simply the United Airlines’ digital version of a long-established banking practice according to Izabella Kaminska at the Financial Times: “Some might call it “bad public relations”, but we would prefer to call it a sign of things …

American author and occasional politician Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. once famously observed that: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Nowhere is the truth of this observation more clearly seen than in Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s recent dismissal of …

For several years, Britain’s National Grid has issued warnings about potential energy shortages as demand outstrips supply in winter.  However, the company, which operates the UK’s energy infrastructure, is now raising concerns about a new problem – low demand coupled to an excess supply of renewable electricity in summertime. According …

Environmental groups were quick to attack US President Trump’s decision to overturn his predecessor’s climate change policy in favour of a pro-fossil fuel approach aimed at securing new jobs in America’s rust belt states.  However, this is to misunderstand the many weaknesses of the Paris Agreement itself, which is a …

In a further blow to the UK government’s energy strategy, troubled Toshiba has been forced to buy French company Engie’s 40 percent stake in NuGen – the company that was supposed to be building three new reactors in Cumbria. The buy-out comes on the back of Toshiba’s decision last week …

Within any country’s economy are several critical industries that are considered “strategic.”  In 19th century Britain, for example, coal, steel and shipbuilding were deemed to be essential.  Even today, the ability to construct military vessels is, at least to a limited extent, considered strategic.  Steel has a less obvious position.  …