Energy

A United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report released last month has urged countries outside the USA to be cautious about fracking. In addition to warning about the excessive water consumption and potential for earthquakes, the report highlights the many commercial advantages the US frackers enjoyed that are …

When the trucks stop running, the economy crashes… and it does so rapidly.  That is a lesson that Brazil has reminded us of this week.  But it is a lesson that more developed states like the UK ignore at their peril. Problems began, as is often the case, with a …

The long period of anaemic GDP growth is about to stall.  The reason why?  Because global oil prices have just broken out of their Goldilocks band – the price range in which oil companies can stay in businesses without triggering a global recession. Last week the Brent Crude oil price …

Sometimes a story is repeated so often that its veracity is never challenged.  One such is the myth that British households are in thrall to a wicked energy cartel that puts excessive profits above common decency.  So much so, indeed, that the government and the opposition parties have all signed …

For all practical purposes, solar energy (along with the wind, waves and tides that it drives) is unending.  Or, to put it more starkly, the odds of human beings being around to witness the day when solar energy no longer exists are staggeringly low.  The same, of course, cannot be …

Every now and again someone poses a question so obvious that you wonder why nobody asked it before.  When that happens, it is usually because it reveals an unconscious narrative that you have been following.  It is precisely because it jars with what you thought you knew that it is …

Even though humanity has barely scratched the surface of its dependency on fossil fuels, it is already hitting hard limits.  The most obvious of these is the storage/back-up problem, which limits renewables like wind and solar to a maximum of some 25 percent of electricity production before it begins to …

Some months ago I decided to be a vegan.  I didn’t do it for any ethical or environmental reasons.  I simply noticed that all of the fittest women are currently attracted to vegan men.  So I figured that if I wanted to succeed in the dating stakes, I’d better dispense …

These days, simply uttering the word “Russia” or the name “Putin” is considered sufficient for all critical thought to go out of the window.  Unlike the rest of the world – upon whom we place a high burden of proof – British exceptionalism dictates that any official accusation or claim …

In a society where the “right” not to be offended takes precedence over factual evidence, it is all too easy to believe that we are well on the way to a 100 percent renewable energy future.  This, after all, is what all of those happy clappy green-tech articles that get …