Venezuela is suffering one of the worst economic crises of modern times. President Nicolás Maduro’s beleaguered government is overseeing scarcities of food and medicine, soaring crime rates and the collapse of public services and the health system. But when it launched a new cryptocurrency, the Petro, in an Initial Coin Offering (or ICO) the… Read More »
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, recently announced his company had bought US$1.5 billion (almost A$2 billion) of Bitcoin. The announcement led to a flurry of enthusiasm and a quick surge in price for the controversial cryptocurrency. This price bump has been good news for Musk in the short term. At one point,… Read More »
It has been a big year for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is worth six times what it was 12 months ago, and the joke currency Dogecoin has seen a hundredfold increase in price. A boom in “non-fungible tokens”, or NFTs – tradable tokens based on the same technology as cryptocurrency – is transforming the art market.… Read More »
Today’s global energy inequities are staggering. Video gamers in California consume more electricity than entire nations. The average Tanzanian used only one-sixth the electricity consumed by a typical American refrigerator in 2014. Globally, the top 10% of countries consume 20 times more energy than the bottom 10%. And 1.1 billion sub-Saharan Africans share the… Read More »
The government has unveiled a $1.9 billion package of investments in new and emerging energy and emission-reducing technologies, and reinforced its message that it is time to move on from assisting now commercially-viable renewables. The package will be controversial, given its planned broadening of the remit of the government’s clean energy investment vehicles, currently… Read More »
Two important global events are coming up that are widely hoped to help address what the United Nations calls the “dual challenge” – fighting climate change and ensuring that poorer countries can develop sustainably. Energy is a central theme in both. For the first time in 40 years, the U.N. General Assembly is convening… Read More »
South Africa’s economy has taken a number of very heavy body blows recently. These include a slowdown due to measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19, on top of increased state dysfunctionality due to corruption. The country has also just experienced the worst riots since it became a democracy in 1994. All have… Read More »
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently announced at the UN General Assembly that China “will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad”. Chinese banks have already swung into gear. Three days after Xi’s speech, the Bank of China declared it would no longer provide financing for new coal mining and power projects outside China from… Read More »
Global demand for energy is increasing by the hour as developing countries move toward industrialization. Experts estimate that by the year 2050, worldwide demand for electricity may reach 30 terawatts (TW). For perspective, one terawatt is roughly equal to the power of 1.3 billion horses. Energy from the sun is limitless – the sun… Read More »
Urban infrastructure – bridges, roads, railways, pipelines, power transmission towers and so on – must be inspected regularly to operate safely. Imagine if we used advanced technologies available to us, such as wireless sensors, mobile apps and machine learning, to remotely inspect and maintain this infrastructure. This could eliminate the need for regular daily… Read More »