Can non-conventional oil fill the gap?
A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 3 December 2009.
The oil crisis is not dead, only sleeping, according to an emerging consensus. The price may have collapsed from last year’s all-time high of $147 per barrel to around $75 today, as the recession grinds away at demand for crude, but nobody expects that to last when the economy recovers.
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Green grid
A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 12 March 2009.
Thomas Edison might have relished the irony. Just as his most famous legacy, the incandescent light bulb, heads for extinction, his other great passion, direct current, is set to boom.
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The end of the road for hydrogen?
A shorter version of this article appeared in New Scientist magazine on 26 November 2008.
Whatever happened to the hydrogen economy? At the turn of the century it was the next big thing, promising a Jetsons-style future of infinite clean energy and deliverance from climate change.
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Green fuel for the airline industry?
Published in New Scientist on 13 August 2008
IF YOU have become addicted to the fly-cheap philosophy espoused by budget airlines over the last decade, it could be time to rethink your travel plans.
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The great coal hole
First published in New Scientist, 17 January 2008
There used to be a joke about taking coal to Newcastle but these days the laughing stock is getting the stuff out.
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