David Fickling

Governments subsidise carbon-based energy to make it artificially cheap, which encourages us to use more polluting energy and deters us from making the switch to cleaner alternatives.

Who’s really keeping fossil fuels alive? Taxpayers globally

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted exports of aluminium from smelters in the Persian Gulf, and that has hit beverage manufacturers in India.

The Iran war is coming for your Diet Coke

LNG may find a way to soldier on as a raw material for the chemicals industry, but prospects for the roughly 40% that goes into power generation look bleak.

Why US$70 should be the most worrying number for LNG

The 1953 Nissho Maru incident is largely forgotten, but prefigured the great geopolitical emergencies of subsequent decades.

A forgotten crisis explains today’s oil shock

With a fresh Middle Eastern oil crisis building, Asian EV  manufacturers are poised to seize a new market, says the writer.

Expensive oil is EV makers’ best sales pitch

The building blocks of the technology industry are deeply dependent on petroleum flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Hormuz is the hidden risk to the AI economy

Shipping accounts for about 3% of global emissions, similar to all the aircraft in the sky.
THE BOTTOM LINE

The ships moving global trade are going electric

Elon Musk's Starlink network has nearly 10,000 orbiters so far.

Musk is beating China’s 203,000 paper satellites

Solar panels are arranged to resemble pandas at a power plant in Datong. Even with a headlong renewables build-out, China's rising electricity consumption means that any shortfalls are met by coal generators.

China’s energy future still runs on old technology

A corn field in Indiana in the US. Yield growth for the three main cereals – corn, rice and wheat – has nearly flatlined over the past five years.

World’s food security is facing a triple threat