Insights from our Editorial Team

Verizon is joining Apple and Google in the effort to not just finance the growth of sustainable technologies but to also fuel their own operations with cleaner energies and to reduce their carbon footprints. As for the telecom operator, it says that it will own its systems and apply those investments to its corporate offices and data centers.

Shale gas producers have gotten an injection of adrenalin by an unexpected source: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has reduced its estimates as to how much methane is leaked during the production process.

The sociological and economic aftershocks from the devastation of Fukushima will reverberate through Japan for decades. Of the 52 nuclear plants operating before the disaster, only two continue to run, and the consensus is that Japan will not again resort to nuclear generation for the foreseeable future. That puts enormous pressure on utilities to replace lost capacity with other fuel sources and to better manage demand.

For more than 100 years electricity generation and distribution systems have evolved to become one of the most reliable services imaginable - one which has been the foundation of the industrial expansion and prosperity of the developed world. Our society is totally dependent upon this and even relatively short and localized interruptions in the power supply (for example during the Sandy superstorm) cause major disruptions to everyday life.