David Fickling

For those of us who aren’t professional traders, the closest we ever get to a real-time commodities market is an airline booking site. Watching prices flicker out of existence before we can make a transaction is an infuriating experience that surely contributes to the discontent that many feel…

Are pipelines built to threaten democracies, or befriend authoritarians? Judging by the responses to Russia’s two biggest gas export projects, it depends where you are. In Europe, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, intended to double Moscow’s direct export capacity into Germany to 110 billion cubic…

A few months ago, it looked like a cascading global power crunch was about to turn back the tide of the energy transition. In China, shortages of coal drove prices of solid fuel to 1,908.20 yuan per metric ton ($299.29), leading to power cuts and industrial shutdowns as generators refused to…

Less than three months into a coal output surge ordered by Beijing to paper over the cracks in China’s electricity grid, the signs of strain are starting to show. Emergency rescue services were rushed to an illegal coal pit in Shanxi province Wednesday night after 22 miners were trapped…

Think the cost of electricity in Europe — where fuel shortages and the approach of winter recently drove prices over $200 per megawatt-hour — is crazy? You should check out Singapore. The city-state has seen wholesale prices rising as high as S$2,947 ($2,184)/MWh in October and $1,121/MWh last…

You probably know him as that stern, cult-leader-ish face staring from billboards on multiple continents, clad in wire-rimmed glasses and a starched button-up shirt, like some Steve Jobs of the sleep industry. Contrary to the haunt-your-dreams imagery, De Rucci guy isn’t the obsessively…

How do we ensure that the world has access to the Covid-19 vaccines needed to prevent more variants like the latest omicron strain from emerging? One disturbingly common response to calls from the World Health Organization and others to increase the availability of doses in emerging economies is…

There’s a grim inevitability to the fact that the latest concerning strain of the Covid-19 virus — known as B.1.1.529, and now nicknamed the Omicron variant 1 — should have been first identified in South Africa. So far, SARS-CoV-2’s most devastating impacts have been in developed countries. The…

The world’s air carriers are preparing their cabins for take-off. After 18 months in which passenger planes were laid up in desert boneyards, converted into makeshift medical-supplies freighters, and even flown on short return hops just to maintain their pilots’ certifications, the machinery of…

For five decades, international environmental meetings have been riven by a north-south divide. While the rich nations of the global north have led calls to rein in emissions, their less affluent counterparts have largely remained on the sidelines. The Kyoto Protocol was in essence a treaty…