As the world is anticipating the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, energy consumption in industry and services is likely to grow. In the longer term, the developing world will increase its energy utilization, leading to growth of global primary energy demand by of 0.4% - 0.6% per year, or a 25% increase by 2050.

What do you see when you imagine a zero-carbon future? Electric buses zipping by? Rolling hills covered with solar panels? Offshore wind farms towering over the sea? If batteries are part of your vision, good thinking. But there's a promising, if whimsical, piece of the renewable energy puzzle that might be missing from your mental picture: the world of gravity energy storage.

Cryptocurrency is not an obvious candidate to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Just mining bitcoin, the primary blockchain-based cryptocurrency, emits about 22 megatons of carbon per year (the precise number is hard to pin down). But Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak is backing a new cryptocurrency promising to do just that.

Updated Nov 21: 750 acres in the title was a typo; the correct number is 720 According to Nate Storey, the future of farms is vertical. It's also indoors, can be placed anywhere on the planet, is heavily integrated with robots and AI, and produces better fruits and vegetables while using 95% less water and 99% less land.

The huge disruption caused by the coronavirus crisis has highlighted how much modern societies rely on electricity. Millions of people are now confined to their homes, resorting to teleworking to do their jobs, e-commerce sites to do their shopping, and streaming video platforms to find entertainmen