THE BASIC MODEL of the electricity industry was to send high voltages over long distances to passive customers.

The world’s 1.2 billion poorest people, who are facing a long and perhaps endless wait for a connection to mains electricity, solar power could be the answer to their prayers.

AT FIRST SIGHT the story of renewable energy in the rich world looks like a waste of time and money.

Thanks to better technology and improved efficiency, energy is becoming cleaner and more plentiful—whatever the price of oil, says Edward Lucas.

During a visit to a young mother’s home in rural Shaanxi province in north-western China, Qin Shuhui, a family-planning worker, sets out a row of plastic cups on a bare concrete floor.

COULD São Paulo run out of water? The idea of South America’s biggest metropolis, home to 20m people, lacking something so basic seems fanciful.

THE “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” lies off the coast of California.

THAT Americans drive brash gas-guzzling cars whereas Europeans putter around in fuel-sipping runabouts is as enduring a stereotype as any.

PERCHED on a hill in Geneva above the city’s cluster of international agencies, the modernist headquarters of the World Health Organisation (WHO, pictured above) seems a manifestation of the organi

ON A grey day in December Johnny Anderes, the head chef at The Kitchen, a trendy restaurant in Chicago, is checking out a farm in an unlikely place.