Urvashi Verma

Nuclear power, the glamorous, high-tech power of the future, may be losing the energy race to humble natural gas, as abundant U.S. shale gas production causes natural gas prices to hit record low levels. So far this year, natural gas has performed the worst among commodities, posting declines in both January and February. Prices have dropped 20 percent to $2.90 per million British thermal units from $3.65 in January. In the past three years, natural gas prices have steadily declined more than 5

Wisconsin, a US state whose name evokes flowing rivers and abundant lakes, has an endemic water problem of nutrient pollution and is turning to Israeli startups to solve it. Nutrient pollution is caused by agriculture, storm water, wastewater and fossil fuels, and is creating an excess of nitrogen and phosphorus in Wisconsin ’s water supplies, harming the economic viability of its freshwater lakes and drinking water, experts say. Now, a partnership forged by Israel’s Start-up Nation Central ha

While the majority of the Western developed world lives with access to power 24 hours a day, more than half a billion people in Africa live without electricity. Now, in an initiative financed by the World Bank, US-based energy firm Solar Bankers is using a Blockchain to power 70,000 Nigerian households. In the sub-Saharan continent of Africa, nearly 600,000 people are without a reliable means of electricity, and more than 55 percent of residents living in outlying rural areas do not have acces

While the majority of us in the Western developed world live with access to power 24 hours a day, more than half a billion people in Africa live without access to electricity. Now, in an initiative financed by the World Bank, US-based energy firm Solar Bankers is using a Blockchain to power 70,000 Nigerian households. In the sub-Saharan continent of Africa, nearly 600,000 people are without a reliable means of electricity, and more than 55 percent of residents living in outlying rural areas do

For months, Cape Town, a city of four million people, has been facing the doomsday scenario of taps running dry. The city’s Theewaterskloof Dam, a water reservoir which once supplied the city 50 percent of its supply, looks more like a desert area. Two cataclysmic issues are at the center of Cape Town’s water crisis. First, the scarcity of rainfall: in the past three years, the once reliable rains that fell during winter months have disappeared. Second is the inequity in the distribution of wa

Nearly six years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, environmental activists are raising alarms that radiation levels are still dangerously high, despite the Abe government’s reassurances that thousands of residents can return home. Last week the Japanese government lifted the evacuation orders in the Fukushima prefecture citing radiation measurement levels under 100 mSv per year and pronouncing that safe for residents to return. mSv means 1 one-thousandth of a sievert, which is a measure of