Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

  PRESS RELEASE   Global Renewable Energy Investment Hit USD 807 Billion in 2024 Record investment in renewables, but growth pace slows to 7.3%      Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 217 November 2025  - Global investments in the energy transition reached a new record of USD 2.4 trillion in 2024 – a 20% increase from the average annual levels of 2022/23. About one-third was directed towa...

In 2014 The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina hosted conference on the Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus. It played an important role in the discussion in the SDG Open Working Group on the interlinkages between Goals. In 2016 Jamie Bartram head of the Water Institute and I brought together some of the key presentations from the conference into a book ' The Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus: Challenges and an agenda for action'. We invited the then Prince of Wales to write the Foreword which he agreed to do. The issues he raised in 2016 have moved even more to the centre of the political agenda. The climate crisis has accelerated and the links between their impacts on food, water and energy are now clear to anyone who is looking. In 2016 the idea of the circular economy was not yet being discussed in the negotiations. In 2022 the new negotiations on a Plastic Convention have it as a central part of the negotiations. His insights into the challenges we f...

Invitation Launch of “ Tomorrow’s People and New Technology”  '  ConnectAID’s SDG Book Corner You are invited to ConnectAID’s online SDG Book Corner for the launch of   “Tomorrow's People and New Technology” by Felix Dodds, Carolina Duque Chopitea, and Ranger Ruffins. Time: 4pm CET/10am/EST to 5pm CET / 11am EST, Thursday 28 October. Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ujuahLbpQ-Kdogl0UFCm9Q "I simply love Tomorrow's People and New Technology. Teasingly playful, inquisitive rather than just another turgid tome trying to be politically correct and accurate with each forecast, the authors' bandwidth is wonderfully broad, the insights incisive, and the writing welcoming. This book is a speculative triumph. It invites us into an imaginative world of endless fascination and ingenuity, at once allying suspicions that the future belongs only to the smart machines we have created and are in the process of letting loose." Richard David...

Vikram Rao, retired CTO concentrating on sustainable energy production and use, finishing his latest book Particulates Matter. A webinar conducted by the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster this week, in which I participated, triggered this piece. Some points made by the other three panelists Ivan Urlaub, Renee Peet and Gary Rackcliff are reflected here, but I take responsibility for this product. For purposes of this discussion, energy f alls largely into two buckets: electricity and oil and gas derivatives. In the last two months or so, the price of oil has halved.  Part of the driver was the Saudi/Russia spat, which is likely to end soon because neither can live with USD 23 (price at the writing) oil for long.  But the “shelter at home” policy in much of the world has slowed industrial output to a dull idle. G asoline and jet fuel use has plummeted. Electricity usage has dropped.   Here we will discuss the likely longer-term implications, especially as relating t...

G-STIC 2018 Co-host Statement In 2015, the international community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (thereby setting clear aspirations and goals to shift the world onto a sustainable development path) and launched the Technological Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) with its motto “Harnessing the Contribution of Science, Technology, and Innovation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals”. To reach these global objectives, a deep transition is needed to more resilient, sustainable and equitable socio-economic development models. Such a transition is possible despite the magnitude of the challenges ahead, but the limited time that remains necessitates the near-term deployment of market-ready transformative technological solutions at scale. To help shape the transformative technological transitions that are urgently needed, five independent and not-for-profit technological research institutes – the co-hosts of G-STIC – have teamed ...