Futures Thinking and Sustainable Development

Huge quantities of networked sensors have appeared in cities across the world in recent years. These include cameras and sensors that count the number of passers by, devices to sense air quality, traffic flow detectors, and even bee hive monitors. There are also large amounts of information about how people use cities on social media services such as Twitter and foursquare.

Citizens are even making their own sensors – often using smart phones – to monitor their environment and share the information with others; for example, crowd-sourced noise pollution maps are becoming popular. All this information can be used by city leaders to create policies, with the aim of making cities “smarter” and more sustainable.

At least 50,000 South Australian homes will be given solar panels and batteries in a scheme by Elon Musk’s Tesla and the SA government to build the world’s largest virtual power plant, slashing household power bills in the process.

Under the deal unveiled by Premier Jay Weatherill, solar systems and batteries will be supplied and installed free of charge.

The cost of the project will be financed through the sale of electricity, generated by the panels, in what Mr Weatherill said would be the largest project of its kind.

The government will this week issue an expression of interest for a retailer to deliver the program, with the intention of bringing additional competition to the market.

Just when you thought vehicle manufacturing in Australia had gone the way of the dodo, billionaire UK investor Sanjeev Gupta has popped up with a bid to buy some of GMH’s old Elizabeth plant in South Australia to build electric vehicles here.

Mr Gupta is executive chairman of UK-based GFG Alliance and is already renowned as a rejuvenator of declining assets.

In the UK he is called the “man of steel” for rescuing 25 British steel mills, car plants and engineering workshops from closure, and the company website claims Mr Gupta has since 2013 acquired and relaunched 35 businesses worldwide, saving 11,000 jobs.

Australia can meet its 2030 greenhouse emissions target at zero net cost, according to our analysis of a range of options for the National Electricity Market.

Our modelling shows that renewable energy can help hit Australia’s emissions reduction target of 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030 effectively for free. This is because the cost of electricity from new-build wind and solar will be cheaper than replacing old fossil fuel generators with new ones.

Machine learning isn't just for simple tasks like assessing credit risk and sorting mail anymore -- today, it's capable of far more complex applications, like grading essays and diagnosing diseases. With these advances comes an uneasy question: Will a robot do your job in the future?

Today we face many problems, from epidemics to climate change. Grand challenges call for grand ideas – new tech, clever science, and smart solutions. Discover the best o

A record-breaking month of rooftop installations and a flood of large-scale solar farms could almost double Australia’s solar power capacity in a single year, industry analysts say.

A massive solar energy boom is being predicted for 2018, after an unprecedented number of industrial solar farms were approved by the New South Wales and Queensland governments last year.

Should we assess global competence?

Every school should encourage its students to try and make sense of the most pressing issues defining our times. The high demands placed on schools to help their students cope and succeed in an increasingly interconnected environment can only be met if education systems define new learning objectives based on a solid framework, and use different types of assessment to reflect on the effectiveness of their initiatives and teaching practices. In this context, PISA aims to provide a comprehensive overview of education systems’ efforts to create learning environments that invite young people to understand the world beyond their immediate environment, interact with others Introduction: The importance of an international global competence assessment  with respect for their rights and dignity, and take action towards building sustainable and thriving communities. A fundamental goal of this work is to support evidence-based decisions on how to improve curricula, teaching, assessments and schools’ responses to cultural diversity in order to prepare young people to become global citizens.

Perth’s Christ Church Grammar School will soon be home to Australia’s largest school solar powered system.

Chairman John Poynton said the 670 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system was expected to save around $195,000 and also provide an example of effective clean energy.

“Christ Church Grammar School has made an investment in solar power because not only do we want to reduce our carbon footprint for the benefit of future generations, we know that it will deliver financial benefits,” he said.

It seems there is a gap between what Australian companies publicly state they are doing with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and what they are actually doing. Our research found that companies are still not meaningfully disclosing the way these goals are measured and reporting their contributions.

These UN goals show business how they can contribute to solving the world’s biggest sustainable development challenges.

Waymo today plans to announce its driverless vehicles have been operating on US roadways for weeks with total freedom. Tesla recently told shareholders it was on the verge of updating its Autopilot software for full autonomy. And Las Vegas will tomorrow become the first city in history to offer the public a ride in a completely driverless shuttle on regular roads with real traffic.

We’ve officially entered the age of level four autonomy for driverless cars.

On Wednesday November 8th the general public will have the opportunity to ride through a half-mile stretch of Las Vegas in a new shuttle built by French AI company Navya. The shuttle is autonomous; it doesn’t have a steering wheel or brake pedal. It’s being operated by non-profit American Automobile Association (AAA) as part of an initiative to help spread positive awareness for the technology.

Machines that can think, learn and adapt are coming -- and that could mean that we humans will end up with significant unemployment. What should we do about it? In a straightforward talk about a controversial idea, futurist Martin Ford makes the case for separating income from traditional work and instituting a universal basic income.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale(1). Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence (breaking quickly) or perceived obsolesence (becoming unfashionable).

But many of the products we buy, especially for Christmas, cannot become obsolescent. The term implies a loss of utility, but they had no utility in the first place. An electronic drum-machine t-shirt; a Darth Vader talking piggy bank; an ear-shaped i-phone case; an individual beer can chiller; an electronic wine breather; a sonic screwdriver remote control; bacon toothpaste; a dancing dog: no one is expected to use them, or even look at them, after Christmas Day. They are designed to elicit thanks, perhaps a snigger or two, and then be thrown away.

The majority of Liberal voters support a strong clean energy target, putting them at odds with the government over its hostile stance on the issue.

A survey of more than 2000 Australians, commissioned by the Climate Council, found 77 per cent believed the government should implement Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s clean energy target.

More interestingly, 61 per cent of Liberal voters said they supported the implementation of the clean energy target. Just 34 per cent believed the CET was “unimportant”.

Earlier this month, I set off for Bonn to help launch ‘2030 Hive Mind’, a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) game at the ODI’s first annual Global Festival of Ideas – the world’s first playable conference on sustainable development.

The idea was to bring influential people, policy-makers, development wonks (like me), and activists together to get a sense of the knock on effects – both positive and negative – that focusing on one SDG can have on other. We aimed to find ways to collaborate and coordinate through the pushes and pulls of many different actors, objectives and motivations.