Nearly 90 percent of U.S. households used air conditioning in 2020, according to the latest survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This figure has been rising steadily over the past two decades. As our chart shows, central air conditioning equipment, which is used to cool an entire home, made up the majority of usage in the U.S. in […]

A Spanish company has devised a system to extract drinking water from thin air to supply arid regions where people are in desperate need. “The goal is to help people,” said Enrique Veiga, the 82-year-old engineer who invented the machine during a harsh drought in southern Spain in the 1990s. “The goal is to get […]

An estimated 92% of the world’s population lives in areas where air pollution exceeds safety limits, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has released new research showing where the worst – and least – affected places are. Interactive maps highlight the magnitude of the problem: swathes of the world are coloured yellow, orange, red and purple, ...