1Sep2022
Blowin’ in the wind – wind power market estimated to cross USD 1.5 Trn by 2031
Transparency Market Research TMR estimates the wind power market to rise at a CAGR of 10% during the forecast period from 2021 to 2031. Emergence of wind power as one of the fastest-growing renewable energy technologies due to key economic and environmental benefits is fueling the growth.
Economic advantages of wind energy are attracting investments for the establishment of wind power plants. Wind power generation offers advantage of low air pollution and zero water consumption. Wind energy is also the cheapest source of power generation. Wind turbines display long lasting operational efficiency of around 20 years without releasing harmful emissions. This has led to the evolution of wind energy uses, from grinding grain and pumping water to commercial electricity generation, underpinning massive revenue potential for the wind power market.
Depleting fossil fuel resources, and their carbon footprint is leading governments to increasingly complement renewable sources of energy such as wind power and solar PV. Government policies of several countries to limit carbon dioxide emissions, along with incentives to adopt renewable sources of energy are favorable to the growth of wind power market.
The road of no return – employees still keen on working from home
TradingPlatforms.com surveyed to establish how sectors are performing regarding return to the office. The highest average attendance rate was for the banking industry at 47%.
However, the average attendance rate for logistics and technology was at the opposite end of the spectrum at 15%. Big industrial companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla have worked hard to get their employees back to their desks. Yet, their workforce prefers the current state of remote or hybrid working.
The attendance varies widely for all 13 sectors targeted during the survey. No sector averages more than 50% attendance; only four of the 13 sectors reach more than 50% peak attendance.
Employers and workers face the novel problem of coordinating a return to work, whether full-time or in a hybrid capacity. TradingPlatforms’s analyst, Edith Reads, said, “The pandemic highlighted extra problems with returning to the office. Most workers have issues with long commutes to and from the office, high childcare costs, ongoing worries about exposure to Covid-19 variants, and now monkeypox. As a result, workers are fighting to maintain the option of working from home while employers force employees back into the office.”
Responsibility talks – real estate lenders show growing focus on ESG
According to a new survey from Aeon Investments, some 95% of pension fund and other institutional investors agree with the view that the bespoke nature of alternative credit presents a viable option for investors to make a positive social and environmental impact by educating smaller companies in the financing market.
Some two thirds (66%) of those surveyed believe that over the next two years real estate lenders will increasingly have closer ongoing engagement with borrowers through the life of the loans they originate, looking at the removal of harmful materials, monitoring of delivery of social housing goals, and mitigation strategies around flood risks, for example.
76% of institutional investors believe that between now and 2024 real estate lenders will increasingly offer much better terms to projects with exemplary ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) credentials. Some 68% of those surveyed believe that the gulf between the financing available to real estate projects at either end of the ESG scale is set to widen rapidly.
Khalid Khan, Managing Director, Aeon Investments said: “The structured credit market is fully embracing ESG. Although there is still much work to do here, and the industry needs to safeguard itself against claims of greenwashing, there is no doubt, for example, that those real estate projects with poor ESG credentials will increasingly face issues accessing finance, resulting in limited options and punitive borrowing terms. This will cascade down in the structured credit market.”
Decrypting the blockchain – hacks on the rise
The number of cyberattacks centered around blockchain technology, a transaction record database commonly used for crypto currency exchange, is on the rise, according to Cambridge based IT security firm, The SecOps Group. With just three hacks causing damage of almost USD 1 billion so far this year, the pressure is on for blockchain developers to identify and patch security issues before they get exploited in the wild.
There are two main methods of successful attack: one relies on social engineering tricks such as convincing a victim to send crypto currency to an attacker’s wallet; the second, and more complicated, type of hack requires a deep understanding of blockchain smart contracts and associated components, such as side-chain, cross-chain, wallets, understanding of various protocols, and more.
With smart contracts playing a key role in automating several processes within a blockchain, running an audit to examine and analyze its code is now crucial for preventing attacks. Implemented effectively, it will help to discover errors, issues and security vulnerabilities in the code and suggest ways to fix them.
Sumit ‘Sid’ Siddharth, the founder of The SecOps Group, said, “With the exponential growth of crypto currencies, NFTs and other blockchain implementations, there has never been a better time for cybercriminals to convert a vulnerability into easy and big money. We can see that thousands of decentralized finance projects and NFT projects have been developed in blockchain technology aka web 3.0, and securing them should be just as important as building them.”
