As nations and international organizations set ambitious climate and sustainability goals, commodity prices have soared and supply chains have entered a state of flux. Geopolitical volatility, trade disputes and resource events such as the war in Ukraine and lockdowns in China magnified the trend, exposing the vulnerabilities of Western energy dependence and pushing critical minerals to the forefront for governments and investors.

Countries like Canada and the US have established lists of critical minerals or materials deemed essential to national security and economic prosperity. However, most of these remain sourced from volatile or monopolized foreign jurisdictions. While the energy transitions of the past relied on fossil fuels, the current shift toward sustainability runs on metals. Among the resources at the center of this paradigm shift is lithium.

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Air Transat is charging more for flights to Europe as the soaring cost of jet fuel — triggered by an oil crisis that has emerged from the war in the Middle East — weighs on Canadian and international airlines.

“We have increased fuel surcharges on Europe. However, this is blended in the total price,” said Jean-François Pruneau, chief financial officer at the Montreal-headquartered airline, during the company’s first quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

“What we’re also doing is currently raising fares on peak travel dates and routes where we see less competition, where we have more flexibility,” he told investors.

Several international airlines have added fuel surcharges — an extra fee tacked onto airfare to cover unforeseen oil costs — to account for a spike in jet fuel prices since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the start of a regional war that has disrupted the global supply of oil.

Air New Zealand, Australia’s Qantas Airways and Scandinavian Airlines have all announced that they would be hiking passenger fares.

Japan Airlines said it has “no plans” to bring forward fuel surcharge changes before April 1, as it evaluates those costs over a two-month period.

Other international airlines, like Lufthansa and Ryanair, have confirmed that they have a hedging system in place to temporary lock fuel prices in.

Pricing adjustments ‘may be needed’: WestJet

Air Transat’s Pruneau told investors tickets that have already been sold can be repriced, and said that if the company were to raise fares immediately it would see “a negative impact on demand.”

Air Transat is also looking at other ways to save costs, “including restricting our expenses across the company to make sure that we’re going to be able to deal with that fuel spike,” he said.

The cost of jet fuel tends to be an airline’s biggest expense, and it has soared since the conflict began. According to a price tracker published by the International Air Transport Association, the cost of jet fuel skyrocketed 58.4 per cent between Feb. 27 and March 6, from $99.40 US to $157.41 US per barrel.

CBC News reached out to other Canadian airlines to ask how they would respond to the soaring cost of jet fuel.

A spokesperson for WestJet said on Monday that the situation in Iran “has already made operating flights more expensive … based on this, it’s likely further pricing adjustments may be needed.”

Air Canada, meanwhile,…

Retail therapy can now be done with less guilt as a massive expansion of EV charge points on the way.

Be.EV, backed by Octopus Energy Generation, will invest £20 million to install 200 ultra-rapid electric vehicle (EV) charging bays across 22 retail and leisure sites managed by Schroders Capital in the UK.

The new infrastructure, with chargers delivering up to 300kW, will be installed at key retail parks occupied by brands such as IKEA, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Lidl, Costa Coffee and McDonalds.

The chargers can deliver up to 325 miles of range in 20 minutes and will be leased on 20-year, index-linked terms.

The charging hubs are expected to significantly benefit retailers.

A survey found 57% of EV drivers shop or visit a cafe while charging. With EV registrations expected to grow by 31% in 2025, this footfall is set to increase.

Agreements have been exchanged for the first three sites, with more expected shortly.

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In 2015, Carter Li decided he wanted an electric car. He was living in a condo in downtown Toronto, and figured he could negotiate with the condo building to get an EV charger installed in his parking stall if he agreed to cover not just his own costs, but some of the building’s costs.

“I mean, I’m helping them upgrade their own infrastructure,” he reasoned. “Why would they say ‘no’?”

But the property manager did say “no” — after more than half a year of research and discussions with Li. “They’re like, ‘This is too complicated. You’re touching common infrastructure. We don’t want anything to do with this,'” he recalled.

While a third of Canadians live in multi-residential homes like apartment and condo buildings, a 2024 online survey of more than 2,000 Canadian EV owners by the non-profit Pollution Probe found only 12 per cent of those EV owners lived in multi-residential buildings, and those that did were far less likely to have at-home charging than those in single family homes.

Many people won’t buy an EV if they have no place to charge, say Canadian Climate Institute researchers Arthur Zhang and Anna Kunduth.

“Access to charging remains a key factor on whether, and which drivers decide to go electric,” they wrote in a 2024 blog post.

Li realized his frustration as a would-be EV owner in a multi-family building was a common one. So he resolved to work on a solution, co-founding a startup called Swtch Energy that aims to make charging easy for buildings where many vehicles may be charging at once.

It’s among a handful of startups across Canada that are trying to provide EV charging access for people who live in condos and apartments. Here’s a look at three of their solutions.

A ‘power vending machine’

Vancouver-based startup Parkizio Technologies has what’s probably the simplest and lowest-tech solution, a device called Plugzio Universal Outlet.

“You can kind of think of it as a power vending machine,” said Ali Mohazab, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

In many cases, a tenant or condo owner may already have a nearby outlet, for example one designed for block heaters. In some cases, Mohazab says, the landlord or property manager won’t allow it to be used for EV charging.

The Plugzio Universal Outlet is a smart meter that allows the landlord or property manager to charge EV owners for the electricity they use, while controlling things like who can charge, when, how much and for what price — addressing concerns that might otherwise make them wary of allowing tenants to charge their EV.

The company says it’s only a fifth the cost of a…

A gum waste produced by trees in India could transform the sustainability and performance of next-generation supercapacitors, researchers from Scotland, South Korea and India have found.

Supercapacitors, used widely in electronics and electric vehicles, offer fast charging and discharging but degrade over time due to corrosive acidic electrolytes.

This degradation leads to e-waste and reduced lifespan.

The international team discovered that combining gum kondagogu — a waste by-product from the Cochlospermum gossypium tree — with sodium alginate creates a biodegradable biopolymer, dubbed ‘KS’.

When added to the electrolyte, KS forms a protective layer over the carbon electrodes, reducing wear while preserving energy transfer.

In laboratory tests, the modified supercapacitor retained 93% of its energy capacity after 30,000 charge cycles.

A standard supercapacitor, by contrast, dropped to just 58%.

Dr Jun Young Cheong, from the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering, said: “The gums we’ve used in this study don’t have many practical uses and are actually a bit of a headache for the Indian government to dispose of. With this research, we’ve found a way of making something genuinely impactful from this gum, creating a biodegradable, recyclable biopolymer which enables remarkable performance and could extend the useful life of supercapacitors dramatically.”

Dr Cheong estimates that with just one cycle a day, the enhanced device could last over 80 years without significant performance loss.

This research builds on his previous work using biowaste in lithium-ion batteries and could be key to lowering the environmental impact of energy storage devices.

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