Fiona Erskine is both a chemical engineer and a mainstream thriller writer. While the ‘engineer by day, writer by night’ dictum keeps her careers separate in real life, there is plenty of crossover in her fictional worlds

Critical minerals will underpin the global clean energy transition, but the threat of constraints on supply is forcing investment and research into new and alternative forms of extraction.

Soaring construction costs are exacerbating London’s housing crisis, according to independent think tank Centre for London.

In time for hosting the 2034 World Cup, Saudi Arabia is building a sprawling futuristic ‘cognitive’ megacity for tourism, urban living, manufacturing and more. How will it do it?

MPs have issued a damning report about the failures of the HS2 rail programme saying the DfT does not have ‘the right skills and capabilities’ to effectively lead the project.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has said a report from the HS2 management team suggesting that costs could rise by a further £9bn are not “accurate or reliable”.

Transport secretary Louise Haigh has said the costs of HS2 have been allowed to “spiral out of control” and has launched an independent review to get spending back on track.

HS2 is still expected to terminate at London Euston rather than an outer borough of the Capital, transport secretary Louise Haigh has indicated.

In just six hours, a new 3D-printed train station was installed in the rural town of Arida, Japan in what railway operators are calling a ‘world first’.

The Prime Minister has pledged to invest £2.15bn to bolster “Victorian-era” transport services in the North of England.

MPs have issued a damning report about the failures of the HS2 rail programme saying the DfT does not have ‘the right skills and capabilities’ to effectively lead the project.

China's CR450 high-speed train prototype is currently undergoing rigorous testing and evaluation in Beijing.

WSP has been selected to undertake engineering surveys and consultancy work for the £220m project.

The world’s first underground structure built entirely by robots has been unveiled that could pave way to build tunnels more than 10 times faster and at half the cost of conventional methods.

Tunnelling has started to create a new river crossing in east London.

A 2,000-tonne, custom-made tunnel-boring machine named Dorothy has become the first HS2 machine to complete a tunnel breakthrough.

TikTok has been given another 90 days by the Trump administration to operate in the US after a law was passed last year that would force parent company ByteDance to sell the video-sharing platform.

The government has unveiled plans to invest £725bn over the next decade in improvements to the UK’s infrastructure including energy, transport, water and digital connectivity.

Amazon’s driverless taxi subsidiary Zoox has opened its first production facility for purpose-built robotaxis in the US and hopes to build more than 10,000 a year.

Generative AI services such as ChatGPT are major carbon (CO₂) emitters due to their intensive energy usage, but a study has found that some AI prompts could cause 50 times more emissions than others depending on what is asked.

A trial of a hybrid vertical growing system in Dyson Farming’s 26-acre strawberry glasshouse on its Lincolnshire farm has massively boosted yields.

A proposed infrastructure link connecting the Moroccan energy grid with the UK has been dropped by the government due to ‘security risks and doubts about its viability’.

Robots will be used to remotely and autonomously sort and segregate radioactive waste at the defunct nuclear sites.

The new Janet Harvey Hall at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Govan, located on the south bank of the River Clyde, will be used to assemble and outfit Royal Navy warships.