Each week Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, summarizes the top-5 future looking developments and news items that I find to be inspiring, interesting, concerning, or downright strange. Each day I read through dozens of blogs and news websites to find those things that we should be aware of.
Top-5 Futures for November 13th: 100% Renewable Energy by 2050 talks about Vancouver’s bold step towards renewable energy, Biologic’s responsive clothing, Apple pushing into person-to-person payments, how to control things with your brain, and 3D-printed cat armour.

Vancouver first major city in North America to approve 100% Renewable Energy Strategy

City Council approved a new Renewable City Strategy for Vancouver to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050 or sooner.
“Vancouver creates enormous economic opportunity by shifting to 100 per cent renewable energy and leading the world’s cities on climate change,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson.
“Today over 30 per cent of the energy used in our city is renewable. With a pragmatic approach to buildings and transportation, we eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels and make Vancouver a cleaner, healthier, and more resilient city.”
The 100% Renewable Energy Strategy approved by Council is based on three key principles:

1. Reduce energy use
2. Increase the use of renewable energy
3. Increase the supply of renewable energy

The City of Vancouver can be the catalyst for change through its own internal operations, by:

• Adopting zero emission standards for new City buildings
• Transitioning the City’s vehicle fleet to renewable sources of energy

Other actions the City can take to move towards 100 per cent renewable energy are to:

• Establish greenhouse gas intensity limits for new buildings
• Enable the conversion of the downtown and hospital steam systems from natural gas to renewable energy
• Streamline the process for installing rooftop solar panels
• Support increased car-sharing and the uptake of renewably powered vehicles in car-sharing fleets
• Pricing carbon pollution into the decision-making process for municipal operations

Via City of Vancouver

Biologic: Responsive Clothing

bioLogic is growing living actuators and synthesizing responsive bio-skin in the era where bio is the new interface. We are Imagining a world where actuators and sensors can be grown rather than manufactured, being derived from nature as opposed to engineered in factories.
Initiated from MIT Media Lab, BioLogic is our attempt to program living organism and invent responsive and transformable interfaces of the future. Nature has engineered its own actuators, as well as the efficient material composition, geometry and structure to utilize its actuators and achieve functional transformation. Based on the natural phenomenon of hygromorphic transformation, we introduce a specific type of living cells as nanoactuators that react to body temperature and humidity change. The living nanoactuator can be controlled by electrical signal and communicate with the virtual world as well. A digital printing system and design simulation software are developed to assist the design of transformation structure.

Here is also the making of Biologic.

Learn more here

Apple, Banks in Talks on Mobile Person-to-Person Payment Service

Apple is talking with US banks about the potential to create a service that would let people use iPhones for person-to-person payments, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
An Apple mobile service that lets people send one another money would compete with offers from PayPal, Google, Facebook and startup Square.
The talks are ongoing and it was unclear whether deals had been inked with any banks, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people said to be familiar with the matter.
The proposed service would let people use Apple mobile devices to quickly transfer money from bank checking accounts to intended recipients, according to the WSJ.
Via WSJ

How to Control Things Using Your Brain 

OpenBCI is an open-source hardware that allows a D.I.Y. community of artists, designers, and engineers to innovate, while serving as a tool for research and innovation. From using brain activity to control a toy spider to engaging a group in collective mind control, the open-source brain computer interface aims to change the way people interact with machines.

Via Wired
Also see our related post – The Future of User Experience – Mind Control

3D Printed Cat Armour

Because cats will need more protection in the future.

Via Print That Thing
See the last 4 week’s Top-5 Futures here:

• Top-5 Futures for November 6th – Facebook’s Unbelievable AI

• Top-5 Futures for October 30th – Stop Eating Bacon

• Top-5 Futures for October 23rd – Humans in 1000 Years

• Top-5 Futures for October 16th – Bikinis and Killer Mosquito Swarms

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.