Australia’s utility sector accounts for some 43.1% of the country’s carbon footprint, and some 37.2% of its direct emissions, new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has revealed.

Dr. Soheil Kazemian, from the ECU School of Business and Law, said the utilities sector included electricity generation, transmission and distribution, gas supply, water supply and waste collection and treatment.

Electricity generation and transmission were identified as the most significant contributors within the utilities sector, with commercial services and manufacturing emerging as substantial sources of embodied emissions within the sector.

The research, published in the Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, revealed that 71% of embodied emissions were attributed to electricity transmission, distribution, on-selling electricity, and electricity market operation. Electricity generation accounted for a further 15%, while gas supply accounted for 5%, water supply for 4%, and waste services and treatment for the remaining 5% of embodied emissions in the sector.

“The study highlights electricity transmission and generation as the subsectors with the highest potential for adopting low-carbon technologies. By pinpointing emission hotspots and offering detailed sectoral disaggregation, the results of the research provide actionable insights for prioritizing investment in emissions reduction strategies, advancing Australia’s sustainability goals and supporting global climate change mitigation,” Dr. Kazemian said.

He said that as with any other business, the pressure to reduce the carbon emissions footprint of the utility sector would need to originate from the consumer sector.

Unlike other sectors, however, increased investment into the utilities sector is likely to result in a smaller carbon footprint.

“This is a major difference between the different sectors in Australia. If you invest more in mining, that means the carbon footprint from that industry would increase, and the same can be said for manufacturing as the investment would result in expanded business.

“While new infrastructure development can generate temporary increases in emissions for the utility sector during construction, the long-term impact depends on where those dollars are spent. Investment in renewable energy systems or efficient delivery networks can significantly cut emissions, whereas continuing to fund carbon-intensive energy sources risks locking in higher emissions for decades to come.

“This complexity highlights a critical point that meaningful decarbonization will depend not only on policy or technology, but also on consumer choices. When households and businesses demand cleaner energy, utilities are more likely to channel investment into low-carbon solutions. By consciously choosing renewable energy options and supporting sustainable providers, consumers can send a powerful market signal that accelerates the transition to a cleaner grid,” Dr. Kazemian said.

The day Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 has coincided with a Patch Tuesday update, with several zero-day flaws that attackers could exploit to target the older Windows operating system.

Among these is CVE-2025-24990, which covers a legacy device driver that Microsoft has removed entirely from Windows. “The active exploitation of CVE-2025-24990 in the Agere Modem driver (ltmdm64.sys) shows the security risks of maintaining legacy components within modern operating systems,” warned Ben McCarthy, lead cyber security engineer at Immersive.

“This driver, which supports hardware from the late 1990s and early 2000s, predates current secure development practices and has remained largely unchanged for years,” he said. “Kernel-mode drivers operate with the highest system privileges, making them a primary target for attackers seeking to escalate their access.”

McCarthy said threat actors are using this vulnerability as a second stage for their operations. “The attack chain typically begins with the actor gaining an initial foothold on a target system through common methods like a phishing campaign, credential theft, or by exploiting a different vulnerability in a public-facing application,” he said.

McCarthy added that Microsoft’s decision to remove the driver entirely, rather than issue a patch, is a direct response to the risks associated with modifying unsupported, third-party legacy code. “Attempts to patch such a component can be unreliable, potentially introducing system instability or failing to address the root cause of the vulnerability completely,” he said.

In removing the driver from the Windows operating system, McCarthy said Microsoft has prioritised reducing the attack surface over absolute backward compatibility. “By removing the vulnerable and obsolete component, the potential for this specific exploit is zero,” he said. “The security risk presented by the driver was determined to be greater than the requirement to continue supporting the outdated hardware it serves.”

McCarthy said this approach demonstrates that an effective security strategy must include the lifecycle management of old code, where removal is often more definitive and secure than patching.

Another zero-day flaw that is being patched concerns the Trusted Platform Module from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Adam Barnett, lead software engineer at Rapid7, noted that the CVE-2025-2884 flaw concerns TPM 2.0 reference implementation, which, under normal circumstances, is likely to be replicated in the downstream implementation by each manufacturer.

“Microsoft is treating this as a zero-day despite the curious circumstance that Microsoft is a founder member of TCG, and thus presumably privy to the discovery before its publication,” he said. “Windows 11 and newer versions of Windows Server receive patches. In place of patches, admins for older Windows products such as Windows 10 and Server 2019 receive another implicit reminder that Microsoft would strongly prefer that everyone upgrade.”

One of the patches classified as “critical” has such a profound impact that some security experts advise IT departments to patch immediately. McCarthy warned that the CVE-2025-49708 critical vulnerability in the Microsoft Graphics Component, although classed as an “elevation of privilege” security issue, has a severe real-world impact.

“It is a full virtual machine [VM] escape,” he said. “This flaw, with a CVSS score of 9.9, completely shatters the security boundary between a guest virtual machine and its host operating system.”

McCarthy urged organisations to prioritise patching this vulnerability because it invalidates the core security promise of virtualisation.

“A successful exploit means an attacker who gains even low-privilege access to a single, non-critical guest VM can break out and execute code with system privileges directly on the underlying host server,” he said. “This failure of isolation means the attacker can then access, manipulate or destroy data on every other VM running on that same host, including mission-critical domain controllers, databases or production applications.”

In the unlikely event that 2 terabytes is not enough, you can increase your storage. The option to upgrade to an even larger plan is available only for current subscribers and in select countries.

• 5-TB Plan: For $25 per month or $250 per year (£20 or £200 in the UK), you get 5 TB with family sharing and the same perks as the Premium Plan.
• 10-TB Plan: For $50 per month (no annual plan) (£40 in the UK), you get 10 TB with family sharing and the same perks as the 5-TB plan.

Google One Benefits

The main benefit of a Google One plan is the extra cloud storage you can share with up to five family members. While families can share the same space, personal photos and files are accessible only to each owner unless you specifically choose to share them. Everyone in the family can also share the additional benefits (provided you all live in the same country). Let’s take a closer look at those benefits:

Unlimited Magic Editor Saves in Google Photos

Courtesy of Simon Hill

Magic Editor enables you to delete unwanted people or objects from the background of your photos, tweak the look of the sky, change the position of people and objects, and more with the help of generative AI. All features work with eligible shots in your Google Photos app. Without a subscription, you are limited to 10 saves per month. These features are available on Google Pixel phones, even if you don’t subscribe to Google One.

Cash Back on Purchases

The 2-TB plan nets you 10 percent back in Google Store credit for any purchases. This could prove useful if you’re thinking about buying multiple Google devices. The credit can take up to one month to get after your purchase, and it will have an expiry date attached.

Google Workspace Premium

The Premium plan includes Google Workspace Premium, which gives you enhanced features in Google Meet and Google Calendar. For example, you can have longer meetings with background noise cancellation or create a professional booking page to enable other people to make appointments with you.

Gemini Pro

Offering access to Google’s “most capable AI models,” Gemini Pro offers help with logical reasoning, coding, creative collaboration, and more. You can also create eight-second videos from text prompts using Veo 2, access more features like Deep Research for your projects, and upload 1,500 pages of research, textbooks, or industry reports with a 1 million token context window for analysis.

Flow Pro

This AI filmmaking tool employs Google’s AI video model, Veo, to enable you to generate stories, craft a cohesive narrative, find a consistent voice, and realize your imagination on the screen. You get 1,000 monthly AI credits to generate videos across Flow and Whisk.

Whisk Pro

You can use Whisk to turn still images into eight-second video clips using the Veo 2 model. You get 1,000 monthly AI credits to generate videos across Flow and Whisk.

NotebookLM Pro

This offers more audio overviews, notebooks, and sources per notebook to make information more digestible, allows you to customize the tone and style of your notebooks, and enables you to share and collaborate on notebooks with family and friends.

Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Vids & More

In Gmail and Docs, Gemini can help you write invites, resumes, and more, helping you brainstorm ideas, strike the right tone, and polish your missives. Gemini can also create relevant imagery for presentations in Slides, enhance the quality of video calls in Meet, and produce video clips based on your text prompts.

Project Mariner

This agentic research prototype is in early access and only part of the AI Ultra plan for now. Google says it can assist in managing up to 10 tasks simultaneously, handling things like research, bookings, and purchases from a single dashboard.

Gemini in Chrome

AI Ultra subscribers get early access to Gemini in the Chrome browser, which can understand the context of the current webpage, summarize and explain, or even complete tasks and fill out forms for you.

YouTube Premium

Subscribers get access to Google’s music streaming service, YouTube videos are ad-free, and you can save videos for offline viewing, among other YouTube Premium perks. Included as part of the AI Ultra plan, this perk is for an individual YouTube Premium plan.

Nest Aware

Only included in the UK so far, a Nest Aware subscription that includes extended storage of video from home security cameras is now part of the 2-TB Premium plan and above, starting from £8 per month or £80 per year. Considering Nest Aware costs £6 per month or £60 per year on its own, this seems like a great deal.

Fitbit Premium

Again, only included in the UK so far, Fitbit Premium is now included as part of the 2-TB Premium plan and above, starting from £8 per month or £80 per year. Considering that Fitbit Premium currently costs £8 per month or £80 per year on its own in the UK, this deal is too good to pass up.

Extra Benefits

A couple of things fall into this category:

• Google Play Credits: You will occasionally get credits to redeem in the Play Store for books, movies, apps, or games. The amount and frequency vary.
• Discounts, Trials, and Other Perks: You may get offers for discounted Google services or hardware, extended free trials of Google services, and other perks (for example, Google offered everyone upgrading to a 2-TB plan a free Nest Mini). These offers pop up and disappear seemingly at random.

How to Subscribe to Google One

If you want to sign up, it’s easy. Create or log in to a Google account, then visit the Google One website or install the Android or iOS app.

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that’s too important to ignore for just $2.50 $1 per month for 1 year. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today.