• Chip manufacturer Intel to receive $8.5bn in US funding to keep US at the ‘forefront of the AI era’

    The Biden administration has proposed up to $8.5bn in direct funding and $11bn in loans to Intel through the CHIPS and Science Act to advance the company’s commercial semiconductor projects at various US sites. Semiconductors were first invented in the US; however, over the years chip manufacturing in the country has significantly depleted. Today the US produces less than 10% of the world’s chips, and none of the most advanced ones that will revolutionise the AI era. However, the Biden Administration is keen to change that. Under the CHIPS and Science Act, various investments have already been made in semiconductor manufacturing. This has now been given a further boost, with the US government announcing that under this CHIPS Act, Intel will receive up to $8.5bn in direct funding, along…

  • Scotland’s 2030 decarbonisation goal is ‘beyond credible’, climate advisors say

    Scotland is unlikely to meet its 2030 pledge to reduce emissions by 75%, government climate advisers have said. In a report, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) blamed “continued delays” in implementing previously promised policies designed to tackle the issue. The Scottish Government pushed back its draft Climate Change Plan last year, despite the 2030 target only being six years away – leaving a significant period without sufficient actions or policies being undertaken to reach the target. Professor Piers Forster, interim chair of the CCC, said: “Scotland has laudable ambitions to decarbonise, but it isn’t enough to set a target; the government must act. There are risks in all reviewed areas, including those with significant policy powers devolved to the Scottish government. “Scotland…

  • Europe’s plastic makers struggle to keep pace with China and meet recycling targets

    Europe’s plastic manufacturers are steadily losing market share to China and are struggling to meet environment and climate targets, a study has found. According to industry body Plastics Europe, Europe’s share of the global sector fell sharply from 22% in 2006 to 14% in 2022. While the amount produced increased slightly from 53.9 million tonnes to 58.8 million tonnes, soaring global consumption rates meant the sector lost ground overall. China, meanwhile, increased its share of global plastic production from 21% to 32% during the same time period. “If this continues, Europe will become increasingly dependent on imports that do not necessarily meet EU sustainability standards, and the ability of European plastics producers to invest in circularity, and the transitions of the many sectors…

  • Just seven countries meet the WHO air quality standards, report finds

    The recently published 2023 World Air Quality Report from Swiss technology company IQAir reveals some stark facts about the level of pollution in cities and countries across the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution poses a major threat to health and climate. Over seven million people die prematurely every year from exposure to fine particulate matter – dust, soot, dirt and smoke – caused by both ambient and household air pollution. To meet WHO guidelines, this fine airborne particulate matter (PM2.5), which is less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3). In its latest 2023 World Air Quality Report, IQAir published region and city PM2.5 rankings. To do this it analysed data from more than 30,000 air quality…

  • Taxpayer-funded 4G masts boost mobile coverage in rural Wales

    The government has installed the first of 86 new 4G mobile masts in the Welsh countryside in a bid to alleviate poor mobile coverage in rural areas. Due to its mountainous terrain and sparse population, much of rural Wales is lacking 4G mobile coverage, and there is little commercial incentive to make improvements. In 2020, an agreement known as the Shared Rural Network (SRN) was signed by all major operators – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – to share some of their masts and infrastructure to deliver 95% coverage across the whole of the UK by the end of 2025. The investment also came with £500m in public funding to eliminate ‘total not-spots’ – typically hard-to-reach areas where there is currently no coverage from any operator. Network operators have committed an additional £532m to the…

  • The world’s ‘first bio-circular data centre’ will see algae recycled into energy

    Industry and academia are coming together in a new R&D project to harness excess heat from data centres to grow algae, which can then be recycled into energy. Large data centres produce a lot of heat. Some organisations have started thinking about how to recycle this waste heat and use it for something useful, rather than it being lost to the atmosphere. For instance, the Data4 group, a French operator and investor in the data centre market, and the Université Paris-Saclay have partnered to launch an R&D project to capture the heat produced by data centres and reuse it to grow algae in what is deemed the world’s first bio-circular data centre. The project commenced in early 2024 and will be trialed in the Paris region. Currently, the most widespread reuse of excess heat from data centres…

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  • Nvidia CEO introduces the tech giant’s ‘processor for the generative AI era’

    Nvidia has unveiled some major announcements during this week’s GTC 2024, including the Nvidia Blackwell Platform to boost the ability of developers to build more advanced AI models. Nvidia has come a long way since it was first set up in 1993 to bring 3D graphics to the gaming industry. Following its invention of the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999, today Nvidia is the third-most valuable company in the US behind Microsoft and Apple, recently hitting a market valuation of $2tn. At GTC 2024, its annual developer conference, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage for his keynote announcing that with the rise of multi-modal AI – able to process diverse data types handled by different models – the demand for advanced computing infrastructure intensifies. “We need another…

  • £58bn electricity grid revamp urgently needed to support renewables, operator says

    A £58bn revamp of the UK’s energy grid is needed to connect a raft of new offshore wind facilities to be built off the Scottish coast, the regulator has said. National Grid’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) anticipates that Britain’s electricity needs will rise by nearly 65% by 2035 as heat and transport are increasingly electrified in a bid to decarbonise the grid. But the current infrastructure is reaching its capacity and is unable to transport much more electricity without reinforcing the network. Investment in renewable energy generation has exceeded investment in transmission capacity over the past decade, resulting in bottlenecks in the electricity network. The grid’s current capacity was largely set in the 1950s with the development of the ‘supergrid’. This once-in-a-generation…

  • The age of the flying taxi is nigh with the UK government’s new action plan

    Drone technology will transform our skies by the end of the decade, according to the Department of Transport’s Future of Flight action plan. Aviation projects have been under way for some time to demonstrate the feasibility of using drones in urban environments, including electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. What was once conjecture is to become reality. With the government and industry’s joint Future of Flight action plan we may see flying taxis, crime-fighting drones and critical care deliveries in our skies by 2030. Indeed, visitors to this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris will be able to fly to venues using air taxis for the first time. Air travel companies are planning to equip Olympic venues with eVTOL landing systems to transport visitors from the airport to…

  • World’s first dedicated centre for floating offshore wind opens in Aberdeen

    Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf today unveiled the £9m National Floating Wind Innovation Centre (FLOWIC) in Aberdeen’s energy transition zone. Delivered by Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult in collaboration with Energy Transition Zone (ETZ) Ltd, a private sector-led, not-for-profit company, and with funding from both the Scottish government and Innovate UK, FLOWIC has been designed to boost the development of floating offshore wind technology in the UK. According to Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, floating offshore wind off the north coast of Scotland is not only a huge economic opportunity but will also contribute to decarbonising North Sea energy production. While conventional offshore wind turbines are fixed to the seabed, floating wind turbines are deployed…

  • Heat pump uptake must ramp up to reach government targets, spending watchdog warns

    The National Audit Office (NAO) has published a report that finds government is not meeting its planned projections for heat pump installations, which is a key component of reducing emissions from home heating. Home heating accounts for 18% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. With the net zero by 2050 target looming on the horizon, the government is keen for us to switch from our current carbon-emitting heating systems to low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps. To decarbonise the UK’s 28 million homes, the government wants to see 600,000 heat pumps installed per year by 2028. This is an elevenfold increase on 55,000 heat pumps installed in 2022. Even with the government’s £450m Boiler Upgrade Scheme, in which homeowners can receive grants of £5,000 for an installation, only 18,900 heat…

  • Scientists unveil ‘world’s fastest AI chip’ set to power AI supercomputers

    California-based Cerebras Systems has launched the Wafer Scale Engine 3 (WSE-3), an AI chip that delivers twice the performance of its 2021 predecessor the WSE-2. The 5nm-based, 4 trillion transistor WSE-3 chip includes 900,000 AI optimised compute cores and is composed of a silicon wafer measuring 8.5 by 8.5 inches. This third-generation chip will be used to power the Cerebras CS-3 AI supercomputer, delivering 125 petaflops of peak AI performance and training AI models up to 24 trillion parameters. According to Cerebras, these 24 trillion parameter models can be stored in a single logical memory space without partitioning or refactoring, dramatically simplifying training workflow and accelerating developer productivity. It claims that training a one trillion parameter model on the CS…

  • Nasa lights beacon on the Moon to help astronauts land in the right spot

    Nasa has lit a beacon on the Moon for 30 minutes as part of a test for a positioning system designed to make it safer for future astronauts to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. The Lunar Node 1 demonstrator, or LN-1, was tested during Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, which delivered six Nasa instruments to the Moon as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme. The autonomous navigation system is intended to provide a real-time communications network on the Moon that could link orbiters, landers and even astronauts on the surface. It could also be used as a location tool, allowing explorer to gauge their position relative to other networked spacecraft, ground stations, or rovers on the move. Nasa researchers said the system would be…

  • Bad data from a single flight caused August’s air traffic control meltdown, report finds

    The meltdown of the UK’s air traffic control system last August, which impacted over 700,000 passengers, was originally caused by the failure to process flight plan data from just a single flight from Los Angeles to Paris. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) appointed an Independent Review Panel to produce an interim report into the incident. During the investigation, it was found that it took around 90 minutes for an engineer to arrive on-site to perform the necessary restart of the air traffic control system, further compounding the delays faced by passengers. As it was a bank holiday, the engineers were working from home and were not permitted to perform the restart remotely. Airlines planning to operate flights through controlled airspace are routinely required to file a flight plan…

  • Undersea cable failures cause internet outages across Africa

    Widespread internet outages have hit multiple African countries, with the cause presumed to be undersea cable failures. Many people living in countries across Africa woke up this morning to no internet. The disruption is believed to be due to multiple undersea cable failures in the region. Based on data from Cloudflare Radar, which reports real-time global internet trends, 11 African countries were impacted, from The Gambia to Ivory Coast, including a major network in South Africa (Vodacom). The data showed a pattern of disruptions from the north to the south of West Africa starting in the south of Senegal at around 05:00 UTC. A recent post by Cloudflare Radar on X (formerly Twitter) said that the disruptions are still ongoing in many countries. News outlets in these countries are…

  • India cuts import tax on EVs to attract foreign manufacturing investment

    In a bid to attract global electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers into the Indian market and set up local manufacturing facilities, the Indian government has approved a new policy that will cut import taxes. Key to the new policy is the lowering of import taxes on certain electric vehicles for companies committing to invest at least $500m in the country. These manufacturers will have three years to establish local EV manufacturing facilities and start commercial production, with at least 25% of components sourced domestically, increasing to 50% by the fifth year. India currently levies a tax of 70–100% on imported cars depending on their value. EV manufacturers who now invest in EV manufacturing in the country will be allowed to import 8,000 EVs a year at a 15% import duty for five years on…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Green spaces and infrastructure ‘under serious threat’ in the UK

    The UK’s green spaces and infrastructure are “under serious threat”, and “urgent action is needed” to reverse their decline, MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have said. In a letter, the committee called on the government to prioritise green spaces and encourage more investment into green infrastructure. It found there was “strong evidence” linking urban green spaces to a host of environmental and health benefits, but there is at present no statutory duty for councils to provide them. With many councils facing severe financial constraints, green spaces are increasingly being underfunded as all available cash is spent on meeting their statutory responsibilities. In a letter to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the committee said there…

  • EU signs law to crack down on ‘high risk’ AI

    The European Parliament has approved new laws governing artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce risk and improve transparency in a rapidly growing industry that could have significant impacts on business and society. The Artificial Intelligence Act aims to protect “fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability” from “high-risk” AI, the body said. It also includes limits on the use of biometric identification systems by law enforcement, bans on social scoring and the use of AI to exploit users. Member states negotiated the wording of the Act in December 2023 – and MEPs broadly endorsed it – with 523 votes in favour, 46 against and 49 abstentions. The new rules ban AI applications that “threaten citizens’ rights”, including biometric categorisation systems…

  • US government proposes a 30% cryptocurrency mining tax to reduce its environmental impact

    The Joe Biden administration has proposed a 30% tax on the electricity used for cryptocurrency mining operations in its budget for 2025. The computers that secure cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin consume large amounts of power. Known as mining, this process involves intense computation and, as a result, consumes significant electricity. This not only has implications for climate change, but can also contribute to rising energy prices. According to analyses by tech nonprofit WattTime and energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, Texas will see a nearly 5% increase in electricity prices by mid-2023 due to industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining. With many other cryptocurrency mining operations across the US, President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2025 includes a proposal to impose…

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    E+T Magazine

  • Record-high methane emissions must be cut, warns IEA

    Methane emissions from the energy sector are still far too high to meet climate targets. But implementing existing pledges on methane could soon put these emissions in decline, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). Leaks of methane cause plumes of potent greenhouse gas to escape into our atmosphere, and as the IEA highlighted in a report published last year, slashing it is imperative to limit global warming. In the latest update of its Global Methane Tracker, a comprehensive assessment of global methane emissions since last December’s COP28 climate summit, the IEA found that methane emissions from the energy sector remained at a near record high in 2023. The production and use of fossil fuels resulted in close to 120m tonnes of methane emissions in 2023, a small rise compared with…

  • Stereovision system enables driverless capabilities on off-road vehicles

    A vision-based system that allows off-road vehicles to drive autonomously has been developed by a team at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The technology is being positioned as a useful tool for the military, as well as space and agriculture clients. The system pairs stereo cameras with algorithms to eliminate the need for lidar and active sensors, which are typically used on autonomous vehicles meant for roads. “We reflected on the toughest machine vision challenges and then focused on achieving dense, robust modelling for off-road navigation,” said research engineer Abe Garza. The engineers developed a suite of tools known as the Vision for Off-Road Autonomy (VORA), which can perceive objects and model environments in real time to navigate. Though highly reliable, lidar sensors…

  • Government plan to ensure the UK is resilient to climate risks is ‘falling far short’, advisers warn

    The UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that far more needs to be done by the government to ensure the UK can deal with the rising threat of climate change risks, including flooding, heatwaves and drought. February 2024 was the warmest February on record globally. In the UK, it was the fourth wettest February ever recorded. Flooding wreaked havoc in many areas across the country, making roads impassable and affecting journey times. The cause is climate change, and it will only get worse if we continue as we are. The European Environment Agency (EEA) announced this week that Europe is not prepared for a barrage of climate change risks. These include the threat of flooding, heatwaves and drought, all of which the UK has experienced in recent years. In summer 2022, the UK’s extreme…

  • UK government should abandon ‘unrealistic’ carbon capture plans, think tank says

    The government’s reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is “outdated and unrealistic” and could leave the UK reliant on fossil fuels when better technologies are available, financial think tank Carbon Tracker has said. In December, the UK unveiled a plan to make the CCS sector a competitive market by 2035, with domestic firms selling their carbon capture services to global firms. This strategy was based on the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, published in the Sixth Carbon Budget in December 2020. However, since then, cost estimates for deploying the technology have more than doubled, leading to a shift in focus to reduce emissions at source rather than abate them once emitted. The rapid growth of renewables and battery storage has also lowered estimates…

  • US steel unions urge Joe Biden to stop China’s domination of global shipbuilding

    The United Steelworkers union (USW) will ask US President Joe Biden to open a trade investigation into alleged Chinese unfair economic practices in the shipbuilding and maritime logistics sectors. In an article published in The Financial Times, USW and other unions are reported to be filing a petition with the US Trade Representative outlining alleged discriminatory practices that have helped China dominate global shipbuilding. According to USW president David McCall, the US was once a leader in the commercial shipbuilding industry, but over the past two decades China has made huge investments in shipbuilding and engaged in predatory trade practices. According to Clarksons Research, a maritime consultancy, in the last 20 years China has gone from producing roughly 12% of global commercial…

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    E+T Magazine

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