France opened bidding on Friday for an ambitious project to blanket the country in solar energy plants and push it closer to the forefront of the fight against global warming.
French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said he wants to build solar plants in each French region by 2011, for a cost of about 1.5 billion euros (US$2.03 billion).
The plan foresees building solar plants that would produce 300 megawatts of electricity, up from about 69 megawatts currently.
Solar energy currently makes a small fraction of electricity produced in France, and even of the renewable energy produced there.
Most of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power.
Expanding solar energy was one of the pledges Borloo made in launching a sweeping program in 2007 meant to make France more environmentally friendly by boosting production of renewable energy, making homes more energy efficient and cars less polluting.
The program was also aimed at catching France up to more ecology-conscious neighbors and making it a pioneer in “green” technology to cut carbon emissions.
France ranks fourth in Europe in terms of total solar energy produced, behind Germany, Spain and Italy. French solar plants are largely concentrated near the country’s southern coast and its overseas territories. The country’s key energy companies — including Total, GDF-Suez and Electricite de France — are all investing in solar energy.
Borloo said the solar plan would include a simplification of administrative steps needed to open up a solar energy plant.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained