European governments have spent large sums of money in recent years subsidizing giant offshore wind projects in hopes of creating a clean source of energy that could eventually pay for itself. Now that moment might be here — and a lot sooner than expected.
The Danish company Dong Energy A/S, the largest offshore wind developer, on Thursday won the right to build two large wind projects in the German North Sea with no government subsidies — a highly symbolic first for the industry.
The company is to receive the revenue from the electricity generated by the wind farms. German consumers would pay the substantial costs of connecting the wind farms at sea to the power grid.
“Offshore wind is categorically proving its competitiveness,” Jochen Homann, president of the Bundesnetzagentur, the German agency that held the auction, said. “This is good news for all electricity consumers who contribute to funding ‘renewable’ energy.”
Offshore wind dates back only 25 years; Danish developers were the first who took to the sea for its open spaces and stronger breezes.
The industry has always seemed promising because its installations could generate large amounts of electricity without the greenhouse gas emissions produced by coal or natural-gas-fired plants.
In this way, offshore wind projects helped meet governments’ goals for tackling climate change, but costs remained stubbornly high until the past two years.
In a news release, Dong cited several factors that underpinned its bids. By the time the projects are completed in 2024, the company said it expects turbine makers to offer a new generation of machines almost double the size of the largest current models.
In recent years, turbine makers like General Electric Co in the US, Vestas Wind Systems A/S in Denmark and Siemens AG in Germany have produced larger and more powerful machines up to 183m high, meaning more power can be produced by fewer windmills.
Dong also said that the new sites offered very high average wind speeds and that it could combine the operations with others in the area, further lowering costs.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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