Germany yesterday closed one of its last two black coal mines, ending an industry that laid the foundations for the country’s industrial revolution and its post-World War II economic recovery.
Miners planned to hand German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier a symbolic last lump of coal hauled up from 1,200m below ground at the Prosper-Haniel mine in the western city of Bottrop. Another mine, in the town of Ibbenbueren about 100km to the north, is to be formally closed next week.
Black coal mines once dominated the surrounding Ruhr region, employing up to 500,000 people at their peak in the 1950s, but have since been in steady decline, surviving only thanks to government subsidies.
The end of those deep-shaft mines is seen as a test for the planned closure of open-cast lignite, or brown coal, mines still operating in Germany.
The country generates almost two-fifths of its electricity from burning coal, which experts say cannot continue if Germany wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in line with international climate change agreements.
However, other sources of energy might not be sufficient, especially as Germany plans to shut down its nuclear plants by 2022.
A government-appointed panel is to deliver a report in February laying out proposals for the gradual phasing out of lignite mines.
Politicians, environmentalists and miners’ union representatives are to propose ways in which tens of thousands of people whose jobs still depend on the coal industry can find new work.
One of the panel’s members said the hundreds of billions in subsidies paid to prop up black coal in Germany were a cautionary tale.
“This time we cannot do it incrementally, in a piecemeal way,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told reporters.
With about 420 coal mining regions around the globe facing similar pressure to shut down in the next few years, Schellnhuber said Germany could become a pioneer in the transition away from fossil fuels.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts