11 verified briefings on Sustainability. Each story includes a plain-English summary, why it matters, and the concrete action engineering teams should take.
X-energy is building America's first advanced nuclear fuel plant in decades. The Tennessee facility will produce next-generation fuel, a potential solution for the massive power demands of AI and data centers.
A Chinese company successfully tested a massive helium blimp that generates megawatt-scale electricity from high-altitude winds. This mobile power plant could provide sustainable energy for remote data centers, disaster relief, and off-grid industrial sites.
Samsung is developing floating data centers for Texas. These waterborne facilities could provide 50MW of power and use the surrounding water for cooling, significantly speeding up construction compared to land-based sites.
The United Nations is calling on AI companies to disclose their full environmental impact. A new initiative will track water usage, carbon emissions, and land use, increasing pressure on tech firms to build more sustainable AI.
Google and UC San Diego are building a private cloud using 2,000 retired Pixel phones. This project explores a sustainable, low-cost way to create computing infrastructure and reduce electronic waste from discarded smartphones.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has launched a public map to track data centers across the United States. The project aims to highlight their environmental and community impacts, such as high water and energy consumption, bringing increased public scrutiny to the infrastructure sector.
Residents in Sardinia are increasingly opposing the development of large-scale renewable energy projects. This "not in my backyard" sentiment reflects a global challenge where communities, while supporting green energy in principle, resist local installations, impacting the broader energy transition and infrastructure development.
New solid-state air conditioners offer a more efficient, climate-friendly alternative to traditional ACs. This could be a breakthrough for data centers, but scientists caution the technology still faces significant hurdles before widespread adoption.
Researchers have developed a new, more environmentally friendly, and potentially cheaper method for extracting lithium, a critical component for batteries. The process, detailed in the journal Science, is being commercialized by a startup named Rock Zero, aiming to address future supply chain challenges for EVs and energy storage.
Waymo is repurposing old electric robotaxi batteries for power grids in California and Texas. This gives the batteries a second life storing renewable energy, creating a practical circular economy model for the tech industry.
Waymo has announced a strategic supply agreement with B2U Storage Solutions. The deal will see used batteries from its autonomous robotaxi fleet repurposed for stationary energy storage, providing hundreds of megawatt-hours of backup power to local grids and creating a circular economy for its hardware.