center

In 2004 Madrid decided to build its own Guggenheim. Now it has a monster that not even Richard Gere wants as a Buddhist center

by

Many cities have pursued the idea that a single building could change everything, attract tourism and redefine their identity almost overnight. The obsession has a very specific origin: the impact it had the Guggenheim Museum in the economy and image of Bilbao, converted into a global case study. In 1997, its inauguration marked a before and after and fueled an urban fever that led to replicate that model in places where the context did not always accompany. A Guggenheim in the suburbs. At the beginning of the 2000s, in the midst of a real estate boom and with the Bilbao effect still resonating, Alcorcón decided to aspire to his own cultural icona complex that was to place the city on the international art map. The idea was ambitious to the point of excess: a macrocenter cwith nine interconnected buildings which included an auditorium, conservatory, conference center and even a permanent circus, all conceived as a kind of Madrid Guggenheim. The problem here was not a lack of imagination, of course, but the scale of a project designed for an economic reality that was about to disappear. A half giant. The works They started in 2007 with budgets that were already high, but soon they began to chain modifications, cost overruns and difficult decisions to justify, such as the demolition of a practically new library or the incorporation of such peculiar facilities as, attention, stables for animals. When the 2008 crisis hit squarely, the project was stopped with around 70% executed and more than 100 million of euros invested, leaving behind a huge structure, partially completed and without a clear function. What should have been a cultural emblem became an empty mass, one too big to abandon completely and too expensive to finish. The hidden cost of an impossible project. Beyond the initial investment, CREAA had profound economic consequences for the municipality. The reason? It had been financed through a public company that ended up accumulating a gigantic debt. The estimates spoke of tens of millions additional costs to complete it and several million annually just to keep it running, which turned it into a structural problem rather than an opportunity. In fact, even its design played against: a complex so integrated that turning on a single zone meant activating practically the entire system, skyrocketing costs and making any reasonable partial use unfeasible. Nobody wants the “Guggenheim” of Alcorcón. Over the years, the building became a kind of failed promise that was passed from hand to hand without finding real lace. Projects of all types and colors were considered, from an NBA campus to a sports university, passing through a large Buddhist center promoted by Richard Gerebut none came to fruition and most of those interested declined the opportunity. Even more recent initiatives, such as the creation of a great audiovisual hubhave ended up running aground when faced with the real costs of adapting facilities designed for a completely different context. The idea that that complex could become an international benchmark has been diluted with each failed attempt. From cultural icon to symbol of excess. Over time, CREAA has gone from being an emblematic project to becoming another example of that appellant excessive planning in Spain, a construction that aspired to change the identity of a city, but ended up conditioning its public narrative. The image of that large iron and concrete structure, partially finished and unused for years, has weighed more than any original intention, fueling the debate about the limits of public spending on large-scale cultural projects. A partial ending to an unfinished story. However, in recent years, some spaces have begun to find usefulnesssuch as the installation of a state victim care center or the partial reopening of certain areas, but the whole is still far from fulfilling the vision with which it was conceived. More than a decade later, the complex begins to reactivate in a fragmented way, adapting to much more pragmatic needs than those from which it was born. The result, as in other phantom “moles” of the Peninsula, is a persistent reminder of a time when it was thought that it was enough to build big to transform a city, without foreseeing that the real challenge would really come later. Image | Juan Lupión, Zarateman In Xataka | The biggest disaster in sports history dates back to the Roman Empire: the tragedy of the Fidenae “VIP boxes” In Xataka | In 1995, South Korea suffered one of the great architectural disasters of the century. The culprit: the air conditioning

China has just launched its first undersea data center with total energy autonomy. The idea makes more sense than it seems

by

In the AI ​​race, having a robust data center infrastructure to power it is essential, but first you need energy to power it all. The United States may lead the chip industry (at least, the strategic ones), but China follows closely at an unstoppable pace and furthermore, has the energy. And he is already beginning to connect the dots, showing off his technical power and ingenuity: already It has the largest data center in the worldis also a pioneer to submerge them under the sea. Now it has taken a twist with the first underwater data center that ‘drinks’ directly from the wind that just opened. This project represents the perfect union of two of China’s strategic priorities: digital sovereignty and carbon neutrality. By placing computing infrastructure on the seabed and powering it directly with clean energy on siteChina is solving one of the great current technological problems: the insatiable energy consumption of AI and Big Data. The project. About 10 kilometers off the coast of Shanghai, at the bottom of the East China Sea, a steel cylinder receives electricity directly from wind turbines and is cooled with sea water. It is the Lingang Subsea Data Centeran ambitious project promoted by Shanghai Hailan Cloud Technology (HiCloud) and built by CCCC Third Harbor Engineering. It consists of a series of data storage and processing modules encapsulated in watertight and submerged containers, which are connected via two 35 kV submarine cables to offshore wind turbines operating off the coast of Shanghai. With a planned capacity of 24 MW in two phases, the first is already operational: it has a capacity of 2.3 megawatts and includes a ground control center, a vertical data module installed under the sea and two main 35 kilovolt submarine cables. Why it is important. In addition to the fact that it does not occupy land, in cities as crowded as Shanghai it represents a valuable saving in land and that it can be installed close to where it is needed (if there is a coast, obviously), because it solves at the same time three structural problems of the sector: Refrigeration. Seawater acts as a constant and free heat sink, eliminating the need for industrial air conditioning systems that consume 40 to 50% of electricity. The metric that measures the energy efficiency of a data center by comparing the total energy consumed versus that used purely by the servers is the PUE, which for a standard data center on land is an average slightly higher than 1.5. The project promises to lower it to a figure not greater than 1.15. Without consumption of fresh water. Traditional data centers evaporate millions of liters of water to cool their servers, but this uses thermal exchange with the ocean, so it does not consume water resources. Take advantage of the surplus from wind power. One of the handicaps of wind energy is that generation depends on the wind and not on demand, so if you do not have a battery, the energy that is not consumed is wasted. Thanks to this direct connection, the data center absorbs wind production in real time, functioning as a constant consumer that reduces the waste of renewable energy due to lack of destination, In figures. The magnitude of the project, with some official numbers: The budget is 1.6 billion yuan, about 200 million euros. Total planned operational capacity of 24 MW (2.3 MW in the first phase). The design PUE is less than 1.15. More than 95 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources. Context. The name of HiCloud is not new because in fact it is an old acquaintance: it is the person behind the underwater prototype in front of Hainan which began to install in 2021. However, the international reference is the Natick project from Microsoft (2013–2024), which demonstrated the potential of underwater centers: only 8 of the 864 servers failed, a much lower mortality rate than that of any conventional data center in the same period and also got a very low PUE of only 1.07. Despite this, Microsoft shelved the matter: viability in terms of costs and maintenance is another story. However, the Lingang project has top-level institutional support: is present on the List of Green and Low Carbon Technology Demonstration Projects of the NDRC, China’s top economic planning body. How they have done it. Servers are placed in pressurized steel cabins filled with inert gases to prevent corrosion and fire with a design that maximizes interior space and minimizes the impact of waves. Heat is dissipated by pumping seawater through radiators located behind the racks. The most complicated operation was raising the cabin in the open sea: the separation between the legs of the support structure and the steel piles on the seabed was only 0.18 meters and the maximum allowable deviation was 10 centimeters, so GPS and the Sanhang Fengfan crane vessel were helped. Roadmap. The project follows a staggered progression that leaves certain unknowns. First was the prototype in Hainan (2021-2024). In 2025 the project began in Shanghai, whose phase 1 concluded in October of that year and it has just been launched a few weeks ago. The key phase that will take capacity up to 24 MW has no official public date. Of course, the consortium of companies made up of HiCloud, Shenergy Group, China Telecom Shanghai, INESA and CCCC Third Harbor Engineering signed a cooperation agreement in October 2025 to scale to 500 MW linked to offshore wind, although where and when is unknown. Yes, but. That 2.3 MW of phase 1 is practically a demonstration, not commercial infrastructure as a large conventional data center operates between 50 and 500 MW. And in addition, it has to resolve the issues that Microsoft’s Project Natick left unresolved, such as underwater maintenance: HiCloud has not published protocols or long-term repair costs. And scalability to 500 MW is at the moment more of an intention than a project In Xataka | Where you see a mountain, China sees a … Read more

China says it has built its largest data center. And confirms that your problem is precisely in the chips

by

China has just turned on its new technological pride in Shenzhen: an AI cluster with 14,000 petaflops built entirely with Huawei Ascend 910C chips. the city has presented it as the first scale computing center with 10,000 cards with completely national technology. It is an undeniable milestone, but if we give it context, an alarm signal and a dose of reality. Why is it important. The Shenzhen cluster, with all its rhetoric of technological sovereignty, represents about 1% of the capacity of the largest US data center in operation today. In other words: China has built, with great institutional effort, what OpenAI already had available to train GPT-4 in 2022. The gap is not a question of ambition (China has it) or capital (it also has it) or energy (of course, he also has it). It’s a chip issue. What are they capable of manufacturing and in what volume today. Between the lines. The Shenzhen government statement highlights energy efficiency metrics and occupancy rates of 92%. It’s really good data. But the selection of indicators (the cherry picking) says a lot so it is omitted: there are no direct comparisons with the clusters of NVIDIA H100 that colonize the data centers of Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Posting only what you have is also a way of not publishing what you lack. The context. At this point no one doubts that China does not lack electricity, not even engineersnor money to build large-scale AI infrastructure. What is still missing, despite the advances, are the chips. Export restrictions imposed by Trump They have cut off access to advanced semiconductors from NVIDIA and TSMCand that has forced China to accelerate its own ecosystem. Huawei has responded with the Ascend 910Ca capable chip but that still has performance limitations and, above all, volume production. If wafers were not in short supply, this data center would be a hundred times larger. Yes, but. Can China close that four-year gap before it gets even bigger? The answer depends almost entirely on how much its domestic semiconductor industry manages to scale, and whether or not Western sanctions manage to stifle that process. At the moment, in Shenzhen they are celebrating an achievement as undeniable as it turns out that in the eyes of Silicon Valley they are still in 2022. Featured image | Huawei In Xataka | Memory prices have started to fall in some markets. There is still a long way to go to close the AI ​​crisis

Imagine you are offered $26 million to convert your farm into a data center. And then imagine that you reject them

by

The market price of agricultural land in Mason County, Kentucky, USA, is around $6,000 per acre. Last year, an unnamed company — the suspect is one of the AI ​​majors — offered Ida Huddleston and her family about 10 times that amount for half of their 1,200 acres. They tempted her with 26 million dollars to build a data center there but Huddleston, 82, rejected the offer without thinking. Farmers of yesteryear. Delsia Bare, daughter of the owner, counted on a local television station as for them “26 million means nothing. Although the phrase is blunt, it is likely that more than indifference to money it reflects a different scale of values. The land matters. Bare explained how his family has farmed that land for generations, paid taxes on it, and kept it productive even during the Great Depression. “We even grew wheat during the Depression and kept bread production lines running in the US when people didn’t have access to other foods.” For the family, the sale would be a break with those values. Obsession with data centers. The Huddlestons’ story is not an isolated case, and Bare herself claimed to be one of dozens of homeowners in the area who had received similar offers from the same anonymous buyer. We all know that large AI companies have been seeking for months to expand the presence of data centers throughout the US, and several of them have announced astronomical investments to achieve that future computing capacity. cheap land. Rural areas are perfect because they are far from urban centers but still have access to resources such as water for their cooling systems and electrical networks with sufficient capacity. In Kentucky the price of agricultural land is relatively low compared to other areas, and that availability of water and energy is a very attractive combination for companies that want to create new data centers. From stupid farmers, nothing. Huddleston, 82, explained that turning down the offer is surprising: “They call us stupid farmers, but we’re not. We know when our food is disappearing, when our land is disappearing.” The owner is clear that the conversion of agricultural land into the basis for digital infrastructure will have consequences on water, food production and the economy of rural communities itself that for decades have been very outside of these technological cycles. Lies. Those who wanted to buy his land claimed that the project would bring jobs and economic growth to the area, but Huddleston has a very different opinion. “I say they are liars, and the truth is not in them. That’s what I say. It’s a scam.” Gone with the wind. His daughter compared this symbiosis with his land to that reflected in the mythical film ‘Gone with the wind‘ and what her protagonist in the film, Scarlett O’Hara, experienced: “She was very attached to that land. Her spirit would never die. The same thing happens to me. As long as I am on this land, as long as it feeds me, as long as it takes care of me, there is nothing that can destroy me if I have this land.” But. Despite the Huddlestons’ refusal, the project has moved forward. Other neighbors in the area have agreed to sell, and the AI ​​company has adapted its plans to use those plots. It is therefore likely that the Huddleston family farm will end up being very close to that future data center if it is finally built, but one thing is certain: for now they are holding out. Image | Xataka with Freepik In Xataka | OpenAI has signed countless billion-dollar agreements with other companies. We are discovering that they are made of paper

Spain is preparing a data center specifically designed to have AI for war. The surprise: it is in Soria

by

More than two thousand years ago, on the hill of Numanciaits inhabitants preferred to resist to the end rather than surrender to the siege of the legions of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. That story of defiance against a superior enemy has remained engraved in Soria’s memory as a symbol of resistance. Now, a few kilometers from that place, in the Valcorba industrial estate, the Ministry of Defense wants to build another kind of fortress: a data center named Numant-IA, where defense will no longer be measured in walls or swords, but in servers, algorithms and artificial intelligence. A unique project. While we live a technological-military schism in the USSpain accelerates in a project that precisely combines both sections. The Government has launched Numant-IA, a data center with a notable investment and totally dedicated to offering computing for AI. Here there are, yes, two notes that stand out. The full name of the project will be the Center for Advanced Defense Technological Capabilities, and its investment is part of the Annual Contracting Plan of the Ministry of Defense (Pacdef) from 2026. It includes 7,868 proposals and 156 framework agreements with a combined value of 10,102 million euros. Soria, new technological capital. The data center announced by the Government last September and that already it was outlined months before, it will have its headquarters in Soria. The project will take advantage of a space provided by the Soria City Council and that covers an area of ​​almost four hectares in the Valcorba industrial estate. Lieutenant General José María Millán, director of CESTIC, already warned then that said center will carry out the “incorporation of artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of the Armed Forces.” Military applications. The initial investment, which was 70 million euros, has been increased to almost 130 million euros according to El Heraldo de Soriaand will be assumed by the Ministry of Defense. Its resources will be used for applications that will process classified data in the area of ​​operations and logistics, and military applications will be an integral part of its mission. This project confirms other movements of the Armed Forces such as the development of Gonzalo, that “ChatGPT” for the army which is precisely designed to support this type of tasks safely. Employment and template. About 20 people will be a permanent part of the staff of this center that will operate 24/7 once it is operational. The construction of the data center, the Department of Defense states, will generate “a significant economic and employment impact on the city.” We know when, but we don’t know what. The Ministry of Defense has indicated that the project has a construction period of 24 months, and therefore they hope that it will theoretically be ready by early 2028. What we do not know is what type of infrastructure it will house or what the real capacity of the data center will be. 67.88 million euros will be dedicated to information systems and servers – unspecified, perhaps because they are not yet defined – while construction will be allocated 58.68 million euros and a third item of 1.65 million euros has no specified purpose. Sovereignty and decentralization. Choosing Soria as the location for this data center responds to the decentralization strategy of the Armed Forces. The defense budgets demonstrate this with a distribution of these funds throughout Spain in different projects that try to avoid the danger of excessive centralization of critical centers. The movement also answers to others that we have been seeing for months and that make it clear that in Spain and Europe they are trying to find solutions that allow us to have the highest possible degree of digital sovereignty. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Spain’s main problem is not weapons, fighters or drones: it is the number of hands it lacks to use them

Google is going to build a mega data center in a state where the drought is atrocious. Your cooling plan: use air

by

The American state of Texas has been dealing with heat wavesdroughts and a increasing pressure on its aquiferswhich makes it on paper one of the worst places to set up a data center. Well, Wilbarger County in Texas is just the place chosen by Google to set up your next data center. But big tech hides an ace up its sleeve: it is not going to use water for cooling, but air. Context. Briefly, a data center is an industrial facility full of servers where information transmitted over the internet, such as AI responses or your Google photos, is stored and processed. And if your personal computer requires cooling when it has been working with a certain intensity for some time to dissipate heat, more of the same with servers, which operate 24/7. The usual thing in these plants is to use thermal dissipation systems with water, either with chillers, evaporation or direct cooling with immersion, thermally efficient solutions, but problematic if water is scarce. The problem? That Texas is an oven that is not for buns: its drought is pressing. But Texas is not a foreign place for Google: it has been in that state for more than 15 years, where it has operational centers in Midlothian and Red Oak and already plans to build two more campuses in Armstrong and Haskell Counties. It’s very serious. The project. The Wilbarger County data center will reduce water use so much that it will restrict its application to basic campus uses such as kitchens and services. As? Google has not provided details of the technology, only that it will be advanced air cooling. Cooling with air in such a hot scenario implies greater energy consumption, so the problem now becomes electricity. What Google proposes is a “Power first” model. In short: the data center goes hand in hand with its own renewable electricity generation plant. Google’s energy partner for this project is AESone of the largest producers of renewables in the US, with whom it has a 20-year energy purchase agreement at an agreed price. This is how both win: AES has stability to build the plants and Google has the guaranteed supply and price. Furthermore, according to Google, they already have the land and the interconnection signed, which saves bureaucracy and launches the project into the construction phase. Why is it important. Because according to EESI estimatesa medium-sized data center can consume 416 million liters per year for thermal dissipation alone, the equivalent of a thousand homes. And if there is a shortage of water, allocating it to meet the needs of a data center is hardly justifiable. Wilbarger’s project solves this with air cooling, removing the precious commodity of water from the equation, but also from the electrical grid itself: Google cooks it and Google eats it (with the help of AES). Given that the demand for computing continues to grow, a model that does not consume water or overload the network emerges as a solution to a resource management problem. In figures. For Google, Wilbarger County is not a pilot plant and its size demonstrates this: 0 liters of water for cooling. The project will provide 7,800 MW of power to the Texas grid. The agreement between the technology and energy companies is for 20 years. Google advertisement an investment item of 40 billion dollars for Texas in November 2025 and has provided a $30 million fund to boost energy initiatives in Texas from 2026 to 2028. It won’t be easy. Although Google has been cryptic when it comes to reporting what the technology, its capacity and needs will be, the reality is that when cooling with air in a hot climate, the pressure is transferred to the electrical grid. On the other hand, and although this specific project points the direction of a possible solution to this problem, we will have to see if and how it can be scaled, because there are more and more data centers and the climate is increasingly more extreme. In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands In Xataka | Data centers in space are the finger, Google’s purchase of an electrical company is the Moon Cover | Google Data Centers and Ganapathy Kumar

An 86-year-old farmer was offered $15 million to build a data center. He said no

by

Get in the situation. You are an 86-year-old farmer who enjoys doing what he does, but from time to time you get the idea that maybe it’s time to retire. One fine day they knock on your door and offer you 15 million dollars which, hey, gives you to plug holes and pay for your hospital in the United States in case of misfortunebut you decide to reject it because accepting would imply the destruction of those lands to which you have dedicated 60 years of your life. Well, that’s what has happened to Mervin Raudabaugh: a farmer who has become a symbol of resistance to AI and data centers. An offer you can refuse. Raudabaugh is a farmer who owns land in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He has spent his entire life cultivating the 100 hectares of his property, land that his family has been exploiting for generations, and has recently come to the fore after rejecting a proposal which, some, considered irrefutable. 60,000 dollars for every 4,000 m2 of their land, around 15 million dollars in total. The offer came from some developers interested in building a data center for artificial intelligence computing on the farm, but Mervin simply refused. Not on my farm. Mervin doesn’t seem like a guy who is against AI specifically or what it means for the planet. He simply has a much more romantic motive: he doesn’t want to see his land turned into a layer of concrete with huge ships on top. In some interviews, he assured that money does not matter to him and that what he wants is precisely that: for agricultural land to remain agricultural. He has expressed his worry for the future of family farming in a country where, if the soil is not protected, “every square centimeter runs the risk of being urbanized”, with what this implies for the land, the fauna and the rural communities themselves. But it has sold. However, Mervin is not going to retire with empty pockets because he did not accept the 15 million from the builders of data centersbut yes some million of Lancaster Farmland Trust. There is talk of a operation of around two million euros to sell the right to develop their lands to this entity that is dedicated to the conversation of agricultural lands. What Marvin has done is secure the land that he loves so much, since the operation implies that his land will be permanently protected for agricultural use, legally preventing the change of land use. And it doesn’t matter if his heirs wanted to sell or not in the future: now the lands are protected. a symbol. As is normal, Marvin’s rejection has been covered in many national media as a case of rebellion regarding data centers, the resounding “no” to Big Tech already something that is consuming all the conversation in technological news. It is an example by guaranteeing the protection of the soil against the specific compensation in the form of money that these Big Tech companies offer to ensure long-term deterioration of the agricultural fabric and the landscape. And although Marvin’s case is striking both for the amount and for the subsequent movement protecting his farm, is not the only one. In other parts of the world the debate has been ignited about Whether it is worth hosting data centersbut in the United States specifically, a country that is betting enormous amounts of money on the development of AI, we are seeing more and more examples of that resistance against data centers. And in an increasingly warlike environment, curiously it is something that is putting according to both Democrats and Republicans. Images | BlueChipFarmsGoal In Xatka | It’s not that AI makes us stupid: it’s that we are surrendering to it

AI needs electricity relentlessly. And that is returning the gas to the center of the system

by

For years, big technology companies projected a clean image: data centers powered by renewables and commitments to climate neutrality. But the explosion of artificial intelligence is putting that narrative to the test. Electricity demand is growing at a rate that the grid cannot keep up with, and the fuel that is covering the gap is not the wind or the sun. It is natural gas. The contradiction is already visible in the numbers. Google and Microsoft consume around 24 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year each, more than more than a hundred countries. And while they announce record clean energy contracts, their emissions continue to rise: Google has increased its emissions by 48% in the last five years and Microsoft by 31% since 2020. An independent analysis rated climate integrity of several technologies as “poor” or “very deficient” in the face of the energy boom of AI. The cloud is not ethereal. It’s physics. And for AI to work without interruptions, we are starting to burn more hydrocarbons. The electron fever. The phenomenon is not marginal. A report from the Open Energy Outlook initiative—led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and NC State— projects that electricity demand of data centers and crypto mining could grow by 350% between 2020 and 2030, going from representing 4% to 9% of total consumption in the United States. Goldman Sachs points in the same direction: Specific consumption of data centers could increase by 160% before the end of the decade. The pressure has already broken market balances. In December 2024, in the PJM region—which supplies 13 states in the eastern United States and has the highest density of data centers in the world—capacity prices went from $30 to $270 per MW-day in a single auction. The extra cost will end up affecting the bills of some 67 million customers. John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy, described it as a “golden era of energy demand”, but warned of a physical limit: “the new electrons cannot reach the grid quickly enough.” And in that void between explosive demand and insufficient supply is where gas reappears. The tyranny of 24/7. If renewables are increasingly competitive, why not cover this demand with more wind and solar? The answer is technical. Artificial intelligence requires continuous, 24/7 supply. It cannot be turned off when the wind goes down or the sun goes down. As Manuel Losa, manager at Pictet Asset Management, explained, to the Financial Times: If demand grows and firm energy is needed 24 hours a day, “today, the only way to achieve this is with gas.” The problem is not the marginal cost of renewables, it is firmness. Without massive storage or reinforced grids, solar and wind generation cannot guarantee constant supply. And the deployment of new transmission lines is slow and contentious. Furthermore, traditional electrical planning assumed growth of 1-2% annually; Now there are areas with increases of 20-30% annually linked to data centers. The quickest solution today is to build or expand gas-fired generation. But even there there are limits. Gas turbines—critical equipment—have become a bottleneck. Just three years ago, Siemens Energy executives stated that the turbine market was “dead” in the face of renewable advancement. Today, the factories are overflowing. Global orders are expected to exceed 1,000 units this year, with the United States absorbing almost half. Delivery times can be extended up to five or even seven years in some cases. The bottleneck is no longer the chips. They are the turbines. So what happens with renewables? Renewables do not disappear. In fact, they continue to expand. Google has signed agreements to purchase nearly 1.2 gigawatts of new wind and solar energy in the United States from Clearway Energy. Big tech companies continue to sign clean energy contracts in multiple regions. However, the problem is temporary and structural. Purchasing renewable electricity does not guarantee that hourly consumption is supported by clean generation at that same time and place. In fact, there are solutions. Battery storage and grid upgrades can increase renewable integration. The Open Energy Outlook report shows which regions like Texas, with more investment in transmission, they manage to take better advantage of wind power to feed new demand. But deploying storage and hardening the network takes years, and AI is growing rapidly. For this reason, even companies traditionally focused on renewables are expanding their portfolio in gas, How did you have access? Financial Times. NextEra has announced plans to develop up to an additional 8 gigawatts of gas-fired generation. Clearway builds hybrid data center campuses combining renewables and combustion turbines. It is not an explicit abandonment of renewables. It is an emergency solution. But there is also nuclear. amazon tried to connect directly a data center to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant to ensure stable and clean supply. Federal regulators blocked the deal over potential effects on grid stability and the impact on other consumers. Furthermore, Google has signed an agreement with Kairos Power to develop seven small modular reactors (SMR), with the goal of adding 500 MW emissions-free by 2030. Microsoft and other companies are exploring similar deals. But even in the most optimistic scenario, new nuclear capacity will not be operational on a relevant scale before the end of the decade. AI needs electricity now. A clash of transitions. Five years ago, natural gas was presented as a retreating bridge fuel within the energy transition. Today it has become the structural support of artificial intelligence. A friction between two transitions that advance at different paces: the digital one, exponential; the energy, regulated and slow. As the Open Energy Outlook initiative warnsthe choice should not be between digital progress and network stability. But if energy planning doesn’t adapt more quickly—more transmission, more storage, better market design—the expansion of AI could mean more gas, more emissions, and higher bills. Artificial intelligence promises efficiency and intelligent decarbonization. But for now, its massive expansion is prolonging the life of the fossil generation. The digital future is advancing at full speed and the energy … Read more

Amazon’s new data center will be installed in La Puebla de Híjar

by

AWS, Amazon Web Services, has chosen La Puebla de Híjar (935 inhabitants) to build its first data center in the province of Teruel. The multinational has secured 70 hectares next to the N-232 and plans to start works in autumn 2027, as reported Aragon Newsdependent on the public body CARTV. Why is it important. The project places a province historically relegated on the European technological map and confirms the strategy of Aragon as hub of digital infrastructure. With 100 MW of power already guaranteed and access to the water of the Ebro and the Gaén canal, the complex specialized in AI thus avoids electrical saturation problems that grip the metropolitan area of ​​Zaragoza. The figure. The investment is around 5,000 million euros, according to sources in the technology sector consulted by local media such as Teruel Diary. It would be the fourth main AWS hub in the community, after Huesca, Villanueva de Gállego and El Burgo de Ebro. The context. Aragón has managed to mobilize more than 47,000 million euros in data centers, according to a study by the Basilio Paraíso Foundation presented in September. The community could become the third European market in the sector, only behind London and Frankfurt. Bigger words. Yes, but. The project arrives surrounded by conflicts regarding water supply: Amazon needs 350,000 cubic meters of water per year for cooling, and although it plans to draw directly from the Ebro, it requires a backup source. Negotiations with the community of Gaén irrigators have been stuck for months. The irrigators insist that they will not take “any step” that compromises the territory’s water future. Between the lines. The choice of Teruel is not accidental. The metropolitan area of ​​Zaragoza suffers a collapse in the capacity of its electrical substations that has slowed down other projects. The availability of energy (100 MW through the Endesa network with connection to the Híjar substation) has been decisive. What has Aragón done to become a leader? The community has developed a recruitment strategy based on three pillars: Energy availability: Aragon has prioritized the reserve of electrical capacity for strategic industrial projects. Administrative streamlining: the figure of the Declaration of General Interest of Aragon (DIGA) allows these megaprojects to be processed as Plans of General Interest, shortening bureaucratic deadlines. It already happened with Stellantis and CATLand with Microsoft. Logistics infrastructure: The N-232 functions as a backbone, connecting the data centers from Huesca to Bajo Martín. The money trail. AWS has already mobilized more than 15,000 million euros in Aragonwith a forecast of creating 6,800 direct jobs. Companies such as Microsoft, QTS and the Aragonese company Forestalia have also opted for the region. Only Forestalia has planned invest an additional 12 billion in three new centers in Magallón, Botorrita and Alfamén. And now what. AWS must present the documentation for the DIGA to the regional government. The British engineering company Arup, in charge of the project, will finalize the application in the coming weeks. The final agreement on water with the irrigators remains pending, an obstacle that may delay the planned schedule. The project will transform the Venta del Barro industrial estate, which already employs a thousand people from the Bajo Aragón regions. In Xataka | The problem with data centers is not that they are running out of water or energy: it is that they are running out of copper Featured image | The Puebla de Híjar

How the Sinaloa Cartel turned the marble industry into its methamphetamine logistics center

by

If Walter White had exchanged the New Mexico desert for the Mediterranean coast, his story would not have been very different from what the National Police has just revealed. in the series Breaking Badthe Albuquerque chemist hid his money under the sand and used a car wash to launder his “blue empire.” On the other hand, in the province of Alicante, the setting has been a marble industrial warehouse, an armored underground bunker and a statue of Popeye that, instead of spinach, kept the purest “crystal” of the Sinaloa Cartel. As if it were a script by Vince Gilligan, “Operation Saga” has revealed that the largest methamphetamine network in Europe did not operate from marginal shadows, but from the heart of the marble industry between Novelda and Monforte del Cid. He Heisenberg From this plot he decided that the marble blocks were the perfect container for the desires to expand the empire that Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán one day founded. The end of “Operation Saga”. The National Police, in a strategic alliance with the US DEA, has put the final lock on an investigation that began in 2023. According to the official press releasethis second phase has culminated in the total dismantling of a Spanish-Mexican organization responsible for turning Spain into the main hub of methamphetamine from the mainland. If in May 2024 the first phase already left a record number of 1,800 kilos of drugs seized, this new coup has ended with nine key arrests. The operation has managed to decapitate the infrastructure that the Sinaloa Cartel had woven between Tenerife, Madrid, Valencia and Alicante. A popeye 40 kilos. The logistics of the network were as ingenious as they were sophisticated. According to local mediathe narcotic was traveling from Mexico hidden inside imposing marble stones that were legally imported. Once in Spain, the organization used the business structure of a well-known marble worker in the area to move the drugs. We found the most surreal example in July 2024. The police intercepted a statue of Popeye, five feet tall and in metallic colors, bound for Tenerife. Its base was not solid metal, but contained 40 kilos of methamphetamine. The recipient, a “historic drug trafficker” on the island, was waiting for the shipment without knowing that the figure had been under police surveillance for months. This seizure made it possible to confirm that, after the 2024 coup, the organization was trying desperately refinance. The bunker and the salary of silence. Civil engineering put at the service of crime reached its zenith in a Novelda warehouse. There, the agents They found an underground bunker hidden under a heavy steel plate and a large stone block, where almost 3,000,000 euros in cash were kept. While the money was accumulating in Alicante, in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña, the organization supported a member of the Sinaloa Cartel “in reserve”. This man lived in a semi-cloistered regime in an apartment from which he barely left. He received a salary of 2,500 euros per month exclusively in exchange for his silence, since he knew the details of the entry of the 1,800 kilos of the first phase. A global drug network. The logistics brain was not at street level. The leader of the drug transporters, a Spaniard with a record of crimes against property, coordinated movements between Mexico and Spain through criminal teleworking from Dubai. From there he supervised not only the glass, but also secondary shipments, such as a 38-kilo shipment of marijuana intercepted in Finland. But why Spain? The answer lies in waste science. a study about wastewater (analyzing metabolites in urine) is the definitive tool to measure actual consumption. Although the consumption of methamphetamine in Spain is lower than that of cocaine, EUDA studies place Spain and the Netherlands as distribution hubs. In areas like Euskadi, for example, records of amphetamines in wastewater already show peaks that are eighty times the national average, an unequivocal sign that the market is there. The end of one era (or the beginning of another). The operation, directed by the Investigative Court number 6 of the National Court, has also seized seven luxury watches, geolocation devices and ammunition. With this, the Police consider that the most powerful criminal network of synthetic drugs in Europe has been dismantled. However, as Commissioner Alberto Morales warnsSinaloa’s persistence is legendary. Since 2009 they have tried to settle in Spain in every possible way: from “Chapo’s” cousin detained in the Palace Hotel in 2012, to the drug laboratories of “Los Chapitos” dismantled in Toledo in 2024. Today the Novelda bunker is empty and Popeye rests in the Canillas police facilities, but the authorities are clear that the “European dream” of the Mexican cartels is far from over. Image | lifestyle.sustainability and freepik Xataka | There is a huge gap between what we think medical marijuana does and what it actually does.

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.