energy

The breakfast that ruins your energy in the office is the same one that saves a cyclist: the paradox of "empty calories"

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The busy and stressed life that a good part of society leads can mean that in the mornings the lack of time means that breakfast is quickly resolved with a coffee accompanied by a few cookies or a bun. Something that is known by many that is not healthy, but the clock pressing from behind makes it difficult to find time to make some toast with something healthy on top. However, with this quick breakfast there is a problem: energy ends up falling in a few hours. The empty calories. a term which is increasingly heard to refer to those more processed foods such as pastries, cookies or any sweet that we eat. And here is the great debate, and it raises many questions about its usefulness and if we really eat foods that serve no purpose in the short term beyond making us fat. In Xataka Nutrition science is becoming clearer: it is not that important "that" We have breakfast but at what time do we do it? A roller coaster. To understand what happens in our body at 8:00 in the morning when we eat a coffee and four cookies, we must look at the biochemistry of digestion. And it is that industrial pastries o cookies are mainly composed of refined flours and free sugars. This is a problem because, lacking fiber, protein or quality healthy fats, the body You don’t have to make a great effort to digest them. That is, they are broken down at a high speed in the intestinal tract and enter the blood in the form of glucose almost suddenly. In energy terms, it is the equivalent of trying to heat a house by lighting a fire with sheets of newspaper: it burns very quickly, generates an intense flare, but goes out after a few minutes. {“videoId”:”x7zo910″,”autoplay”:true,”title”:”Added sugars: How to avoid them and improve your diet?”, “tag”:”sugar”, “duration”:”220″} There is no need to demonize to glucose because it is essential as fuel for our body and especially for the brain. However, this sugar peak which is produced by the consumption of these products or others that represent a large release of glucose in the blood, forces the pancreas to secrete a large amount of insulin at once to remove excess blood sugar towards the muscle or adipose tissue. The result here is a drastic drop in glucose just a couple of hours after eating these foods, which causes ravenous hunger or fatigue that makes us need to eat again to have sugar in our body. A continuum of sugar. If you have a slower breakfast with much more varied, healthy and fiber-rich foods, this does not happen. When there is a good amount of fiber, the digestive system has to spend more time processing food and, therefore, the transfer of glucose to the bloodstream is slower and more sustained over time. This gives you a ‘more sustained’ energy throughout the morning without feeling the classic mid-morning ‘slump’. In Xataka We’ve been believing oatmeal is the perfect breakfast for years, but science has a warning: there’s a limit It’s not always bad. Although on many occasions these empty calories are demonized for not having quality nutrients, sometimes it is necessary to have extra quick energy. without thinking about fiber or vitamins that may be presented. This is something we see in the world of sports, where a hyper-sugar chocolate or a cookie can work a miracle when you are at kilometer 80 of a stage, climbing a hill or when the dreaded ‘bird’ is lurking. In this context of high sports performance, fiber or fat would be a hindrance, since they would slow down gastric emptying, stealing blood from the legs to send it to the stomach and causing heaviness or gastrointestinal problems. That glucose spike that in an office causes lethargy after two hours, on the bicycle is immediately burned in the muscle as high-octane fuel, allowing the intensity to be maintained. Images | Bayu Syaits In Xataka | To the question of whether “eating breakfast as soon as you wake up is good for your body”, science offers a clear answer (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The breakfast that ruins your energy in the office is the same one that saves a cyclist: the paradox of “empty calories” was originally published in Xataka by José A. Lizana .

Perovskite is the “holy grail” of solar energy, but its industrial manufacturing was hell. This new technique changes everything at once

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Solar energy has a clear favorite to lead the future: tandem solar cells. The idea is brilliant and simple on paper, since if you combine traditional silicon with a top layer of revolutionary perovskite, you create a “super panel.” Perovskite swallows high-energy, short-wave light, and silicon finishes the job with longer waves. So the result is capturing much more solar spectrum and generating more electricity than with traditional plates. The valley of industrial death. The problem is that the photovoltaic industry had been banging its head against a wall for years. Perovskite was a wonder in the “Petri dish” of the laboratory, but manufacturing those very thin layers on a large scale, uniformly and quickly, was a true technical nightmare. Technology ran the risk of remaining an eternal promise, until a bridge built between Karlsruhe and Valencia showed that the problem was not the material, but the method. The 10 minute record. A team of researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the University of Valencia, supported by institutions in France and Argentina, has just published a historic milestone in the magazine Nature Energy. They have designed an ultra-fast, solvent-free vacuum process that deposits the layer of perovskite at a pace never seen before. They have managed to manufacture tandem cells with a very high efficiency of 24.3% and the conversion process lasts just 10 minutes. To understand why this turns the industry upside down, you have to look at the factory numbers. As Professor Ulrich Paetzold (KIT) explainsIn the industry, not only efficiency matters, but also that the process is robust and scalable. This new method achieves a deposition rate of 47 nanometers per minute, that is, a speed ten times greater than that of conventional thermal evaporation methods. In addition, it consumes very little material and allows sources to be reused, drastically reducing costs. The “magic” of sublimation. The technique is called Closed Space Sublimation (CSS). We could say that it is like a microscopic oven: the precursor materials evaporate and collide directly against the silicon cell, which is placed just a few millimeters away. There they react on site to form the structure of the perovskite almost magically. Sofía Chozas-Barrientos, researcher at the University of Valencia, emphasizes that this system It allows you to do without solvents and save a lot of time. However, the recipe needed to be refined. For the tandem to work, the perovskite The upper part must act as a spectral filter (have a wider bandgap), and this is achieved by adding bromine. The drama was that, when trying to introduce bromine, it literally vanished during the process. The solution, according to researcher Alexander Dierckswas to create a mixed organic source by mixing methylammonium iodide and methylammonium bromide in an exact ratio of 3 to 1. Thus they managed to retain the bromine and nail an ideal band efficiency of 1.64 eV. Ready for the real world. The point is that good solar panels are not smooth; They are full of textures (with micropyramid shapes) to better catch the light. And this CSS process has worked perfectly on smooth, nanostructured and microstructured silicon, without having to touch a single button in the machine’s settings. Microscopes confirmed impeccable coverage in all topographies. As Professor Henk Bolink summarizesfrom the University of Valencia, a process that only works on smooth laboratory surfaces is of no use in industry. The fact that this sublimation achieves uniform layers on textured silicon is what makes this advancement real, viable and marketable. The future, on the roofs. Closing the gap between the laboratory and the factory is the great challenge of our energy era. With this Spanish-German milestone, the mass production of tandem solar technology finally removes the “unviable” label. The perovskite revolution no longer has to wait decades; is ready to make the leap to factories and, very soon, to rooftops around the world. Image | Eurekalert Xataka | Where you see an old bullet from the 17th century, Germany sees a magnificent source of perovskite for solar panels

Singapore achieves an almost invisible solar cell that generates energy even in the shade

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The windows of a car parked in the sun or the lenses of smart glasses can be future charging points for a battery. And the technology has already reached that point thanks to scientists from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU) who have just published in ACS Energy Letters a new type of transparent, ultra-thin solar cell based on perovskite, a semiconductor material with compositional versatility that conventional silicon cannot match. In short. The team, led by Associate Professor Annalisa Brunohas managed to manufacture cells just 10 nanometers thick. To have an even greater dimension: a human hair measures about 70,000 nanometers, that is, if that hair were the Eiffel Tower, this film would be a sheet of paper placed next to it. However, there is an even more revealing piece of information from the study, since the natural roughness of the surface on which the cell is deposited—about 2.8 nanometers according to microscopy measurements of the paper itself—represents almost a third of its total thickness. But the milestone is not in its form. The real paradigm shift proposed by this technology is the end of exclusive dependence on direct sun. Unlike conventional silicon panels, these perovskite devices generate electricity under indirect light and diffuse light conditions, making them especially useful in high-density urban environments where vertical facades and frequent cloud cover limit direct solar exposure. “Buildings consume about 40% of the world’s energy, so we urgently need technologies that turn their facades into energy generators,” explains Bruno. According to the team’s initial calculations, if we covered the glass façade of a large skyscraper (such as those in the Marina Bay financial district) with this technology, we could theoretically generate hundreds of megawatt-hours per year. We are talking about covering the annual consumption of about 100 four-bedroom apartments. These are preliminary figures, of course, but the potential is there. The secret is in evaporation. How do you keep a window looking like a window while generating energy? The answer is that these cells are semitransparent and neutral in color, with no apparent dye that reveals their presence. To manufacture them, the team used a vacuum thermal evaporation process: the base materials are heated in a vacuum chamber until they evaporate and are deposited on a surface forming an ultrathin and uniform film. Without toxic solvents, without the usual defects of solution methods. What distinguishes this work from previous attempts — and there have been many, the study compares its results to decades of studies — is that it is the first time ultrathin perovskite cells have been made using entirely vacuum processes, from start to finish. That is not a minor detail because vacuum processes are already used by the large-scale semiconductor industry, which considerably shortens the path to industrial manufacturing. The data, but with nuances. Let’s get to the numbers, which is where this technology really comes into its own. In their completely opaque versions, these sheets manage to transform 7%, 11% and 12% of the light they receive into energy, using minimum thicknesses of 10, 30 and 60 nanometers. What if we want the window to remain a window? The 60 nanometer semi-transparent model allows 41% of visible light to pass through and maintains a non-negligible efficiency of 7.6%. According to the researchers, it is the best that has been seen to date with this type of materials But here the real tension of this type of engineering appears: the more transparent, the less efficient. The study identifies the 30 nm cell as the one that best balances both variables—it has the highest potential for combined light utilization efficiency—but allows less visible light to pass through than the 60 nm cell. There is no perfect solution; There is a compromise that each application will have to negotiate according to its priorities. But what about stability? This is where any perovskite technology has to prove its maturity. The data from the study itself shows that 100 nm cells last projected for about 15,400 hours before degrading to 80% of their initial performance. The 60 nm ones, 5,800 hours. The 10 nm ones, 4,100 hours. These are figures that speak of a laboratory, not of a window exposed to rain, temperature changes and years of use. Professor Sam Stranks, from the University of Cambridge, sums it up precisely in a separate commentary on the study– The balance between transparency and generation is promising, but the next critical tests will be long-term stability, durability and performance on large surfaces. The roofs are already occupied. The next frontier of urban solar energy is the millions of square meters of glass that cover our buildings, cars and devices, surfaces that until now were passive by definition. The progress of the NTU team, already patented through NTUitive and in conversations with companies to validate the process, points in that direction. There is still a way to go, especially in real durability. But for the first time, that path has an industry-compatible manufacturing method, cells that operate with a fraction of the available light and a thickness that makes the word “invisible” not a marketing metaphor, but a technical description fairly close to reality. Image | ACS Energy Xataka | Coal is back in fashion in many countries. The problem is that it is clouding the sky from the solar panels

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz chokes the Chinese economy. Its only energy solution is a historic pact with Putin

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“一日不见，如隔三秋” (A day without seeing you is like three autumns). Using the Russian translation of this ancient Chinese proverb, President Vladimir Putin wanted to begin his meeting with Xi Jinping. The gesture of extreme closeness was not accidental. Tiananmen Square was dressed up with a 21-gun salute, a military band and dozens of children waving flags to welcome the Russian president. On the face of it, Beijing displayed the same diplomatic theatrics and pageantry it had offered to US President Donald Trump just days earlier, as detailed Bloomberg. However, the background was diametrically opposite: if with Trump the red carpet sought to appease and choreograph stability with a volatile rival, with Putin the authority and support for a cornered partner was staged. The Chinese leader addressed his counterpart as an “old friend,” a term unusually reserved in the Party bureaucracy for highly regarded foreigners. The visit, which marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the friendship treaty between both countries and represents Putin’s 25th trip to China, represents a vital alliance at the most critical moment of the decade. Behind the walks through the imperial gardens and the closed-door meetings, there is a suffocating urgency. The global board is burning due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz derived from the war between the United States and Iran, a blockade that has cut off Asia’s energy arteries and has turned this summit into a geopolitical lifeline. The Siberian lifeguard. The response to the crisis has a clear name on the agenda of both leaders: the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. According to the estimatesOnce completed, this colossal 2,600-kilometer-long infrastructure will transport up to 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from the Russian Arctic fields of Yamal to northern China, passing through Mongolia. Moscow and Beijing have already reached a “general understanding” on the project, encompassing consensus on the layout and construction methods, as stated Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told journalists and spokesman Dmitri Peskov confirmed. Additionally, both governments have signed a legally binding supply memorandum to boost construction. But all that glitters is not gold. As newspapers such as he Financial Times and CNBCthe agreement has been stumbling over the same rock for years: the price, financing and delivery schedule. China, aware of its position of strength, demands that the rate for the new gas pipeline be equal to the price of the heavily subsidized Russian domestic market (between $120 and $130 per 1,000 cubic meters), conditions that would drastically reduce the profit margins for the Russian state giant Gazprom. Furthermore, secrecy and caution reign in Beijing: as pointed out Reuterswhen Gazprom announced the memorandum last September, China did not issue any official statement on the matter. And even if the agreement is closed now, Russian salvation will not be immediate; from the research unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) has already has warned that gas projects of this magnitude require at least eight to ten years for their construction. The Hormuz factor: a geopolitical accelerator. If the gas pipeline had been on the drawing board for years, the Third Gulf War has stepped on the accelerator. The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused a real cataclysm in the Indo-Pacific region. This maritime blockade has suddenly interrupted the arrival of half of China’s oil imports and almost a third of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. The consequences they have been immediate: The Asian giant has already reported a rebound in inflation and an abrupt weakening of its domestic economic activity during the month of April. Faced with maritime vulnerability, securing a land supply route is vital for Beijing’s survival. As experts in German Welleinstability in the Gulf has triggered China’s desire for a pipelined energy flow that is immune to Western sanctions or American naval blockades. Still, China faces this crisis with homework done. Far from improvising, Beijing took advantage of the previous years to buy heavily sanctioned crude oil from countries such as Russia, Venezuela and Iran. Thanks to this, China today has colossal strategic reserves, also supported by a fleet of Iranian oil tankers that function as a floating warehouse off its coasts. A deeply strained and asymmetrical relationship. Although official statements speak of “mutual respect” and a “limitless” partnership, economic reality depicts a deeply unequal relationship. President Putin himself has declared that Russia and China want to be equal partners, but the gap is evident: the Chinese economy is almost eight times larger and much more technologically advanced. Without China’s money and technology, the very survival of the Russian regime would be in question. The data is devastating. According to him Financial TimesRussia has suffered a 38% year-on-year drop in its energy export revenues. To survive Western isolation, Moscow has turned China into its lifeline. At the end of last year, more than 99% of bilateral trade was settled in rubles and yuan to circumvent the SWIFT system, and Beijing currently supplies 90% of imports of sanctioned Russian technology, including semiconductors, microelectronics and dual-use goods, essential for its war machine. For his part, Xi Jinping carries out a delicate diplomatic balancing act. His meeting with Putin comes just days after his summit with Donald Trump. This synchronicity allows Russia a key tactical move: as reported EuronewsPutin’s trip serves to receive direct information and exchange views with Beijing on recent negotiations with Washington. Simultaneously, China does not hesitate to invoke its “Blocking Rules” to order its domestic refiners to ignore US sanctions and continue buying Iranian crude. But at the same time, as the newspaper highlights Asahi Shimbunthe Chinese Ministry of Commerce confirmed the purchase of 200 Boeing aircraft just after Trump’s visit, in a clear gesture to stabilize its economic ties with the West. A new world epicenter. The current crisis and the negotiations in Beijing certify an irreversible paradigm shift. The entry into operation of “Power of Siberia 2” is not just a commercial agreement, it is the chronicle of an announced breakup. … Read more

China already mass-produces the strongest carbon fiber in the world. And that changes the rules in defense, aeronautics and energy

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For decades, access to the world’s highest-performance composite materials has been a privilege of a few countries. For high-performance carbon fiber, Japan and the United States have controlled that market with a combination of technological advantage and export frameworks explicitly designed to keep China out. Last March we saw that this balance had changed, as the Chinese state group CNBM (China National Building Material Group) presented in Paris the world’s first mass production of T1200 grade carbon fiberthe highest step on the tensile strength scale of this material. What is the T1200. As we explained a while ago, in the world of carbon fiber, the letter T followed by a number is a direct resistance classification. The higher the number, the more force the material can withstand before breaking. T1200 exceeds 8 gigapascals (GPa) of tensile strength, making it about ten times stronger than conventional steel, with a density that is just one quarter of that of steel and with a filament diameter less than one tenth of a human hair. According to counted CCTV, a cable just over two millimeters thick, made up of 120,000 of these filaments, is capable of towing a bus full of 54 passengers. More companies join this fiber. China showed its prowess at the JEC World in Paris, but the industries have already gotten up and running. At the end of April, PetroChina announced the inauguration of its first carbon fiber project high-performance in the city of Jilin, with an investment of approximately 1.3 billion yuan (about 180 million dollars). It is relevant because it is no longer just CNBM, as the state energy giant enters the sector taking advantage of its dominance in the supply chain. Zhongfu Shenying, a subsidiary of CNBM, for its part, has commissioned additional production a new 10,000 ton plant standard fiber metrics. China’s idea is to build an industrial ecosystem from the top down, including mastering high-performance carbon fiber production techniques. China had not been able to manufacture it for decades. High performance carbon fiber has been on dual technology lists for decades use of the Wassenaar Agreement, the multilateral export control regime created in 1996 with 42 member countries including Japan and the United States, but not China. According to the China Composites Industry Association, the Agreement restricts the export of carbon fiber of high modulus (from grade T800) to non-member countries. This means that accessing materials above that threshold required, in practice, manufacturing them at home or obtaining them through alternative means. China did not have its first T300 until 2008. From there to the T1200 it took less than twenty years. It has taken Japan 43 to travel that same path. How China has accelerated so much. The model that has been repeated many other times and in other sectors: state capital, research from universities and industrial capacity functioning as a coordinated ecosystem, with the same approach as China has been applied to semiconductorsbatteries or electric vehicles. In this case the protagonist is CNBM, which developed the fiber through Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber. Zhou Yuxian, president of CNBM, counted in the presentation that the country has demonstrated “completely independent and controllable capabilities throughout the entire industrial chain”, from equipment to the transition from laboratory to mass production. Chen Qiufei, head of T1200 R&D at Zhongfu Shenying, added Furthermore, the new grade improves the resistance of the previous T1100 by more than 14% and allows the weight of the equipment to be reduced in the sectors where it is applied by more than 10%. Who led the market until now. Toray Industries, a Japanese company, dominates the global market with a production capacity of 29,100 tons per year. It also developed its own T1200 with 8 GPa strength, but so far has not announced a mass production line equivalent to that of CNBM. Mitsubishi Chemical, another Japanese giant, advertisement plans to double its high-performance capacity before 2027. The South Korean Hyosung Advanced Materials aims to reach 24,000 tons per year in 2028. On the other hand, on the American flank, Hexcel is defined as the main supplier of carbon fiber for aerospace and United States military programs. Where is it applied? High-performance carbon fiber has been used for decades in combat aircraft, missiles, satellites and military fuselages precisely because it combines extreme strength with extreme lightness. With the T1200, things go even further. According to counted Interesting Engineering, the material could redefine the limits of fifth and sixth generation military aircraft manufacturing. In the civil sphere, commercial aeronautics already consumes around 76% of global carbon fiber, and the T1200 would allow additional structural weight reductions on platforms such as the Boeing 787 or the Airbus A350. In energy, high-pressure hydrogen tanks use carbon fiber structures to withstand pressure with the lowest possible weight. China has also pointed out applications in humanoid robotics and in the so-called “low-altitude economy” (drones, air taxis and urban air mobility). The Chinese space company Welight Technology already operates a rocket whose structure is around 90% carbon fiber composites, which reduces weight by 25 to 30% compared to equivalent metal designs. Cover image | Zhongfu Shenying In Xataka | Brazil holds one of the largest reserves of rare earths in the world. And he doesn’t want to repeat the same mistake from centuries ago

The energy jets from black holes are so powerful that they can reshape entire galaxies and now we know how to measure it

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It is always said that black holes They gobble up everything that comes close to themfrom matter to light. However, this is not entirely true. In some cases, there is a fraction of particles and energy that, instead of falling inside, does the opposite. It is ejected in the form of jets, known as jets. Although there are some hypotheses about this, the reason why this occurs is not completely known. What is known is that these jets are so powerful that they can even influence the evolution of galaxies. The problem is that it is known that they are very powerful, but not how powerful. Until now, no one had been able to directly measure the power of these jets. However, an international team of scientists has achieved measuring these jets around a specific black hole, thereby opening up a very interesting range of possibilities. The data. These scientists have studied the Cygnus X-1 systemcomposed of a black hole and a blue supergiant star orbiting each other. Using a very novel method, they have discovered that the energy of the jets leaving the black hole is equivalent to that of 1,000 suns. They have also observed that they move through space at a speed of 540 million kilometers per hour and that 10% of the energy that is initially formed in the fall towards the black hole is converted into jets. The background. Until now, no one knew how to measure the power of a black hole’s jets. The only thing that was done was to measure the scars they left in space using calorimetric methods. When freed, they can leave in their wake hot spots and holes in the intergalactic medium. However, As explained in an article by Interesting Engineeringthis is something like wanting to measure the power of an engine by observing the treads of the car’s tires. The important thing is to directly analyze the machinery. And that is precisely what has been achieved now. Indirect measures. In systems formed by a black hole and a star, the black hole feed little by little gas surrounding the star. As it approaches it, the gas begins to rotate faster and faster, generating a lot of heat and energy. Part of that energy does not fall into the black hole, but instead jump outward, forming the jets. In turn, the star releases very intense flows of particles, which give rise to what is known as stellar winds. Those stellar winds can interact with the jets and bend them. And there is the key. The jets cannot be measured as such, but the resistance they offer to being bent by stellar winds can be measured. For example, we can know how strong a person is by analyzing his or her ability to beat someone whose strength we do know in an arm wrestling match. Trajectory changes. The overall trajectory of the jets depends on the momentum flux of both the jets themselves and the winds. Since the momentum flow of the wind can be calculated, it is enough to analyze the trajectory to solve the unknown. The data can also be further refined with a series of computer simulations. The result is a fairly rough estimate of the power of the jets. There are limitations. The biggest limitation of this study is that only one black hole has been analyzed. The procedure would have to be repeated with more jets in more black holes to check if there is a trend and, therefore, if the method is valid. Galactic evolution. Since jets from larger black holes can significantly affect galactic evolution, this method could be very useful to better understand how galaxies form. That is why it is important to move on to the second step and check if the method is reproducible, especially with larger black holes. Image| A supermassive black hole ejects a jet of plasma 3,000 light years long, traveling at almost the speed of light. NASA artist concept In Xataka | We thought that the heart of the Milky Way was an immense black hole. Mathematics has changed this idea for us

the savior of world energy

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When the price of fossil fuel tightensthe answer is not long in coming. The Iran war caused breaking the barrier of 100 dollars per barrel WTI. It was not surprising considering that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz led to the loss of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined products, leaving the market with a net deficit of about eight million barrels per day. The world did not sit idly by watching the price of fuel rise and the reaction was immediate: buy solar panels at industrial levels. And, in that scenario, there is a very clear winner: China. Bottleneck. When the war startedsome of the first objectives had to do with energy. Through the Strait of Hormuz It moves more than 20% of the oil consumed by the world, being a strategic element and, therefore, vulnerable. With the closure of the Ras Tanura refinery and with the collapse of the strait itself, a brutal traffic jam was caused in which hundreds of vessels They moved at the speed of a bicycle. According to Bloombergthere were more than 800 stuck boats, and an Al Jazeera investigation pointed out that, in the first 40 days of conflict, 206 million barrels disappeared from the market. With that amount, 103 supertankers would be filled. The reaction of the governments was to begin releasing millions of barrels from their emergency reserves, as well as to call on citizens to spend as little as possible. Chinese panels. This is when countries have accelerated the transformation of their electrical network. As we read in Electrekwith data from Ember, China exported 68 GW of solar energy in March alone. The graph prepared by Ember speaks for itself, but that amount is double February’s total and 49% more than the previous record, set in August 2025. It is estimated that the solar energy installed in Spain is about 42 GW by the end of 2025and being Spain one of the powers in this sensespeaks volumes about the extent to which the world has turned to Chinese solar when the fossil fuel belt was tight. It goes through neighborhoods. The largest clients have been the logical ones: those most exposed to fluctuations in fossil fuel prices. Imports from Africa increased by 176%, reaching 10 GW with Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia being the largest importers. India imported 6.6 GW, Malaysia 1.8 GW and, in total, other Asian countries added 39 GW. Panels were also purchased in Europe, Japan and Australia, but the study points out that capacity was lower due to work carried out previously, and in the Middle East things were more complicated due to trade restrictions due to the war. Trend change. Something that the study points out is that, although entire panels continue to be purchased from China, there seems to be a turning of the tables because imports of solar cells are increasing, which are subsequently assembled in the destination country. For example, of those 68 GW exported, 32 GW belong to pre-assembled panels and 36 GW to cells and wafers. One is going down, the other is going up. And something important: it also means a relief for a China whose panel companies they were dying of success. Not just the panels. And this commitment to new energy not only translates into a greater amount of solar energy exported. Batteries and electric vehicles They are also booming and it is estimated that, as a whole, they increased by 70% year-on-year and by 38% compared to February. The Spanish lifeguard. Going down the data, the global implementation of solar energy is growing and it is being seen that it is not only a way to pollute less, but also to cushion the blow of the fossil fuel price increase that can suffer turbulence due to war, geopolitical issues or by accidents. It also shows that the fact that much of the world’s oil passes through a single point is something that can strangle the market in the event of a catastrophe, explaining why countries seek this transition to renewable energies that make them more self-sufficient. Images | Jenikir In Xataka | For the first time, 100% of Spain’s energy has been covered by renewables. The question is whether we can repeat it

“Some people expend tremendous energy just being normal.”

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If modern philosophy had its pantheon of rockstars, Albert Camus It would probably be one of the most popular. And not only because he is one of the key figures of the absurdism and existentialism, the latter label he rejected throughout his life. As if that were not enough, Camus was a prominent political activist, a brilliant novelist, and one of the youngest writers to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He picked it up when he was 44 years old, just three years before he died prematurely in a traffic accident in Villeblevin, France. We also remember Camus for something else: his deep reflections on the human condition, something that connects with the quote with which we opened this post. Pill Philosophy. We have discussed it many times: The Internet is full of philosophical quotes of dubious attribution and authorship that is impossible to verify, if not outright false. This is sometimes a problem because the quotes clash with the way of thinking of the philosopher to whom they are assigned, as happens with the most famous phrase (and false) by Marcus Aurelius. Other times the quotes are simply paraphrases that try to make complex ideas digestible. Hidden in a notebook. The phrase that concerns us today is not neither one thing nor the other. It is not by Camus, although the Internet is full of pages that point to him as its author. However, it did come out of his own handwriting and is included among his works. How do you explain that? Simple. In addition to writing his own reflections, Camus was fond of recording other people’s comments that, for one reason or another, he found interesting. one of those quotesnoted in one of his notebooks between 1942 and 1945, is the one that concerns us today: “No one realizes that some people expend tremendous energy simply to be normal.” The comment is attributed to “BB”, the actress’s initials Blanche Balainwho was probably heard during a meeting in Saint-Étienne. Isn’t it your work then? No. And yes. Perhaps Camus is not its author in the strict sense, but (ironies of life) that phrase has ended up becoming one of the most popular of the Nobel Prize in Literature. And it is understandable. In addition to being suggestive, the phrase connects with the way Camus looked at the world and the human condition. It is difficult to know why he decided to write down Alain’s comment in his notebook, but what is clear is that he was the one who popularized it. Not only that. Over time, the actress’s words have become a door through which to access Camus’ philosophical legacy. “Just be normal”. The phrase in question leaves behind a suggestive, almost challenging idea: there are people investing energy in something seemingly as simple and simple as “being normal.” But… What is ‘being normal’? Does it require an effort? If something is ‘normal’, shouldn’t it come naturally to us by definition? Balain-Camus’s reflection dynamites that idea and introduces another, much more suggestive one: the ‘normal’ can actually be an artifice, a mask that we put on to avoid going against the current and whose use, furthermore, is exhausting. “The most important thing”. Camus is not the first to point out the clash between social pressure and authenticity, an idea that already had expressed centuries before the philosopher Michel Montaigne in ‘About loneliness’: “The most important thing in the world is knowing how to be yourself.” What Camus does stand out for is his radical nonconformity and his defense of the rebellion as a form of dignity. Hence many people interpreter Camus’ annotation as a wake-up call, a way to remind us of the price often paid by those who deviate from ‘normality’ or do not meet society’s expectations. The (no) meaning of life. Camus’s phrase has a deeper reading level that connects directly with his ideas about the human condition. Like other authors who embraced philosophy of the absurdCamus believed that our existence is meaningless and does not respond to any higher purpose. That does not mean that it has no value or that we should abandon ourselves to death. On the contrary, the French writer believed that the meaninglessness of existence forces us to pursue a lofty goal: be the ones who give it our own meaning and do so while being fully aware of its futility. Remembering Sisyphus. The clearest example (used by Camus) is left by classical mythology with the character of Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra condemned to push a huge rock up a mountain day after day only to see that, just before reaching the top, the stone always rolled down the mountain. That of Sisyphus is an absurd purpose, just as is the determination of men to search for meaning in a universe that lacks purpose. Still, Sisyphus presses on, carving out his own courage. Just like we do, facing day to day. “The very struggle to reach the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. You have to imagine Sisyphus happy,” Camus concludes. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

China’s largest solar park is doing much more than generating energy: it’s greening a desert

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more than a year ago we had in Xataka how a huge solar park in the Chinese province of Qinghai, in the heart of the Tibetan plateau, served as an ecological experiment: under the panels, the shade retained moisture and made vegetation sprout in the middle of the desert. Now, that same place – the Talatan Solar Park – has become something much bigger. It is the largest clean energy facility on the planet, a “blue sea” of silicon that already covers more than 600 square kilometers at three thousand meters above sea level. Where before there was nothing, China is lifting an energy ecosystem without comparison in the rest of the world. The scale has multiplied. Where last year there was talk of a 1 gigawatt solar park, today a complex extends that reaches 15,600 and 16,900 megawatts and continues to expand. Its area – between 420 and 610 square kilometers – is seven times that of Manhattan. Furthermore, it is not alone since 4,700 megawatts of wind energy and 7,380 megawatts of hydroelectric dams are deployed around it, completing an unprecedented hybrid system. The result: enough renewable energy to supply almost all of the plateau’s needs, including the data centers that power China’s artificial intelligence. According to CleanTechnicaevery three weeks China installs as many solar panels as the entire capacity of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric project in its history. A global clean energy laboratory. The Tibetan plateau, with its pure, cold air, has become the most ambitious energy laboratory in the world. There, China is experimenting with an electricity production model based exclusively on renewables. Electricity generated in Qinghai—40% cheaper than coal, according to the NYT— powers high-speed trains, factories, electric cars and data centers. In fact, the region is home to new computing centers dedicated to artificial intelligence, which consume less energy thanks to the altitude and low temperatures. “Hot air from servers is used to heat other buildings, replacing coal-fired boilers,” explained Zhang Jingang, vice provincial governor. In the words of Professor Ningrong Liu, in his column for the South China Morning Post: “China is not only leading the transition to green energy; it is building the 21st century energy scaffolding that sustains its industrial leadership in electric vehicles, batteries and solar technology.” Three sources that beat in unison. The magnitude of the project is only possible thanks to centralized planning that combines three main sources: solar, wind and hydroelectric energy. During the day, Talatan panels capture more intense solar radiation than at sea level; At night, thousands of wind turbines collect the cold breezes that sweep across the plains. When both systems fluctuate, hydroelectric dams balance the grid. Also, from the New York Times They described a system reversible pumping: excess solar energy during the day is used to raise water to reservoirs located in nearby mountains, which release that water at night to generate electricity. And under the panels, life returns. The shade of the plates reduces evaporation and soil erosion. According to China Dailythis year the vegetation has recovered up to 80% and 173 villages have benefited from the associated livestock farming. A local shepherd, Zhao Guofu, said: “My flock has grown to 800 sheep and my income has doubled since I grazed between the panels.” The perfect geography for the sun. No other country has taken solar generation to similar altitudes. The altitude plays in favor of physics, at 3,000 meters the air contains fewer particles that block light and the low temperatures reduce the thermal loss of the panels. This efficiency is multiplied in Qinghai, one of the few areas of the Tibetan plateau with large plains, where it is possible to build without the limits of the mountainous relief. The Talatan Desert, once an arid and worthless land, has become an energetic jewel. local authorities offer symbolic leases and have developed roads and high-voltage lines connecting the plateau with the industrial centers to the east. That energy travels more than 1,600 kilometers to factories and cities. According to CleanTechnicaChina already operates 41 ultra-high voltage transmission lines, some longer than 2,000 miles and up to 1.1 million volts. The global scale: no one comes close. Other countries have tried to generate clean energy at altitude, but with modest results. Switzerland, for example, inaugurated a small solar park in the Alps, at 1,800 meters, with barely 0.5 MW. For its part, in the Chilean Atacama Desert, a 480 MW project operates at 1,200 meters. By way of comparison, the Talatan complex multiplies the capacity of the Bhadla Solar Park in India, and for more than seven that of the Al Dhafra Solar Park in the United Arab Emirates, which until recently held records. The superpower of clean energy. China produces and consumes more renewable energy than any other country on the planet. In 2024, was responsible of 61% of new solar installations and 70% of global wind power. That same year, it achieved the capacity targets it had set for 2030. In the first six months of 2025added 212 GW solar and 51 GW wind, and the country’s carbon emissions fell for the first time. In this context, Talatan Park is both a symbol and an infrastructure. China is exporting its renewable technology around the world, from Asia to Africa, following the logic of Belt and Road Initiative. For the academic Ningrong Liu: “China wants to stop being the world’s factory to become the engine of the world’s factory.” It is not just about manufacturing panels, but about selling the complete model: engineering, financing and know-how to build green networks in other countries. The less visible side of the miracle. It’s not all clean energy and pastoral harmony. In its report, The New York Times recalled that access to Tibet remains strictly controlled by the Communist Party, and that Western media were only allowed to visit Qinghai on a government-organized tour. There are also human and environmental costs. CleanTechnica documents how the giant power lines that transport energy … Read more

studies a huge submarine cable with distant Ireland to stop being an energy island

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Spain may have emerged as one of the EU states that more and better have understood and adopted the energy transition towards renewables, but there is an unquestionable geographical reality: The Iberian Peninsula is an energy island which has a problem called France. A bottleneck that prevents Spain from exporting its enormous surplus of solar energy, so the European Commission wants to correct it with ambitious connection goals for 2030. How? Looking at the sea that surrounds the peninsula in search of partners “to lend a helping hand” to solve this limitation: across the Mediterranean with two gigantic connections to Italy and also towards the Atlantic, with a cable between Spain and Ireland. The future cable between Spain and Ireland. The planned route would link the northern coast of Spain, specifically Asturias, with the southern coast of Ireland, with an estimated length of between 1,000 and 1,100 kilometers, as collects The Energy Newspaper. Although there is no defined route yet, the infrastructure will have to navigate considerable depths in the Bay of Biscay and the Celtic Sea. Go ahead that the agreement signed between Spain and Ireland It is a Memorandum of Understanding to study the feasibility of an underwater electricity cable within the framework of the WindEurope 2026 congress held in Madrid signed by the Spanish vice president Sara Aagesen and the Irish minister Darragh O’Brien. Why is it important. Because both Spain and Ireland share a structural problem: they are one of the least interconnected electricity markets in Europe and are classified as “energy islands” by the EU, which limits their ability to export renewable surpluses and reinforce their security of supply (friendly reminder: the blackout). From the point of view of energy security, more interconnection means less dependence on imported fossil fuels and more resilience in the face of shortages. This cable would diversify Spanish export routes, a detailed priority objective in REE Electrical Planning. The energy logic of the project rests on the complementarity of renewable resources: Spain would export solar surpluses and Ireland would provide electricity generated in its offshore wind farms. Both technologies have generation profiles decoupled in time, so the exchange is technically valuable to stabilize both electrical networks: when the sun shines in Spain, it can power Dublin, when Atlantic storms sweep the north, its wind turbines can sustain Spanish industry. Context. Spain currently has barely 3,000 MW of interconnection capacity, which represents a ratio of 2%, according to REE dataon its installed mix of approximately 150 GW. That is to say, it fails to meet the minimum target of 10% set by the EU for 2020 and has to work a miracle to reach the 15% planned for 2030. This chronic deficit limits the capacity of the Spanish system to export the growing surpluses of wind and solar energy. The project arises at a time of maximum urgency for energy independence after the gas crisis. Recent war conflicts have led the EU to accelerate the processing of large electrical interconnections between European markets as a tool for collective energy security in search of self-sufficiency with its own resources. Initiatives like the plan REPowerEU They have these cross-border interconnections as one of the levers with absolute priority. Map of transmission and storage projects. ENTSO-E Main connections in Spain. A brief summary of the very few electrical connections of the Spanish state with other EU states: Existing: Spain–France (Pyrenean land interconnection), with a current capacity of approximately 3,000 MW through the Pyrenees and Spain – Portugal, through various bidirectional land high voltage lines that make up the Iberian market. Under construction or approved: the submarine cable of the Bay of Bizkaia between Spain and France, scheduled to enter service in 2028, will add 2,000 MW of additional capacity with France. The wire Fontefríabetween Portugal and Galicia, will provide about 1,000 MW of exchange. Projected (under study or preliminary phase): Apollo Link between Spain and Italy, of 2000 MW and entering service in 2032. Iberia Link between Spain and Italy of 1,200 MW. Trans-Pyrenean land connection through Navarra and Aragon, blocked by the French government. How are they going to do it?. Technically, the project would be executed using a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable, the standard technology for long-distance underwater interconnections, due to its lower energy loss in transportation compared to alternating current. There are direct and operational precedents of a similar scale, such as the recent Celtic Interconnector between Ireland and France. After signing the Memorandum of Understanding to study the viability of an underwater electricity cable that links both states, the project must be technically and economically evaluated jointly by Red Eléctrica and EirGrid, the operators of both states. They will then present it to the European authorities for possible inclusion in the list of Projects of Common Interest (PCI), which would give it access to European funding and accelerated administrative procedures. ENTSO-Ethe association of European network operators, publishes every two years the Ten-Year Network Development Planthe technical reference framework to prioritize and evaluate this type of projects. Yes, but. The project is in its earliest phase, which means that it has everything ahead of it and a submarine cable is a major technical and economic infrastructure. A cable of more than 1,000 kilometers in length implies an estimated investment that would exceed 2,000-3,000 million euros, a construction period of several years once approved and logistical challenges in North Atlantic waters. Furthermore, the route through Asturias would require reinforcing internal transport networks to cross the Cantabrian Mountains to connect with the large solar generation centers in the interior of the peninsula. In Xataka | The submarine cables belonged to the teleoperators, and now the big technology companies are controlling them In Xataka | The first great Atlantic submarine cable that connected us to the internet says goodbye for a simple reason: it was too expensive to repair it Cover | ENTSOE

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