heat

In Barcelona they did not drop below 19°C on an April night. And that’s more important than all the heat waves

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It’s one piece of information, just one. But he alone weighs more than all the daytime maxims combined. Barcelona-Fabra just broke the record of a century with a nighttime minimum in April above 19 degrees. And yes, 19 degrees seems little compared to the 33-35 that the Guadalquivir Valley experienced that same day in the morning; But if climate change has been teaching us something for decades, it is that appearances can be deceiving. That anomaly called ‘April’. Although it is not being as scandalous as January, April is breaking all historical records. The fact that has been repeated the most is that AEMET has recorded more than 70 records temperature only in the first time of the month. In aggregate terms, we are talking about a sustained thermal anomaly of between 5 and 10 degrees. And it is interesting because, although it is evident that we are not talking about a ‘heat wave’, experiencing an anomaly of this size in this context is something tremendously revealing. Not only because they are the temperatures that most affect the population’s rest, but because they are the ones that rise the most due to the effect of climate change and the ones that best explain where the country’s climate is going. But what has happened? On April 10, at the Fabra Observatory in Barcelona, ​​at the foot of Tibidabo, the minimum it did not drop below 19 degrees. That is, it is the warmest night in at least a century. And it was not an isolated event: the ALmería airport registered a minimum of 23.3 degrees that same night. That’s two degrees higher than the previous record. The month, as I said, has had more than 70 temperature records. AND, according to Duncan Winger of Tiempo.comwhat awaits us between the 18th and the 24th looks to be much worse. The explanation is simple… because it arises from two combined elements: a subtropical ridge installed on the peninsular vertical that blocks the arrival of Atlantic storms and a very warm air mass from the south that causes little relief at night. …but the fact that it is ‘explainable’ doesn’t reassure anyone. Above all, because we come from 9th warmest winter on record and an especially hot February with an anomaly of more than 2.4 degrees above average. Everything seems to indicate that the meteorological data show the structural warming that the models indicated. But… what can we expect from all this? First of all, be clear that nights are becoming a problem. Without leaving Barcelona, We know that mortality from natural causes in the city it increases up to 9.2% on nights when the temperature does not drop below 23 degrees. There are more consequences, of course: a good part of the country’s agriculture is in critical phases and the Mediterranean is getting so hot which is going to cause innumerable problems. But warm nights before HVAC systems are turned on are a public health risk that is difficult to control. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | In two days, AEMET is clear that spring is suspended: an “early summer” arrives in Spain

heat records in Spain have doubled

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Every summer in Spain seems to bring with it the same refrain and we repeat several times “this is the hottest day I can remember.” And although sometimes memory deceives us, statistics and mathematics have confirmed that It is not a subjective sensationbut breaking the thermometer year after year has become normal. And it is more common in some specific regions of our country, such as has collected El Confidencial in an interview with the researchers. The data. This has been determined by a team of researchers from the University of Zaragoza who has analyzed data from the State Meteorological Agency between 1960 and 2021. What they were able to observe is that the frequency of breaking a high temperature record has multiplied by two due to global warming. The interpretation. In the published article by these researchers, they are not limited only to counting hot days in a specific time range, but they developed a mathematical tool first level to have very reliable conclusions. And, instead of looking at weather stations in isolation, the team has created a Bayesian model using MCMC (Monte Carlo Markov Chains) methods. This means that they designed an algorithm that is capable of understanding how temperatures are related in space throughout the entire Spanish geography and in time during the period of more than sixty years that they have analyzed. An advantage. This system allowed them to filter out the statistical noise that exists when we interpret these data in a raw manner. In this way, they have processed data from more than 40 locations in mainland Spain and have found out not only how many records have been broken, but how many would have been broken if climate change did not exist. The result is that today we see twice as many records as would be expected in a stable climate. High heat areas. The spatio-temporal model has not only produced a national average, but has also made it possible to map extreme heat with astonishing precision, pointing out that the impact of climate change is more pronounced in specific areas of Spain. In this way, if we look at Spain in general, the frequency of thermal records in the last decade is almost double what is normal. But if we specify much moreareas such as the Northern Meseta, in the area of ​​Madrid and part of Castilla y León, and especially during the summer, have tripled the record data in their historical series, which is well above the national average. A prize model. The great work done by this group has not gone unnoticed, but has managed to win different awards, such as the award for the best applied contribution in statistics. But beyond recognition, the researchers have left a “gift” to the scientific community by leaving the model completely open in R. This means that climatologists and data analysts around the world can download their code and apply it to predict and model the breaking of thermal records in other regions of the planet. Images | Immo Wegmann In Xataka | Long periods of drought are going to become more and more normal. It’s time to get used to them

The molecule that stores the sun for years and releases heat just when you need it

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In winter, raising the blinds to take advantage of the light and heat of the sun in the central hours of the day is a good idea to heat the house while saving on heating. Of course, as the afternoon passes and night falls, goodbye to the sun and its heat. From an energy point of view, it would be fantastic to be able to store the sun in a bottle to release its heat when needed. Something like this has occurred to a research team from the University of California in Santa Barbara, which has published its research in Science: a molecule that captures sunlight, stores it for years without loss, and releases it on demand. No plugs or batteries. Professor Grace Han’s group has synthesized a modified organic molecule inspired by DNA. It is called pyrimidone and is capable of capturing solar energy, storing it in chemical bonds and releasing it as heat in a controlled and reversible manner. In short, as if it were a battery. Context. The analogy of the bottled sun is for practical purposes one of the great problems of solar energy: the issue is not so much capturing it, but rather storing it because obviously there is not always enough sun to satisfy demand. And conventional batteries degrade, are heavy, carry inherent management risks, and are expensive (although now they are below minimums). What Han’s team is proposing is not new: molecular thermal storage, known as “MOST” for short, has been researched for years. However, until now no system had managed to combine competitive energy densities with release temperatures sufficient for real practical application. Why is it important. Because this research breaks two essential barriers that make MOST increasingly closer to being a reality: It has an energy density of more than 1.6 megajoules per kilogram, almost double the energy density of a standard lithium-ion battery. It releases enough heat to be able to boil water under ambient conditions. It is also soluble in water, which makes it potentially compatible with circulation systems in solar collectors. These properties open the door to uses such as domestic heating and domestic hot water (DHW), areas without an electrical grid or systems integrated into roofs. How it works. It is important to highlight that despite the analogies with solar energy, its mechanism is completely different from that of photovoltaic cells. Come on, it does not convert light into electricity, but rather it transforms it into chemical energy that it stores in its chemical bonds. The molecule, which was designed with computational modeling thinking about reducing it as much as possible, works as if it were a spring: upon absorbing ultraviolet light it undergoes a reversible change in its shape, passing into a high-energy state. The molecule can remain stable in that state for years until an external stimulus causes it to relax, releasing the accumulated heat. As Han Nguyen detailslead author of the article, “the concept is reusable and recyclable.” From Barcelona to California. The fact that the MOST have been in the laboratory for a long time is so true that in 2024 a team from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia published a paper in Joule on a hybrid device that integrated a MOST system directly into a silicon photovoltaic cell. The idea is that organic molecules (composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine and nitrogen) act on the one hand by storing energy and on the other, as an optical filter and cooling agent for the solar cell. The molecules absorb the UV photons that silicon does not use well, cool the cell and store that surplus as chemical energy. Thus, the solar cell generates more electricity and nothing is wasted: the system achieved a solar utilization efficiency of 14.9% and a record of 2.3% in MOST storage. Yes, but. That two independent studies separated in time work on the MOST shows that this technology is more than a mere laboratory concept: it is getting closer to having real applications. Of course, like any other innovation, it faces the challenge of scalability and costs, essential for eventual industrial deployment. In Xataka | Plastic solar panels have always been more of a dream than reality: China has just changed that In Xataka | Spain has just plugged in more batteries in one month than in three years: this is the plan to save our cheaper energy Cover | POT

how to dissipate heat in a vacuum

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We call it a cloud, but in reality it lives on solid ground, more specifically in mammoth buildings with endless corridors, or that’s how it has been until now. The idea of ​​​​taking data centers into space It sounds increasingly louder and is presented as the solution to the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence. In the midst of this growing obsession, the player who holds the key to all current hardware has just had a reality check. NVIDIA puts on the brakes. Google, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos…everyone has talked about taking data centers to space. Even NVIDIA itself He has participated in projects of this type, but it seems that he has changed his mind. As published in BezingaDuring the company’s latest earnings call, Jensen Huang took the opportunity to lower short-term expectations for orbital data centers. dissipate heat. The idea of ​​bringing data centers to space was born from the need for energy. In space, energy is practically unlimited because solar panels can be receiving light all the time. The problem, according to Huang, is dissipating heat. On Earth, data centers use air or water for cooling, but in the vacuum of space there is no air. The only way to dissipate heat in space is by conduction to radiators which, in the CEO’s words, must be “quite large.” NVIDIA knows this well because already has a satellite with H100 GPUs in space. Why it is important. Huang’s intervention is relevant because NVIDIA is the main provider of the infrastructure that xAI, Amazon, Google and other technology companies need for their space plans. If the biggest beneficiary of selling chips for these projects warns about their viability, the market listens. Even so, his words have not been a complete refusal, but rather a “not yet.” Analysts agree. In a Gartner report to which he has had access The Registerclaim that companies are wasting money pursuing the dream of space data centers. Their argument is that orbital facilities are not profitable, but they also claim that they could not satisfy the necessary computing demand. In addition, it also highlights the technical challenge that cooling these structures in the vacuum of space would entail and another problem: the extreme temperature fluctuations that can go “from 100 degrees kelvin to 400 degrees kelvin” (between 126ºC and -173ºC). This would require the use of special materials and components, much more expensive than their terrestrial equivalents. Musk vs Altman. There is little that the CEOs of xAI and OpenAI agree on and data centers in space were not going to be any different. Elon Musk announced a megaproject with SpaceX and xAI to launch a constellation of one million satellites. At an event a few days ago, Altman called the idea ridiculous.although he also admitted that “it will make sense one day (…) we are not there yet.” In Xataka | Aragón is becoming a Spanish data center giant thanks to Amazon. There is still a big unknown Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA

‘Heat’ has become a cult film for many men. Now they get what they have been waiting for for years.

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Michael Mann has officially announced ‘Heat 2’, the sequel/prequel to the 1995 film that, over the years, has become much more than a police thriller: it is a cultural code, a cult film that defines a certain masculine sensibility very attached to its time. Its arrival just now and with this cast is not exactly a coincidence. A cult process. ‘Heat’ it was notat its premiere, the film loved by everyone that it is today. When it hit theaters in 1995, it received good reviews but also had a modest commercial reception: it grossed $67 million at the domestic box office against a budget of $60 million. It was in international markets (where Michael Mann was better regarded) where the film doubled those figures. From there, ‘Heat’ grew, gaining fame as one of the great American thrillers of recent decades, at a time when, on the verge of the bombing of ‘Matrix‘, the pyrotechnic spectacle was going to become a priority in action cinema. The origin. Everything that surrounds the film has ended up acquiring a special aura. For example, its origin. Mann wrote the original screenplay in 1979, based on Chicago detective Chuck Adamson’s real-life manhunt for professional thief Neil McCauley. The two men met face to face in a parking lot and instead of shooting each other they went to have a coffee. McCauley died in a shootout with police in 1964. Mann it took fifteen years in being able to bring it to the big screen with the budget and cast that he considered appropriate. The Pacino-De Niro clash. The most iconic scene of the film has done a lot to give it a special packaging. The coffee scene between the two actors was the first in history in which both actors shared a shot, since in ‘The Godfather II’ their characters existed in different timelines and never interacted. Mann built the entire narrative of ‘Heat’ as an inevitable path toward that moment, and when it arrives, the encounter is neither a fight nor a chase: it’s two men talking about mundane topics. And it has remained an idealized model of male conversation in which things are not said directly but are understood. That masculinity (contained, professional, stoic) is one of the keys to the cult that ‘Heat’ has earned. As it has been saidwhat Mann explores is not crime but its cost: the loneliness of men who don’t know how to live outside of their work, who come to love too late or with too much baggage. That tension between the professional world and personal life resonates with a certain generation of men, and explains the devoted following he has gained over the years. From that point of view, that films like Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films, Mann’s own ‘Collateral’ or Ben Affleck’s ‘The Town’ owe so much to ‘Heat’ and generate follow-ups with comparable audiences explains everything. Work for men. Mann described his own film as a “symphonic drama.” That operatic tone (a “nothing” of passion: men who do not tell what they feel, who channel their entire emotional life into work, who arrive late or do not arrive at love) is combined with the definition that Mark Kermode made Man’s cinema: hypermasculinity that tends towards implosion, destroying the social relations around it not out of malice, but out of inability. The theme of the film is male alienation, and it is what has resonated with so many men. McCauley’s code (don’t tie yourself to anything you can’t get away from in thirty seconds) is self-help in reverse, and also a fantasy of radical autonomy that a certain sector of men has been claiming for years. He totem paper of ‘Heat’ makes all the sense in the world: these men in one piece, which Mann describes without judging, had not yet been deactivated by the irony of post-heroes like The Rock or the fragile Marvel characters, full of flaws and nuances. Only with films are experiments like the podcast possible’One Heat Minute’which dissects the film minute by minute. And now, ‘Heat 2’. The sequel carries a gestation process which promises to be comparable to its predecessor. It has taken more than three years to find financing, it has changed studios in the midst of budget negotiations and it has seen how the director reduced the budget from an initial $200 million to $150 million that United Artists (a division of Amazon) has approved. The starting point is a novel that Mann published in 2022 with Meg Gardiner. It works as a prequel and sequel, with a non-linear structure that jumps between 1988, 1995 (immediately after the first film) and the year 2000. Although McCauley has been dead since 1995, the novel goes back to his formative years and moves forward with the survivor played by Val Kilmer. Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale have been confirmed in the cast, and this is also a declaration of intentions: there are few actors as loved and respected by the male audience as them (among other things, for the devotion that manosphere towards films as ridiculously misinterpreted as ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Psycho’). Filming will begin in August of this year and the premiere is scheduled for 2027. Great expectations. Since 2004’s ‘Collateral,’ Mann has had a few punctures at the box office: ‘Blackhat’ cost 70 million dollars and grossed 19.6, and ‘Ferrari’ cost 95 and barely made it to 16. It is an opportunity to make amends and also to meet his audience: the one at the center of a cultural debate on masculinity that has charged the original film with a meaning that it did not have in 1995. All this, if we season it with the inevitable nineties nostalgia, there we have it: one of the possible next box office phenomena. In Xataka | On TikTok there are men shaving their eyelashes to look more masculine. Science has bad news for them

Science suggests that heat does not eliminate the toxin from potatoes with sprouts

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Being in the kitchen, opening the pantry and finding some potatoes at the back that we had forgotten about is a scene that can be common in Spanish kitchens. As time goes by, it is common for ‘eyes’ or small sprouts appear on the tubers with greenish areas. And this is where we divide ourselves into two banks: those who cut the ugly piece and cook the rest, and those who throw everything away out of fear. The risk. In order to know which side is the most suitable, in this case, you have to understand the chemistry that the potato hides inside. The tuber naturally produces compounds called glucoalkaloids, mainly two: α-solanine and α-chaconine. They are not compounds that are there to bother us humans, but rather they are an evolutionary defense system that it has. The problem is that under certain conditions of stress this concentration skyrockets and that is where is becoming a red flag for humans. The stress. Among the stimuli that can increase the production of these stimuli we find light, which stimulates chlorophyll synthesis, but also blows and cuts. But the most striking thing is the appearance of sprouts on the surface of the potato that mobilize these compounds. AND according to toxicological data While a normal potato has safe levels, green or sprouting parts can accumulate up to 1 mg of the compound per gram of potato. The dose makes the poison. Taking a little of this compound is not fatal, but the problem is reaching the toxic doses that It is calculated between 2 and 5 mg per kg of body weight. This means that for a 70 kg adult, the dangerous intake would begin between 140 and 350 mg of solanine. It seems like a high amount, but if we consume very green potatoes or those with many sprouts (where the concentration is maximum), it is not impossible to achieve it. And even when both compounds are combined, the effect is much more powerful than when they are ingested separately. The symptoms. Most mild poisonings go unnoticed because they are confused with common gastroenteritis. And it is quite similar because the symptoms appear between 30 minutes and 12 hours after ingesting this compound, presenting nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. However, in high doses, solanine is a neurotoxin and that is why we have documented cases where serious neurological disorders or cardiovascular complications have occurred. And it is no wonder, since the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) places special emphasis on the vulnerability of children, since due to their lower body weight, reaching the toxic threshold is much easier for them with few potatoes. The boiling myth. This is perhaps the most important point and where the most people make mistakes. There is a belief that by boiling or frying the potato, we “kill” the poison and the short answer is no. The reason centers on the great stability of solanine against the high temperatures of domestic cooking. This is why boiling a potato with sprouts will not degrade solanine, although frying at very high temperatures can partially degrade it. But in no case is it a guarantee of total security. What should be done. What you should try to do in these cases is quite clear.: If the potato is hard and the sprouts are incipient, it can be consumed. Although logically you have to remove the sprout and the surrounding area generously. But the problem comes when there are green spots on a large part of the potato, it has large sprouts or it is very wrinkled. Here you have to throw it away, since the solanine could have spread throughout the tuber and the risk is not worth it in these cases. Especially when we talk about the little ones in the house. The flavor rules. And although it is something strange to see in our society, there is the possibility of detecting the presence of a large amount of solanine thanks to its bitter taste. Here, if when you taste a dish of potatoes you notice a persistent bitterness, it is best to stop eating immediately. Images | Bekky Bekks In Xataka | Restaurants in half of Spain are giving us scallops for scallops. And Galicia has tired of fraud

Europe is the world leader in heat pump manufacturing. The only problem is that Europeans don’t use them

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Not to get grandiose, but Europe has never had so many renewables underwayhad never made so much clean technology and never had talked so much about energy independence. And yet, winter has arrived again and the ritual is always the same: turning on the heating still means burning imported gas. Although if we reach this point it is not for lack of alternatives, because they are there. The problem is much more mundane: in much of the continent, heating with electricity it’s still more expensive than doing it with gas. The energy shock that changed everything. A recent EMBER report has detailed how Europe abruptly lost access to cheap Russian gas and had to replace it with much more expensive liquefied natural gas in a highly volatile global market. The result was an unprecedented price shock: an accumulated extra cost of 930 billion euros during the energy crisis. More on fossils. Far from being a problem caused by the green transition, the document indicates that the impact was concentrated precisely in the sectors most dependent on imported fossil fuels. Energy-intensive industries reduced production and, in many cases, never returned to pre-Ukraine war levels. This reading coincides with that presented by researcher Jan Rosenowwho rejects the idea that dismantling climate policies would make energy cheaper. The problem, he maintains, was not going too fast, but rather having delayed electrification for decades and having kept gas as the pillar of the system. Here the central contradiction emerges. According to EMBERheat pumps are a mature, efficient and strategic technology: they produce between two and three times more heat than a gas boiler for each unit of energy consumed. Even if that electricity came entirely from a gas plant, the net fuel savings would still exist. However, in practice, the technological advantage is diluted in the bill. In most EU countries, electricity costs 2 to 4 times more than gas for the end consumer. The average electricity-gas ratio in the EU is 2.85, and in some member states it exceeds 4. The problem: the pricing structure. As pointed out in the consultancynon-energy costs —taxes, tolls and public policy surcharges— can represent up to three quarters of the final price of electricity, while gas maintains a much lower tax burden. The result is an obvious distortion: the most efficient technology appears expensive and the most polluting technology appears affordable. You save but not. For an average home, this anomaly has a direct effect, since changing systems reduces energy consumption, but it does not always reduce the bill. And when that happens, adoption slows down. Furthermore, the data confirm that this is not a cultural or climatic issue, but rather an economic one. In countries like the Netherlands, where electricity is only slightly more expensive than gas, heat pump sales are soaring. On the other hand, in Germany, Poland or Hungary —where electricity can cost more than three times as much as gas—, adoption is much lower. The lever that remains to be activated. Solutions exist and many are immediately applicable: transferring the costs of electricity policies to public budgets, reducing electricity VAT, taxing fossil gas more coherently or implementing specific rates for heat pumps. From there, technological deployment is no longer a promise, but a reality. In fact, Europe leads the global heat pump industrywith manufacturers such as Bosch, Vaillant, NIBE or Danfoss, and with industrial projects that already operate on a large scale. These are not prototypes or pilots, but rather functioning infrastructure. Real limits and tensions. None of this eliminates obstacles. Europe still need gas to stabilize its electrical grid. The infrastructures are stressed, the flexibility of the system is insufficient and any cold winter can send prices skyrocketing again. Added to this are the physical frictions of the transition. The massive expansion of offshore wind in the North Sea is generating unprecedented conflicts between countries due to the so-called “wake effect”, which reduces the production of neighboring parks. Electrification is not only a matter of political will, but also of technical coordination and supranational planning. The anomaly that Europe has not yet corrected. Europe already has the technology, the industry and the climate goals. What it has not yet corrected is a basic anomaly: fiscally penalizing electricity while de facto subsidizing fossil gas. As long as that distortion persists, heat pumps will continue to advance more slowly than data, engineering, and economic common sense would allow. As the EMBER report concludeselectrifying heating is not a green whim, but a strategy for energy security, industrial competitiveness and price stability. The transition is not about inventing new machines, but about deciding which energy is made cheaper and which is left behind. And today, in Europe, that decision continues to be reflected—very clearly—in the invoice. Image | freepik Xataka | While the US and China dominate different sectors, Europe leads an unexpected leadership: heat pumps

The Earth has been providing heat for millions of years and now Google wants it for something very different from heating

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The race for artificial intelligence is no longer fought only in laboratories or chip factories. It is moving towards much more basic and, at the same time, more critical terrain: electricity. At a time when data centers are increasing their energy consumption and the electrical grid is beginning to show signs of saturation, an American geothermal startup has just closed one of the largest financing rounds in the sector. It is called Fervo Energy, it has raised $462 million and, among its investors, is Google. It is not just another financial movement. It is a clear sign of where big technology companies are looking to sustain their ambitions with artificial intelligence. First commercial project. The company has closed this financing in a Series E – one of the last phases of private investment before a possible IPO – aimed not at research, but at the deployment of large-scale energy infrastructure. The round, led by B Capital as lead investor, will serve to accelerate the construction of Cape Station, its geothermal plant in Utah, and advance the development of other projects. In other words, moving from technology demonstration to commercial production of firm electricity for the grid. In addition, the round has aroused the interest of a broad group of industrial, financial and technological investors. Among the new names are AllianceBernstein, Mitsui, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and, especially significantly, Google. As reported by TechCrunchFervo has raised nearly $500 million in equity and debt in the last year alone, reflecting an unusual investment appetite for a technology that for decades was considered marginal. The Google entry. Fervo is not just a climate bet or an impact investment: it is a direct energy supplier for data centers. The company already maintains an agreement with Google to supply geothermal electricity to its facilities, something that turns the technology company into a client and investor at the same time. This move fits with a broader trend. The big tech companies they have stopped trusting only in the traditional electricity market. The explosion of generative AI has multiplied the demand for continuous, stable and emission-free energy, a profile that neither solar nor wind power alone can guarantee without massive battery backup. On the other hand, geothermal energy offers firm electricity 24 hours a day. How does the Fervo bet work? Fervo’s key It’s in your technology of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Unlike traditional geothermal energy – which depends on natural hot aquifers – Fervo drills hot rock, injects water and creates artificial reservoirs that allow steam to be generated in a controlled manner. A direct adaptation of hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling techniques developed over decades by the oil and gas industry. It is no coincidence: many Fervo engineers come from that sector. The flagship project is Cape Station, located in Beaver County, Utah. According to the company’s planswill begin supplying 100 megawatts in 2026 and will reach 500 megawatts in 2028. One of the key factors is speed, as the company has drastically reduced the drilling time for its wells: from about a month in its first projects to a current average of about 15 days. As Sarah Jewett, senior vice president of strategy, explained, to TechCrunchapproximately half of the cost of a well depends on drilling time. Reducing it is synonymous with economic viability. AI as the engine of the new energy map. The rise of Fervo cannot be understood without the pressure that artificial intelligence puts on energy infrastructure. According to the International Energy Agencythe electrical consumption of data centers could double before 2030. An analysis by the Rhodium Group goes further and estimates that advanced geothermal could cover up to two thirds of new energy demand of these centers in the United States. Google is not alone in this race. The company is simultaneously exploring the reopening of nuclear plantsthe development of small modular reactors (SMR) and even experimental projects as solar-powered orbiting data centers. The logic is the same in all cases: ensure its own, stable, long-term electricity supply. In the words of the CEO of FervoTim Latimer: “There is a huge appetite to understand how the history of electricity demand is going to be resolved.” The answer, increasingly, lies in energy sources that previously seemed secondary. A sector that matters again. For years, geothermal energy was relegated to wind and solar energy. Today, United States live a true renaissance of the sector. The combination of new technologies, private capital, institutional support and demand from Big Tech is changing the landscape. Fervo is considered a pioneer within this new ecosystem. According to TechCrunchthe company is focused for now on the western United States, where the hot rock is closer to the surface, but does not rule out expanding to other states or abroad when its technology is even more optimized. The subsoil as a competitive advantage. While artificial intelligence is presented as the most ethereal technology of our time, its expansion depends on something deeply physical: constant, cheap and clean megawatts. In this context, Fervo represents more than just an energy startup: one more—but key—piece in the new infrastructure that supports the digital age. Google didn’t get here by chance. He has been exploring all possible avenues for some time to ensure stable power for his AI. And in that strategy of not closing any doors, while some look to the sky, others – like Fervo – look underground, kilometers underground, where the planet’s heat is beginning to emerge as one of the most solid responses. Image | FervoEnergy and freepik Xataka | The United States may win the AI ​​race, but its problem is different: China is winning all the others

In Finland they already know how to deal with excess heat from data centers: convert it into district heating

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Helsinki has found an unexpected ally to decarbonize its heating in the midst of the rise of artificial intelligence: waste heat from data centers. The same heat that servers generate when processing millions of queries, training AI models, or moving Internet traffic is no longer wasted. In the Finnish capital, this thermal flow – which is growing at the same rate as the digital world – is beginning to become shelter for tens of thousands of homes. A digital sector that is now heating up cities. For years, data centers were known for one uncomfortable characteristic: they generated a lot of heat and needed huge cooling systems to dissipate it. Now that residual heat is already being channeled to the Helsinki heating network, thanks to agreements signed with operators such as Equinix, Telia and Elisa. Data Center Dynamics remember that the company It has been testing this model for more than a decade – the first pilot tests date back to 2010 – but now the scale is completely different: the thermal demand of the city is enormous and the volume of heat generated by the digital economy is growing non-stop. The result can already be seen, a single data center can heat up to 20,000 homes, according to official figures from Helen. The Telia plant, for example, already recovers up to 90% of the heat generated by its servers, enough to heat 14,000 apartments, and in a few years it could double that figure to 28,000. A change in the way heat is produced. Digital heat recovery is more than just a technological curiosity. It represents a change in the way district heating is conceived. In the words of the Finnish company“the electricity consumed by data centers always ends up being converted into heat.” The difference is that now that heat is no longer released outside: it is reused. The engineering behind urban heat. Finland can convert digital heat into district heating because it has a network of district heating especially advanced: a network of pipes that distributes hot water to homes, schools and public buildings. The process is as follows. A data center generates heat: the servers run 24/7 and are continuously cooled. That heat, instead of being dissipated outside, is captured. It is then recovered and transferred; To do this, data centers can install their own recovery systems or use those offered by the energy company. The heat is sent to an “energy platform”, where heat pumps raise it to useful temperatures. Then, the temperature is adjusted to the 85–90 ºC necessary so that the water can circulate through the urban network. This is where high-temperature heat pumps come into play—some of which, like Patola’sthey work even with outside air at –20 ºC. Finally, the heat is injected into the grid and distributed throughout the city to heat thousands of buildings. Closing the energy circle. To understand why Finland leads this model, we must look at an essential technological element: heat pumps. Not only domestic ones, but also large-scale industrial ones, capable of raising waste heat to temperatures useful for an urban network. Europe—and especially the Nordic countries— has become a world leader of this technology. Finland has 524 heat pumps per 1,000 homes, a figure second only to Norway, and its cities have been electrifying heating for decades. This combination—cold climate, tradition of district heatingheat pump industry and the need to decarbonize quickly—turns Finland into an urban-scale energy laboratory. A model with limits. Although the system works, it is not a panacea. As Middle Parenthesis remembersnot all data centers are close to cores with thermal demand, not all generate enough heat to justify the investment, heat recovery improves efficiency but does not reduce the electrical consumption of data centers, and in hot climates or widely dispersed cities, replicating it is much more difficult. Still, the trend is clear. With the expansion of AI and the growth of cloudthe amount of heat available will only increase. The Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark – already take advantage of it, and large operators such as Microsoft and Google They explore similar systems across Europe. From silicon to the stove. The Finnish model shows that, even at the heart of digital infrastructure – those data centers that power our online lives – there can be hidden a useful and concrete source of energy for everyday life. The heat produced by our searches, our videos or our conversations with AI can be transformed, with the right infrastructure, into heating a home in Helsinki. In a world desperately seeking clean heat, Finland has already found a tangible, scalable and surprisingly logical answer: turning the thermal problem of the digital age into a solution for the Nordic climate. A silent reminder that, sometimes, the energy transition advances with a simpler approach: taking advantage of the heat that servers already produce tirelessly. Image | freepik and freepik Xataka | Someone cut five undersea cables in the Baltic. Finland already points to a ship from the “shadow fleet” as responsible

While the US and China dominate different sectors, Europe leads an unexpected leadership: heat pumps

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Europe is experiencing an energy and industrial crisis that has reopened old fears: factories that lose competitiveness, homes punished by gas and a political debate that looks backwards. But behind the noise, the data tells a completely different story: Europe is not going backwards. It is leading the largest energy transformation in the world. And at the center of that transformation is a technology that is already changing the rules: heat pumps. The real problem: an industry trapped by gas. A large part of public opinion believes that European industry is becoming more expensive because of climate policies. But, As Jan Rosenow points outOxford energy professor, in EUobserver, the reality is exactly the opposite: “I do not accept the analysis underlying the reversal narrative. The idea that green policies must be dismantled to lower prices is nonsense.” According to Rosenow, the real shock came after 2021, when Europe lost access to the cheap Russian gas pipeline and had to replace it with much more expensive LNG from the United States. The impact was brutal: energy-intensive industries stopped production and never returned to pre-Ukrainian War levels. Ember’s report quantifies it: Europe paid an accumulated extra cost of 930 billion euros during the energy crisis due to its dependence on imported fossil fuels. The conclusion is uncomfortable, the problem is not that Europe has gone too fast in the transition, but too slow. Europe leads the solution, although it does not know it yet. While the political debate goes in circles, the market advances. Europe is, today, world leader in heat pumpsa title that he does not hold by chance. In residential adoption, some countries are decades ahead of the rest of the world: Norway has 632 heat pumps per 1,000 homes and Finland has 524, according to European Heat Pump Association (EHPA). And the surprise is in the laggards, countries like Poland, Ireland or Portugal continue to grow even in years of weak market. The European industry dominates the market. European manufacturers such as Vaillant, Stiebel Eltron, Bosch, Viessmann, Danfoss, NIBE or Clivet dominate the global market. Unlike what happened with solar panels, Europe has retained manufacturing capacityalthough it still partially depends on imported compressors and electronics. Still, most employment, engineering and assembly remain on European soil. A revolution underway. Industrial projects are not prototypes: they are signs of the times: So why do we still depend on gas? Despite technological leadership, adoption is slower than it should be. There are four main blocks: Electricity continues to be weighed down by the price of gas. In much of central Europe, gas sets the marginal price of electricity. This means that even if renewables lower the cost, gas increases it again at the peaks. As the Financial Times points outthe result is an obvious paradox: the most efficient technology (the heat pump) seems expensive because electricity is distorted by gas. Taxation. The Oxford Professor details that the majority of European countries They charge more taxes on electricity than on gas. This penalizes the clean option and favors the fossil option. Lack of installers. The European Commission calculates that they are needed 750,000 additional installers before 2030. The German company Apricum adds that the experience installation remains “complex and fragmented”. Cultural barrier. As Rosenow explains: “Most industries are used to burning things.” Fire is perceived as safe and familiar, even though it is more expensive and inefficient. But this barrier disappears when you look at northern Europe: Sweden, Finland or Denmark already use heat pumps on a large scale even at sub-zero temperatures. Electrification is not a green whim. Heat pumps are not a technological anecdote, but the pillar of a broader movement: the electrification of the continent. According to the EMBER reportelectrification could halve the EU’s fossil dependence by 2040, and that two-thirds of energy demand could be met by mature technologies: heat pumps, electric vehicles, storage and solar. Today, however, the EU has barely electrified 22% of its final energy, which reveals ample room to triple that share in the coming years. The European Commission agree with this diagnosis. Brussels estimates that Europe will have to reach 60 million heat pumps installed in 2030 – compared to 25.5 million currently – to meet its climate and energy security objectives. Also, remember that the entry into force of the new ETS2 from 2027 fossil gas will progressively become more expensivenaturally accelerating its replacement by more efficient electrical technologies. Europe needs to trust its own leadership. European politics is trapped between nostalgia for cheap gas and the fear of losing competitiveness compared to other regions. But the data tells another story: Europe is leading the technology that can free it from those dependencies. While some in Brussels debate whether the Green Deal should be slowed down, the market and European engineers are saying the opposite. If Europe wants secure energy, strong industry and affordable bills, the answer is not in returning to gas, but in something much simpler: plugging itself in. Image | dbdh Xataka | Aerothermal energy is the heating of the future, but the electrical installation is stuck in the past

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