largest

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

by

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

discovering the largest railway network in the world at 347 km/h

by

A new day dawns in Beijing. After a long (and exhausting) day at the Motor ShowToday we have a long train journey ahead of us. Today we leave Beijing to head to Wuhuthe city where the headquarters of the Chery group is located, and yes, we do it by train. I admit that I am excited: it is the first time that I have gotten on both a bullet and a Chinese train. When I ask local Chery employees about Wuhu, what it is like, they all tell me the same thing: “for you it is a huge city, but for us it is a small city.” Wuhu has four million inhabitants. Madrid, to put us in context, has 3.4 million. I imagine that living in a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants causes the dimensions of things to become distorted. I suppose that for someone from Beijing traveling to Madrid is like when we go to town. Buildings in Wuhu | Image: Xataka Wuhu is located around 1,000 kilometers south of Beijing. Specifically, between Wuhan and Shanghai. Google Maps, which is not the most reliable reference in China, shows me almost 11 hours by car. By train, the trip lasts around four and a half hours, which is more than enough time to talk a little about this other small-big city and, in the process, get to know the city more closely. chinese railway network and the experience of traveling on one of its trains. China has made leaps and bounds in its electrification, we have seen that in the two previous installments of this daily blog. Well, in the same way that the electric and hybrid car has evolved, so has its railway network. Let’s go in parts. To get into flour let’s look at some numbers. Let’s talk about Spain. Our country has 15,652 kilometers of road, of which 4,000 kilometers are high-speed (+200 km/h). It is the second most extensive high-speed network in the world. The first, indeed, is the Chinese one. And it is with an absolutely insane difference. Roads in China | Image: Xataka According to the Chinese government and according to the local Xinhua agencyChina closed last year with 165,000 kilometers of track, of which “more than 50,000 kilometers” are high-speed. In 2025 alone, Chinese railways transported a whopping 4.59 billion passengers, 6.4% more than last year. In Spain, the figure was of 177.6 million. We cannot make the direct comparison because the size of China is like 17 times that of Spain, but it helps us put into perspective how enormous this infrastructure is. And it is getting worse, because this year they intend to put 2,000 more kilometers into operation. Only in the first quarter of 2026 will Chinese railways they completed an investment in fixed assets of 20.9 billion dollars. By 2050, the country’s goal is to achieve 274,000 kilometers. Image | Xataka The body in charge of managing most railway operations is in the hands of China State Railway Group Company, a state-owned company created in 2013 after the dissolution of the Ministry of Railways. Since 2019 it has been under the umbrella of the Ministry of Finance. There are other “private” lines that connect mines with refineries, for example. The network is divided into several horizontal and vertical corridors, mostly concentrated in the east of the country where, evidently, most of the population is concentrated and where coal is produced. Only one line extends to the northwest (crossing the Gobi Desert and bordering the Taklamakan Desert) and southwest of the country (near the Tibet Plateau). A train on the way to Wuhu | Image: Xataka ​But let’s leave geography and talk about experience, because it is not only that the Chinese network is larger than the Spanish one (for whatever reason), but it is also significantly faster. And no, it is not noticeable | Image: Xataka The Spanish high speed can be up to 300 km/h, but on a line like the one from Andalusia to Madrid it is normal for trains to not exceed 250 km/h. Sections of 200 km/h are also frequent. Also, recently, there have been more aggressive speed limitations on some lines. I write this on a train that moves exactly at 347 km/h and I must admit that because I have seen the figure on a screen, otherwise I would not have known. I don’t know if it will be the same on all trains, but the experience on this one has been exquisite. The train, despite going 50% fast, vibrates much less than the trains I am used to taking in Spain. I think the video speaks for itself. This speed, which has remained relatively constant throughout the trip, allows us to get from Beijing to Wuhu in about four and a half hours. The train has made some stops of just a few minutes at certain stations, but little more. In a country of these dimensions it makes all the sense in the world to bet on the railway. Not only to transport people, that too, but for the transport of goods. If we have discovered something these days it is that China has a competitive advantage by having all the links of the supply chain very close at hand. That, however, is of little use if the transport of goods does not accompany. It is not the case, although half. In Wuhu, where Chery was founded, the brand’s presence is much, much more evident | Image: Xataka Again, according to official Chinese government data, in 2025 alone railways moved a whopping 5.27 billion tons of freight, 2% more than the previous year. However, road and air transport remains very important when moving goods in the domestic market. At an international level, air and sea are the two great cornerstones. Tomorrow more, this time in Wuhu. More deliveries: Journey to the center of the Chinese motor (part 1): a walk through Beijing, Ebro, Chery and the silent streets Journey to the … Read more

the largest battery company in the world is no longer just about batteries

by

The Chinese company specialized in the development of batteries has published results for the first quarter of 2026 that have left analysts speechless. Not because they are good, but because no one saw them coming. And the income has exceeded the forecasts of several analysis firms by 40%. The margin of error is so large that it only shows the obvious: that CATL It has long ceased to be just a battery company. What the numbers say. In the first quarter of 2026, CATL had a turnover of 129.1 billion yuan (about $18.9 billion), 52.5% more than in the same period of the previous year, according to they count from Reuters. Net profit grew 48.5% to 20.7 billion yuan. Analysts expected revenue growth of 35.7% and profit growth of 20.9%. The reality is that the numbers almost double the estimates. If the context of the successful year they had in 2025 is added, the image is just as groundbreaking, since according to the annual report The company’s own revenue that year reached 423.7 billion yuan, with a growth of 17%, and net profit rose 42%. Why analysts They have failed so much. Market consensus continued to treat CATL as a supplier of cells for electric cars. The problem is that this approach ignores two movements that are redefining the company. The first: energy storage, a business with higher margins than vehicle batteries, already represented around a quarter of the product the company shipped in the first quarter. According to data Production data collected by Hello China Tech, in April storage had climbed to 41.3% of total cell production, up from less than 20% a year earlier. The second movement: internationalization. Approximately a third of CATL’s revenue already comes from outside China. A Bet that explains everything. Energy storage is not a segment that CATL has joined by inertia. It is the logical consequence of a thesis: the world needs to store renewable energy on a massive scale. The war in Iran has skyrocketed global energy costs and accelerated demand for renewables, making storage systems critical infrastructure. CATL, which already led that market with a global share of 30.4% in 2025, according to SNE Research (for the fifth consecutive year), has arrived at the exact moment with the necessary capacity. And its shipments of batteries for storage have grown by 80% year-on-year in 2025. Europe as a lever for internationalization. The Debrecen plant, in Hungary, went into mass production during the first quarter of 2026. An investment of 7.3 billion euros to supply Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Stellantis and Volkswagen, with a planned capacity of 100 gigawatt-hours annually and a planned workforce of 9,000 people. This factory is proof that CATL is not content with being a supplier that exports cells, but rather a manufacturer with an industrial presence in the markets it serves. At home, dominating like never before. At the same time, CATL has reached a milestone in China that it had not achieved for five years. According to data from the Chinese Passenger Car Association collected According to CarNewsChina, its production share of electric vehicle batteries in the domestic market exceeded 50% in the first quarter of 2026. In the NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) type battery segment, that share reaches 81.6%. And in the LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) segment, where there is more competition, it reaches 41%, the highest level in four years. The world’s second largest manufacturer, BYD, fell to 13.4% global share, from 16% a year earlier. What CATL is today, beyond batteries. The company itself has been trying to change the story for some time. In your 2025 annual reportstates its ambition to become “a leading global zero-carbon technology company.” It may sound like corporate rhetoric, but it is worth noting that CATL has storage systems deployed in nearly 2,300 projects around the world. Its batteries power artificial intelligence data centers, including SenseTime’s in Shanghai, which the company says reduces electricity consumption by more than 10 million kilowatt-hours annually. It also has subsidiaries in the electric aviation sector and solutions for maritime transport zero emissions. It operates more than 1,000 battery exchange stations for passenger cars and more than 300 for heavy trucks. And it is building what it describes as the world’s first zero-carbon off-grid industrial park, in Shandong. ANDThe market has not yet it has finished processing. It’s not all good news. Morningstar analyst Vincent Sun warns that the automakers’ strategy of diversifying suppliers and cutting costs could “dilute CATL’s pricing power and put pressure on its unit profit.” When you are the dominant supplier, customers have incentives to reduce their dependence. Here it would be necessary to see if CATL’s diversification towards storage, energy services and internationalization builds a sufficient barrier. Cover image | CATL In Xataka | China and the US are dancing the AI ​​dance. And more and more they dance ‘agarraos’

South Korea overtakes China as ASML’s largest market. Sanctions are already changing the world

by

In the first quarter of 2026, South Korea has accounted for 45% of ASML salesthe Dutch manufacturer of lithography machinery without which no advanced chip exists. China, which until now led the same ranking with 36%, has fallen to 19%. The order of the semiconductor world has been inverted in the duration of a ‘Q’. Why is it important. ASML is the only company on the planet capable of manufacturing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machinesessential to produce chips less than 7 nanometers. Whoever controls access to ASML controls, to a large extent, which countries can manufacture elite semiconductors. That is why the figures for the first quarter of 2026 are not just another balance sheet but a way to understand the geopolitical map in real time. Or at least with “only” three weeks of latency. In figures: South Korea: 45% of ASML sales in Q1 2026 (up from 22% in the previous quarter). China: 19% (up from 36%). Taiwan: 23% (up from 13%). ASML’s total net sales in the quarter: €8.8 billion. Net profit: 2,760 million euros (+17% year-on-year). Sales forecast for 2026, revised upwards: between 36,000 and 40,000 million euros. The context. The United States has been building a sanctions architecture for years designed to disconnect China from access to advanced semiconductor technology. ASML, a Dutch company but with technology whose development has also involved American and British partners, stopped selling its EUV machines to China years ago. In 2023 added restrictions on more advanced DUV/UVP systems. What the first quarter data show is that this fence already has measurable effects on real sales flows. Between the lines. South Korea’s jump is not explained only by the Chinese fall. Samsung and SK Hynix They are in full race to build high-end memory capacity (the type of chip that powers AI data centers), and both companies have accelerated their orders for EUV machines. SK Hynix has committed nearly 12 trillion won (about 8.2 billion euros) in EUV lithography equipment for its Cheongju and Yongin factories. And Samsung, for its part, has placed a bulk order for approximately 20 EUV machines as part of a larger purchase of 70 systems for its P5 plant in Pyeongtaek. The underlying message is that the demand for AI is already sold in advance. According to ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, customers in the memory segment have already exhausted their capacity for the entire year. Supply will not meet demand in the foreseeable future and prices continue to skyrocket. Main loser? China, without access to EUV, has been using older DUV systems for years and multiple exposure techniques to approach the 7 nanometer nodes. This translates into chips that are more expensive to produce and have lower yields. Companies like SMIC, ChangXin or Yangtze Memory Technologies operate under increasing financial pressure: the more exposures you need to compensate for the absence of EUV, the worse the production economics. The big question. Can China build its own ASML? There are prototypes in development and the ambition to achieve mass production of EUVs before 2030 is public and no one hides it. That doesn’t mean we can take it for granted: neither Nikon nor Canonwho have dominated lithography for decades, have managed to develop EUV systems. ASML is where it is because it spent years working to achieve it, and it also did so with a very well-coordinated ecosystem: Carl Zeiss optics, specialized laser technology, thousands of components from suppliers around the world… Replicating that from scratch, under sanctions, in less than five years, is a titanic task even for a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants and an excessive ambition. Yes, but. The restrictions, in fact, have not sunk China, but have forced it to adapt. SMIC produces 7 nanometer chips using alternative techniques, although at higher cost and on a smaller scale. The pace of state investment in semiconductors has not slowed down. And the fact that several engineers who have worked at ASML have ended up in Chinese projects has raised alarms on the other side of the Pacific. China has built its current position on a long-term mindset. The sanctions close the shortest path, but that does not mean that other paths do not exist. In Xataka | China prepares a 2nm AI chip to end NVIDIA’s dominance. Your problem is how you are going to manufacture it Featured image | ASML

James Webb has bad news for the largest natural laboratory for rocky planets, but there is still some hope

by

The star TRAPPIST-1 and the seven known planets that surround it are a natural laboratory in which the evolution of rocky planets can be studied. This has led many scientists to focus their attention on them, in search of a possible habitable planet. However, observations made by an international team of astronomers with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope They are not very encouraging. Planets without atmosphere. The James Webb Space Telescope has a very powerful infrared radiation analysis instrument, with which it can analyze the temperature of the planets it observes. These emit infrared radiation whose intensity is proportional to their temperature, so a thermal map can be made. That’s what these astronomers have done. They have initially focused on two of the planets that orbit TRAPPIST-1: TRAPPIST-1a and TRAPPIST-1b. The resulting heat map shows that neither planet has an atmosphere. They may have had it one day, but possibly TRAPPIST-1 itself destroyed it. It is a very uninspiring result for the search for habitable planets in this system. Lights and shadows of TRAPPIST-1. So far seven exoplanets have been discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1. They are all very close together. In fact, its seven orbits are concentrated in the distance between Mercury and the Sun. What happens is that this red dwarf is less energetic than our Sun, so the temperature would not be as suffocating. All of these planets are rocky, like Earth, and in fact, some are very similar in size. There could be an exoplanet with conditions similar to ours. The problem is that red dwarfs They emit a lot of radiation and energetic flows of particles that could destroy their atmosphere.. And of course, without atmosphere, there is no life. Tidal lock. All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are tidally locked. This means that its rotation and translation period around the red dwarf they are synchronized. As a result, there is one side continuously exposed to the star and another on the opposite side. On one side it is always day and on the other it is always night. NASA/JPL-Caltech Extreme temperatures. When a planet is tidally locked, there can be two situations, depending on whether it has an atmosphere or not. When there is an atmosphere, heat flows from the light side to the dark side, so that the entire planet has a stable average temperature. On the other hand, if there is no atmosphere, the dark side can be frozen and the illuminated side can be scorched. In the two exoplanets analyzed by James Webb, it has been seen that temperatures are around 100ºC-200ºC on the illuminated side and -200ºC on the dark side. Therefore, it is confirmed that there is no atmosphere. And now what? Despite this hard blow, there is still hope. The two exoplanets that have been analyzed are not in the star’s habitable zone. This is the distance from it at which the temperature is adequate for the water, if any, to remain in a liquid state. At that exact point there are only TRAPPIST-1e, TRAPPIST-1f and TRAPPIST-1g. Furthermore, the former has a density and size very similar to those of Earth. James Webb has all his attention on this exoplanet right now, to repeat the process. If there were an atmosphere on it, it could still remain on the list of possible habitable planets. It’s still interesting. Despite the first blow, TRAPPIST-1 remains a very interesting system for understand the evolution of rocky planets. The Earth was lucky not to lose its atmosphere; but, beyond those, the evolutions can be similar. Furthermore, we have not yet ruled out that TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere. Let’s go step by step. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | There is only one chance in 11,000 years to reach the planet Sedna. Some Italians want to use this nuclear engine

We believed that data centers in space were a thing of the future. Kepler has already activated the largest orbital cluster

by

For years, talk of data centers in space sounded like the kind of idea that always seemed a few years away. The conversation existed, of course, but almost always supported by long-term plans, ambitious announcements and an industry that had not yet shown much real muscle in orbit. That is why what has just emerged deserves attention. TechCrunch explains that Kepler Communications has already launched the largest computing cluster currently operating in space, a sign that this race is beginning to leave the field of promise to enter, little by little, the field of infrastructure. What has Kepler put into orbit. It is not a large facility suspended above our heads, but rather a distributed cluster made up of 10 operational satellites. Together they add up to around 40 Nvidia Orin processors aimed at Edge Computingconnected to each other by laser links. That set, launched in January of this year, as we say, is today the largest active computing cluster in orbit. The company itself also frames this network as a constellation designed to move data in space almost in real time. What it really is. So we are not facing a massive orbital data center that replicates the Earth model, but rather a distributed architecture that combines connectivity and processing in the full space environment. This difference matters because it allows us to separate two plans that are often mixed: one thing is the large-scale vision defended by actors like SpaceX or Blue Origin, and quite another is this first step, much more attached to immediate uses and specific needs of missions in orbit. The immediate business. If this orbital computing is starting to be interesting, it is because it addresses a fairly clear problem: it does not always make sense to send all the data to Earth to process it later. The initial value of these systems is in working with the information right where it is generated, something especially useful for more advanced sensors and for applications that require a faster response. Kepler also maintains that its network can serve as a basis for future processing and connectivity services between different space assets, and the media adds that the company already transports and processes data uploaded from the ground, as well as information collected by payloads hosted on its own satellites. Sophia Space. Here a startup comes into the picture that wants to upload its proprietary operating system to one of the satellites in the constellation and try to deploy and configure it on six GPUs spread over two ships. In a terrestrial data center that would be almost routine, but it would be the first time we would see something like this in orbit. For Sophia, in addition, the test has a clear risk reduction value before its first launch scheduled for the end of 2027. And we are not talking about a minor detail: the company is developing space computers with passive cooling, a way with which it seeks to attack one of the big problems in this sector: avoiding overheating. Kepler doesn’t want to be that. In the midst of so much noise around orbital data centers, the company itself is trying to position itself in a somewhat different place on the map. Your corporate presentation insists in a mission much more linked to communications, with a hybrid optical constellation designed to modernize the flow of data in low orbit and beyond. In this sense, it does not define itself as a data center company, but as infrastructure for space applications. The journey has begun. If this step by Kepler makes anything clear, it is that orbital computing no longer belongs only to the realm of great presentations. SpaceX wants to deploy a massive network of satellites for AI, Google prepares in-orbit tests with solar-powered chips and Blue Origin has announced a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites. In parallel, starcloud already launched a satellite in 2025 with an Nvidia H100 GPU and Aetherflux targets 2027 for its first node. Images | Kepler Communications | Sophia Space In Xataka | The mystery of the misinflated balloon: the more we calculate the size of the Universe, the less sense it all makes

CATL is the largest battery manufacturer in the world and has a new goal: electrify the entire sea

by

CATL, the Chinese giant that dominates the global battery market for electric vehicles, it has become entrenched to move towards a new front: the electrification of maritime transport. It makes more sense than it seems, but it is still a great technical challenge. Although the company is not caught by surprise. Below these lines we tell you all the details. What you are already doing. The company, which controls 37% of the global market for batteries for electric cars and 22% of the energy storage market in electrical networks and data centers, has been working in the naval sector since 2017. It has so far deployed its battery systems on about 900 vessels, although mainly on small ships operating near the Chinese coast, in ports or on rivers. Its subsidiary dedicated specifically to powering ships already exists, and this year it plans to more than double the team’s staff, reaching around 500 people, according to confirmed Su Yi, the head of that division, told the Financial Times. Why now. As the media shares, the maritime sector is responsible for 3% of global carbon emissions, and the International Maritime Organization has set itself a goal halve those emissions by 2050. But there is another more recent catalyst that has made many companies reconsider: the recent escalation of war between the United States and Israel against Iran and the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The war in the Middle East has once again highlighted the fragility of energy supply chains and CATL has a good margin of maneuver there. According to counted To FT Neil Beveridge, an analyst at Bernstein specializing in energy in China, the long-term consequence of this type of situation will be an acceleration of the “global mega-migrant towards electrification.” CATL shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange have risen about 13% since the conflict with Iran broke out. The challenges. Electrifying boats is not like electrifying cars, up to this point I think we are all clear. But seriously, batteries have a much lower energy density than traditional fuels, making them impractical for long-distance ocean crossings. The middle shared the study by the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Navigation, in which they concluded that the most promising approach in the short term is hybrid: combining electric propulsion with combustion engines. Added to this are extra risks that come from the marine environment itself: greater exposure to humidity and salinity, much more difficult evacuation conditions in the event of a fire, and the need for more demanding maintenance than in any car. Replicate the truck business model. CATL does not want to limit itself to selling batteries, as it wants to build an entire infrastructure around it, just as share in FT. It already operates in China a network of battery exchange points for trucks on highways, and now intends to take that same model to the sea. The idea is that ship operators can change their batteries in port without having to charge them, which would also eliminate that cost from the ship’s acquisition price. The company is working with municipalities and ports to develop this ecosystem from scratch; Cities like Guangzhou, one of China’s major shipbuilding centers, already offer subsidies for electric-powered vessels, according to share the middle. A personal story. There is a rather curious detail in all this. And just as account FT, Robin Zeng, founder of CATL, studied marine engineering at university before switching to electronics. “Naval engineering was his original discipline and passion,” Su Yi explained to the outlet. It has its advantages, because over time this discipline could end up becoming the next great industrial transformation of your company. Financial muscle. CATL closed 2025 with a net profit of 72.2 billion yuan (about 10.4 billion dollars), 42% more than the previous year, driven mainly by demand for energy storage. From this position of financial strength, the company has the muscle to invest long-term in a sector where margins are still uncertain. We’ll see how the company ends up doing. Cover image | Wikipedia and Elias In Xataka | In 2022, Europe forced energy companies to swallow the cost of the gas crisis. Now she’s willing to do the same.

take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy

by

The energy wave drive It has a great advantage over other more popular renewable energy sources, such as the sun or wind: it never rests. Waves are an almost continuous and enormously energetic resource. And yet, it is the ugly duckling of green energies because its unpredictable and far from constant nature turns energy extraction into a titanic task in terms of efficiency. An American startup, Panthalassa, has been testing for a while In Pacific waters, a prototype that rethinks from the ground up how to relate to the ocean: instead of resisting it, it follows the flow. The invention. He Ocean-2 It is a device that at first glance looks like a giant buoy. In fact, in tests in Puget Sound, Washington, several people reported an unidentified floating object. The spherical part of the end (the node) has almost 10 meters in diameter and is mounted on a tubular hull approximately 60 meters long (which is submerged under the sea). But the analogy with the buoy is accurate in that it is a simple structure that sways with the waves. When it is horizontal it moves and when it is vertical (when it looks like a buoy) it starts working. Why it is important. Because the oceans They cover 71% of the Earth and its energy has an advantage that solar and wind power lack: consistency. The ocean generates energy regardless of whether it is day or night, even if it is calm or the sky is cloudy, which makes this energy source the ideal complement to stabilize networks. The endemic problem of this technology is its low efficiency. If this prototype can be scaled, it could become an alternative and complement to clean and independent energy for coastal areas. Context. In the midst of the race for AI and data centers, the great bottleneck of the United States is the energyso much so that they are dusting off old energy solutions as fossil power plants and resurrecting its nuclear industry. Of course, and although his role in the US, Israel and Iran war is different from Europe and so is its access to oil, the reality is that the price of a barrel being uncontrolled does not benefit them either. In that scenario, it is expanding your investment in renewables. Wave energy has been promising and disappointing for decades. Salt, corrosion, biological growth on structures, and the brutal cost of offshore maintenance have literally and figuratively sunk dozens of projects around the world. The result: almost everything has remained in the pilot phase. Nor has efficiency ever been anything to write home about. And while wave power has stagnated, the price of solar and wind has fallen so rapidly that it has left other clean energies without a competitive advantage. However, wave energy faces another opportunity: Ocean Energy Europe figure The portfolio of planned deployments until 2030 is at 165 MW and the United States has invested $591 million in ocean energy in the last five years. How much energy it produces and uses. In the test he managed to generate up to 50 kW in decent wave conditions, enough to power a small coastal town. However, its priority application is not the domestic electrical network, but something more specific such as clean fuels and computing: producing green hydrogen that is transported to shore in autonomous ships, and powering data centers in the ocean. How they do it. The design of the Ocean-2 has a more philosophical than technical point: it is not so much about resisting the ocean but about accompanying it. As the waves oscillate, water is propelled through an internal pipe to the spherical surface and then descends through turbines to generate power. It has hardly any moving partsbeyond the turbine, integrated into the steel structure The buoy does not have nets or elements that can trap marine fauna, it operates silently and with slow movements: Panthalassa’s environmental manager, Dr. Liam Chen, explained for local TV KOMO that its soft, low-impact design allows you to “live in harmony with the ocean.” Testing in Puget Sound showed no visible alterations to the surrounding marine ecosystem. According to the co-founderGarth Sheldon-Coulson, these machines can be made for around $1,500 per kilowatt. What comes next. As account its co-founder, have been working for about ten years: the first four or five years was only R&D, in 2021 they launched their predecessor the Ocean-1, in 2024 the Ocean-2 was released and the Ocean-3 is already in development and It is making steady progress in its financing. Yes, but. So far, everything is testing and prototypes because the project is in the experimental phase, that is, there is not a single commercial kilowatt generated, nor a connected network, nor long-term durability data. And the sea is not exactly an easy environment: knowing how it will withstand storms and the passage of time, what maintenance will be like or simply something as basic as the transfer of energy from the device to the network is essential. Without forgetting the cost, especially given the collapse in the costs of solar or wind energy, both technologies that are already mature, consolidated and very cheap. In Xataka | With oil skyrocketing, Japan has resurrected an old idea to extract infinite energy from the ocean In Xataka | Something is happening in the oceans for which we have no convincing explanation: the waves are disappearing Cover | Panthalassa and Matt Paul Catalano

The largest naval project in German history since World War II is turning out to be a crazy disaster

by

In Europe, large military programs often take more than a decade to be completed and, in many cases, end up costing several times more than initially anticipated. It is not uncommon for complex projects to accumulate thousands of technical requirements and go through multiple reviews before reaching production. In this context, some plans are born as emblems of modernization… and end up becoming examples of how difficult it is to bring them to fruition. From something historic to something unsustainable. He program F126 was born as the great symbol of German rearmament and largest naval project of the country since the Second World War, but over time it has become quite the opposite: an example of how an ambitious plan can derail to the point of collapse. Conceived as a latest generation frigateflexible and prepared for decades of service, the project has not only accumulated delays and cost overrunsbut has called into question Germany’s ability to execute large military programs at a time when it aspires to lead European defense. Technical errors and chaos. He told in an extensive report the financial times that the origin of the problem seems as modern as it is devastating: a failed bet on a new software design that was not ready for a project of this scale. What should have been an advanced tool ended up generating cascading errors, from cables incorrectly located on the plans to steel parts manufactured with incorrect shapes, forcing manual corrections and slowing down the entire production. The result was a system that was moving at just a fraction of its planned pace, with delays that pushed the initial delivery several years later than planned. A culture shock. It turns out that the problem was not just technical. Apparently, the media reported that the project was trapped in a deep shock between the Dutch shipyard’s way of working and the German contracting system, known for its extreme rigidity. Thousands of specifications detailed even the smallest elements, while approval processes were they dragged on for months within a complex bureaucracy that required paper documentation and rejected even plans in English. This combination made collaboration a slow, frustrating, and, in many cases, unproductive process. Skyrocketing costs and limit decisions. As the problems piled up, so did made the invoice: The project, initially valued in the billions, began to go off track with significant cost overruns and structural delays. As it is, Germany now faces critical decisions ranging from replacing the main contractor to accepting billions already invested. as irrecoverable losses. At the same time, faster but less ambitious alternative solutions are being studied, reflecting the extent to which the original project has lost credibility. Notice to sailors of rearmament. If you like, the case of the F126 goes beyond a simple industrial failure: it reveals the limits of European military cooperation even among closely integrated countries and raises questions about the continent’s ability to implement complex joint programs. In a context of increasing of defense spending and increasing strategic pressure, the project has become a clear warning: It is not enough to invest more, you also have to know how to manage better. Because otherwise, even the most important projects can end up being, as in this case, a costly and lengthy example of what not to do. Image | Give me In Xataka | Germany is experiencing a new “industrial miracle” that it already experienced 90 years ago: that of weapons In Xataka | Germany was a sleeping military giant: now it has been awakened and it is already surpassing the US in bullets produced per year

EEEU vetoed the largest Chinese drone manufacturer. He did not expect that he would be left without the largest Chinese drone manufacturer

by

In December 2025, the US government banned DJI, making it the Huawei of drones. It was an absolutely crazy idea.with American drone pilots themselves warning about the Trump administration’s terrible decision. To no one’s surprise, the play did not go well. what happened. Late last year, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided ban all drones and critical components of these small aircraft that were manufactured in foreign countries. The measure affected the import of new drones, remaining existing ones operational. But the government did not take into account a small detail: DJI is the main reference in drones worldwide and, literally, there are no alternatives. What is happening. Already in 2025, Greg Reverdiau, co-founder of the Pilot Institute in Arizona, conducted a survey in which 8,000 pilots participated. 85% made it clear that they could stay in business for about two years. From then on, without access to DJI drones, the outlook was unsustainable. Photographers Videographers Farmers Surveyors Emergency services Security forces Major figures in the industry make it clear that no one is going to replace the gap that DJI has left, whether in capacity, affordability, reliability or ease of use. The alternative. GoPro launched a drone, Karma, in 2018. It failed and was never heard from again. Companies like Parrot also launched consumer drones almost ten years ago, but today there is no trace of them. American companies like Skydio have pivoted completely towards defense, with drones worth thousands of dollars and million-dollar contracts with the US military. When asked if they intended to manufacture drones for consumption, the answer was a clear no. Goodbye to 90%. DJI dominated the US drone market with a 90% share, and there are no real alternatives to replace drones that are reaching the end of their useful life. With no possible DJI replacement in sight, the question is no longer who will take over, it’s how long the current fleet will last before volunteer firefighters, farmers and rescue teams run out of work tools. In Xataka | Best drones. Which one to buy and recommended models from 50 to 3,500 euros

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

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

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

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