At a conference in Manchester, England, early this month, Times Higher Education released the 2025 edition of its World University Rankings. We take a closer look at the findings, including how institutions score when it comes to tech transfer and patents.
Find RFI Ready sites in Greater Des Moines (DSM) that are prime for development and ready for your next project. The Greater Des Moines Partnership can provide the data needed to guide your decision-making and provide expert insights on the DSM business climate. See what this top 10 fastest growing metro in the United States (Site Selection Group) and #2 Best Place for Young Professionals (Forbes) has to offer you.
The ECO Edison was christened and launched in a ceremony at the Port of New Orleans (pictured) in late May.
Image courtesy of Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO) and ABS
Award-winning journalist Pam Radtke, editor for the Floodlight reporting team for the Louisiana Illuminator, recently published this update on the status of offshore wind in the United States. One thread in her report is her conversation with energy entrepreneur Herman Schellstede, whom Site Selection first spoke with in 2005: His concepts for a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico were explored in this January 2006 Site Selection cover story about how companies and communities in every state in the Gulf Coast region were approaching recovery from the active hurricane season of 2005.
Radtke’s report also chronicles the progress of the ECO Edison, a recently christened offshore wind farm service operations vessel that popped up in recent Site Selection reports on New England and in our own offshore wind update in July entitled “Keeping Up With the Jones Act.”
In a mountain in Val di Non, 25 miles north of Trento, Italy, you will find what developers are calling the first data center in Europe to be built within an active mine. Intacture, branded as “the Natural Home of Data” is a €50.2 million project funded partly by the private sector and partly by funds from the country’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It is being developed within a dolomite mine operated by Tassullo. Scheduled to start operations in 2026, the project “has the ambitious objective of creating not only a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure integrated into the territory and with a small environmental footprint, but also an innovation hub, where research and development are intertwined in strategic areas of application such as life sciences, artificial intelligence, energy transition and cybersecurity,” said a release from the University of Trento. Construction is being carried out by engineering firm In-Site.
“Data are the raw material of our future,” said a statement from the private partners in the project. “We will help companies and organizations to store and manage data safely and efficiently, within an ecosystem that has been designed to generate multiple benefits through co-location services for public and private companies, synergies with the world of research and the development of solutions for the local community and the environment.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Photo by Jüri Talts courtesy of Tartu County Public Photostock
Some might call Estonia’s tax code as spare and beautiful as its landscape or renowned Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s music. The Tax Foundation this week unveiled its 2024 International Tax Competitiveness Index, organized around the principle that “a well-structured tax code is easy for taxpayers to comply with and can promote economic development while raising sufficient revenue for a government’s priorities.” For the 11th year in a row, Estonia was found to have the most competitive tax code in the OECD, just ahead of its southern neighbor Latvia and New Zealand. The least competitive tax code is in Chile, the Tax Foundation’s 74-page report said, followed by the codes in the United Kingdom and Poland.
This photo is from Tartu County, Estonia, located in the eastern part of the country adjacent to Lake Peipus. Invest in Estonia touts the region’s ICT and startup ecosystem, science and academic institutions, encapsulated in the annual sTARTUp Day, the largest startup festival in Baltics, says the agency, which takes place in late January.
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