A new hydrogen center of excellence will rise near Glasgow International Airport. Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) will build its first manufacturing plant in the U.S. since 1980 at Tulsa Port of Inola industrial park. Having surpassed 70 million units produced in India, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India will expand in the world’s largest motorcycle market.
“Today, water is no longer an assumed commodity in the Western U.S.,” writes water resources expert James Eklund, partner at Taft/Sherman & Howard. “It is a strategic asset. In fact, it may be the strategic asset when it comes to industrial site selection, permitting timelines and operational risk.”
If you heard Hydro-Quebec is no longer exporting power to New England, listen up: Here are the facts about the region’s present and future power scenario.
SUEZ, CTCI Group and Hung Hua two weeks ago broke ground on Taiwan’s first large-scale municipal reverse osmosis desalination plant in Hsinchu. The $576 million facility will ultimately serve approximately 1.6 million people and industries.
Christopher Gleadle, CEO of SV-Electra and co-founder of think-tank The Paddy Ashdown Policy Research Forum, last week opined in fDi Intelligence about the value of desalination in helping the world confront water scarcity issues brought on by data center development and other demanding sectors. The week before that, SUEZ, CTCI Group and Hung Hua broke ground on Taiwan’s first large-scale municipal reverse osmosis desalination plant in Hsinchu.
That’s a topic that was near and dear to the heart and futurist mindset of Site Selection Founder McKinley “Mac” Conway, whose many writings on the topic included a March 2007 piece suggesting that desalting plants “may offer a better way to achieve sea level balance.” In 2008, he ended “Decision Time for Desalt Plants” by stating, “One of our safest predictions is that the manufacture and distribution of fresh water will become one of the world’s biggest businesses.”
Mac passed away 14 years ago this week at the age of 90. “Looking at the world landscape, we know that our small company is but a grain of sand,” he wrote in what became Conway Data’s mission statement. “However, joining with many others, we know that we are part of a wonderful vista.”
America’s most ambitious governor talks about the path that delivered to Texas a record-setting 13th consecutive win in the Site Selection Governor’s Cup race.
“Lots of states aspire to have an advanced manufacturing industry the size of the one growing in Texas,” writes Mark Arend. “At more than 240,000 workers, many countries do as well.”
At a trade show in Germany earlier this month, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) unveiled what it called the world’s first 9MWh ultra-large capacity energy storage system solution set for mass production, “adequate to charge 150 electric cars or power an average German household for six years.”
Photo courtesy of CATL
Framed around a visit to the Shanghai Auto Show, this “Deep Dive” report filed last week by NPR explores the race between U.S. and Chinese companies to develop the best electric vehicle batteries. Since 2016, the Conway Projects Database has documented 17 major battery manufacturing plant investments from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), nine of which were more than $1 billion.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Photo by Agnese Bedini
International design and innovation firm CRA–Carlo Ratti Associati, in collaboration with the Municipality of Naples, has launched a participatory design project to reimagine Le Vele — an iconic modernist housing complex in Scampia, Naples, in southern Italy whose name translates to “The Sails.” Similar housing complexes such as Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and Robin Hood Gardens in London also symbolized modernist utopia turned social crisis and were demolished in full, says a release from the architectural firm, but this project blends community voices with AI to translate “residents’ memories and ideas into visual blueprints for the future” for a preserved section of the Vele called Vele Celeste.
“This is not transformation by disruption, but by slow accumulation,” said Carlo Ratti, founding partner of CRA and curator of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. “We’re building not with concrete, but with feedback. The question is not whether buildings can be smarter — but whether they can evolve alongside the people who inhabit them. Can AI design with us, not just for us?”
