The latest innovation news, important investments or inspiring stories: in this series, we highlight stories that shape the news of the future. Each week we dive into the details of the most promising startups, technologies and research initiatives.
1. New EU rules make high-value datasets available to fuel AI and data-driven innovation
As of last week, new EU rules on making more public datasets available for reuse have started applying. These so-called ‘high-value datasets’ contain information on six thematic areas laid out in the Open Data Directive: geospatial, earth observation and environment, meteorological, statistics, companies and mobility.
The new rules have the potential to generate important societal and economic benefits by fuelling new innovative products and services such as artificial intelligence applications. High-value datasets in the meteorological area, for example, can be used to produce better weather predictions and related apps. Agricultural companies could leverage satellite imagery, weather data and soil health information to implement precision farming techniques, thereby increasing yield and reducing waste.
2. China produces first nuclear-generated steam for petrochemicals plant
China’s first nuclear-based steam generation project began production on Wednesday, state-run China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) said in a Wechat post announcing the latest step in Chinese efforts to decarbonise heavy industry, Reuters writes.
The Heqi No. 1 project at the Tianwan nuclear plant in eastern Jiangsu province produces steam to be used by a petrochemicals operation in the port city of Lianyungang. Integrating nuclear power plants with other applications, such as cooling and heating, is termed cogeneration and can have economic and environmental benefits, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said.
In December 2022 the Qinshan plant in eastern Zhejiang province became the first project to supply nuclear-generated thermal energy for industrial use.
3. EU organic farming: 16.9 million hectares in 2022
Good news for the European organic farming sector. The area used for organic agricultural production in the EU continues to increase, and in 2022 reached 16.9 million hectares (ha), up from 15.9 million ha in 2021 and 14.7 million ha in 2020. In 2022, the area used for organic farming was equivalent to 10.5% of the total utilised agricultural area (UAA) in the EU.
Between 2012 and 2022, the area used for organic farming increased in almost all EU countries. The sharpest rates of expansion in this period were in Croatia (+306%), Portugal (278%) and Bulgaria (182%). The highest shares of organic farming areas within the total UAA were in Austria (27%), Estonia (23%) and Sweden (20%).
4. Not Microsoft but Nvidia is the world’s most valuable company
Chip-maker Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company after its share price climbed to an all-time high on Tuesday. It is now worth $3.34tn, having nearly doubled since the start of this year. The company has more value than fellow tech giant Microsoft, which overtook Apple earlier this month.
The Californian company’s meteoric rise has been fuelled by its dominance of what analysts call the “new gold or oil in the tech sector” – the chips needed for AI. NVIDIA benefits from the race among big tech companies to develop new applications for AI. The company makes chips for data centers that run AI models.
NVIDIA first became prominent with graphics cards for games, which require a lot of processing power for realistic effects. That same computing power is also useful for processing large amounts of data for AI models. The AI division is now the most significant part of the company.
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