Ministers in the United Kingdom on Tuesday approved the second phase of the world’s biggest offshore wind farm. Hornsea Project Two will include 300 turbines spread across 300 square miles, 55 miles off the cost of England in the North Sea. With an estimated energy capacity of 1.8 gigawatts, the project could provide enough power for 1.6 million homes.
But the wind farm is expected to bring more than just cleaner energy. According to British ministers, the project will create 1,960 construction jobs and 580 operational and maintenance jobs.
“The U.K.’s offshore wind industry has grown at an extraordinary rate over the last few years, and is a fundamental part of our plans to build a clean, affordable, secure energy system,” Greg Clark, the U.K.’s secretary of state for business, energy, and industrial strategy, told The Guardian. “Britain is a global leader in offshore wind, and we are determined to be one of the leading destinations for investment in renewable energy, which means jobs and economic growth right across the country.”
The decision was stalled for two months as regulators reviewed concerns about turbine noise intruding on porpoise habitats, reports to The Guardian.
Hornsea Project Two and it’s predecessor are both developments of Denmark’s Dong Energy, the world’s largest offshore wind farm operator. Although the energy giant made its final investment in the first phase this year, they have yet to officially commit to funding the second phase.
“Development consent for Hornsea Project Two is very welcome,” Dong Energy’s U.K. chairman, Brent Cheshire, told The Guardian. “We have already invested [$7.8 billion] in the U.K., and Hornsea Project Two provides us with another exciting development opportunity in offshore wind.”
The second phase is also expected to cost $7.8 billion if built to full capacity. “A project of this size will help in our efforts to continue reducing the cost of electricity from offshore wind and shows our commitment to investing in the U.K.,” Cheshire added.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.