The industry endured a bruising 2025, with many projects cancelled or delayed amid high European energy costs and cheaper fossil fuel-based hydrogen

International News via Reuters:

Europe’s fledgling green hydrogen industry is urging the EU to introduce “made in Europe” requirements for public spending on the sector, warning that without support to scale up quickly, domestic producers risk being overtaken by Chinese rivals.

The industry endured a bruising 2025, with many projects cancelled or delayed amid high European energy costs and cheaper fossil fuel-based hydrogen. 

Brussels is counting on green hydrogen to help chemicals, steel and fertiliser producers cut emissions. Today, more than 90% of the hydrogen used in European industry still comes from fossil fuels.

Kim Hedegaard, CEO of Power-to-X at Danish engineering company Topsoe, told Reuters that manufacturers backed EU plans for “made in Europe” rules for publicly funded electrolyser purchases – pointing to solar panels as a cautionary tale if the industry fails to scale fast.

Europe lost most of its solar panel production in the 2000s as Chinese manufacturing costs plunged, leaving the region heavily dependent on imports.

PRIORITISING EUROPEAN MANUFACTURERS

“You can use that as an example of what will happen to the European electrolyser industry if we don’t do something different,” Hedegaard said.

The European Commission plans this month to propose a law to prioritise European manufacturers in public procurement, aiming to tap the 2.5 trillion euros that EU public authorities spend each year on goods and services.

A draft of the proposals, previously reported by Reuters, included electrolysers. But the plans face pushback from some governments and firms, and officials are still haggling over which technologies to cover – and whether “made in Europe” should include non-EU countries such as Turkey.

Hakon Volldal, CEO of Norwegian electrolyser manufacturer Nel Hydrogen, said European firms were missing out on large-scale projects like those progressing in China, which public contracts could help secure.

“We have technology leadership, but unless we’re able to deploy that technology and also learn with that technology, the Chinese will catch up, and they will race past us,” he said.

“China is getting an edge … because of the scale of their projects,” said Nicolas de Coignac, CEO of the hydrogen arm of Belgian engineering group John Cockerill.

European Investment Bank President Nadia Calvino this month singled out electrolysers and wind energy as “low-dependency sectors” where Europe can still stay ahead.

“But it will require continued investment in EU value chains,” she wrote in a letter seen by Reuters ahead of Thursday’s meeting of EU leaders on industrial competitiveness.

China already hosts 60% of global electrolyser manufacturing capacity. European firms still dominate their home market, supplying more than 80% of sales to European projects since 2022, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

But there are signs that Chinese companies are making gains. Brussels tightened access for Chinese-supplied projects to the EU’s main hydrogen support fund in 2024, after finding many past beneficiaries planned to use cheaper foreign equipment.

Reporting by Kate Abnett. Editing by Mark Potter

Big Tech’s effort to swiftly build and electrify giant data centers across the U.S. to expand technologies like artificial intelligence has been slowed by the country’s aging power system and constrained electricity supplies

International News via Reuters:

Microsoft is exploring using superconducting power lines in its data centers, which could potentially accelerate its massive U.S. build-out of the server warehouses by making them more energy-efficient, the company said on Tuesday.

Big Tech’s effort to swiftly build and electrify giant data centers across the U.S. to expand technologies like artificial intelligence has been slowed by the country’s aging power system and constrained electricity supplies.

Microsoft said recent tests of high‑temperature superconductor cables have shown that the power lines can deliver the same amount of electricity as traditional cables while taking up less space. 

“The technology helps us scale power density without expanding our physical footprint,” Husam Alissa, who leads the Systems Technology Team at Microsoft’s CO+I CTO Office. “It can also help us reduce the size of power transmission infrastructure and lower community impact.”

High-temperature superconductor cables use a ceramic-like material that transports electricity more efficiently than conventional copper and aluminum conductors, which are used widely in power infrastructure.

Deploying the cables, which are not currently used in data centers, could shorten the time it takes to power the large server warehouses.

Microsoft said the technology could allow it to increase electrical density inside facilities without expanding infrastructure like substations. The company, however, did not disclose its investment in superconducting technology or when it would be able to deploy them in its data centers. 

U.S. government research shows the electricity use of data centers may consume about 12 percent of U.S. power supplies by 2028, a tripling from four years earlier, which would require more infrastructure to generate and transport the electricity.

Single data center campuses being built today will require more than one gigawatt of electricity at a single location, enough to power about 750,000 homes.

The cable technology has been under development for  decades, but stymied by high costs and manufacturing constraints.

Microsoft is investing in superconducting companies, including Massachusetts-based cable manufacturer and cooling system vendor, VEIR, which closed a $75 Series B funding round this last year. VEIR, which recently completed a test of its three megawatt cable to power a server rack in a  simulated data center, said the advanced cables can be more than 10 times smaller and lighter than traditional cables, allowing for a smaller data center footprint. 

Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

The endorsement matters because the European Central Bank needs Parliament’s legislative approval before it can issue a digital euro, meaning its goal of a 2029 launch depends on lawmakers signing off

International News via Reuters:

The European Parliament gave its first major backing to the digital euro on Tuesday, endorsing the European Council’s negotiating stance for a central bank digital currency with both online and offline functionality.

The endorsement matters because the European Central Bank needs Parliament’s legislative approval before it can issue a digital euro, meaning its goal of a 2029 launch depends on lawmakers signing off.

The assembly’s position marks a shift from earlier parliamentary proposals focused solely on offline payments and signals closer alignment with the ECB on safeguarding the bloc’s monetary sovereignty.

The ECB has been developing a digital euro to preserve the role of central bank money in an increasingly digital economy and to reduce reliance on non‑European payment providers.

Fraying transatlantic relations and growing geopolitical risks have stoked concerns about the fragmentation of EU payments services and the bloc’s dependence on U.S. providers such as Visa or Mastercard – with some countries lacking altogether a domestic payment network.

The project, however, met resistance from bank lobbies in countries such as Germany and progress in parliament stalled, with the draft stuck for more than two years — far longer than the ECB expected.

MEPs on Tuesday approved two amendments to parliament’s resolution on the ECB’s 2025 annual report, calling for a digital euro that ensures equal access to payment services and provides a new form of public money usable both online and offline.

Lawmakers also underlined that a digital euro is essential to bolstering EU monetary sovereignty and deepening the single market while reducing fragmentation in retail payments.

“These votes are a big win for the progress of the digital euro,” said Laura Casonato, head of policy at Positive Money Europe, a not‑for-profit organisation advocating a digital version of cash.

“There is now a clear parliamentary majority in favour of an inclusive future form of cash — money in digital form backed by the central bank, making it safe,” she said.

The parliament also urged the ECB to step up monitoring of crypto‑assets, warning that the shift to digital payments, if left to private and non‑EU providers, risks creating new forms of exclusion for users and merchants.

Reporting by Valentina Za, Editing by William Maclean

Ireland began the three-year trial in 2022 to help artists recover from COVID-19 shutdowns

International News via Reuters:

Ireland rolled out a permanent basic income scheme for the arts on Tuesday, pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week following a trial that participants said eased financial strain and allowed them to spend more time on projects.

Ireland began the three-year trial in 2022 to help artists recover from COVID-19 shutdowns. While similar pilots have been tried in San Francisco and New York, Ireland’s Culture Minister Patrick O’Donovan said the scheme was the first permanent one of its kind in the world.

The move will “set Ireland apart from other countries with regard to how we value culture and creativity,” O’Donovan said, launching the scheme in the James Joyce Room at Bewley’s Cafe, a Dublin cultural institution which hosts lunch-time theatre performances.

“This is a gigantic step forward that other countries are not doing.”

The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. O’Donovan said he would like to increase the number of recipients over time.

Over 8,000 applicants applied for the 2,000 places in the pilot scheme.

A report on the trial found it lowered the likelihood of artists experiencing enforced deprivation, and reduced their levels of anxiety and reliance on supplementary income.

It also recouped more than the trial’s net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.

“The scheme was a real-world test of what happens when people are given stability instead of precarity,” said composer and designer Peter Power, a member of the National Campaign for the Arts group.

“Artists on the scheme spent more time creating and less time trapped in unrelated jobs just to survive, and many became better able to sustain themselves through their work alone.”

($1 = 0.8403 euros)

Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Aidan Lewis