The only indoor facility built specifically for the Paris games is having a watershed moment.

As part of organizers’ sustainability goals, the Olympics Aquatics Center—the venue hosting the diving, artistic swimming, and water polo competitions—draws heat from sources in the neighborhood, including emissions from a nearby data center that digital infrastructure company Equinix operates.

The model is one that Noah Nkonge, Equinix’s heat export lead, said he hopes gains traction after its showcase on the world stage.

“There’s an interest in what can be done from an energy-efficiency perspective, what can be done to give back to the community,” he told Tech Brew. “At Equinix, we’re committed to doing that, to being a leader, to finding those solutions that will improve our company’s energy efficiency, because it does benefit our customers, but it also benefits those communities.”

In Paris, as across the world, data centers are a critical link providing the processing power for all manner of online experiences, from searching for an address in Google Maps and booking a hotel to supporting caregiving and record-management in hospitals. The IT infrastructure that carries out these processes inside data centers generates a lot of heat; in Paris, the output from the Equinix center is enough to heat about 1,000 homes.

Without an energy-sharing arrangement, that heat is released into the atmosphere. But with the right partners on board, the byproduct can instead be released into heat-distribution networks and redirected to places it’s needed.

Keep reading here.—KG

From commuting on a rainy day to trekking a final summer getaway, the shoes on your feet shouldn’t enter uncomfy mode just because the journey is long.

That’s why HOKA’s Transport Chukka GTX was built for everyday adventures, whether you’re meeting at the office or the trailhead. It’s a new waterproof, ankle-high, weather-ready style that amps up all the fave features on the original HOKA Transport.

Protective deets include nubuck leather, a waterproof GORE-TEX invisible-fit membrane, and a soft engineered-knit collar.

No matter the season, the Transport Chukka GTX can give you a reason to take the scenic route—rain or shine.

Shop here.

With 5G rollouts still underway, it might feel too early to start talking about 6G.

Not so, according to Subho Mukherjee, VP and global head of sustainability at Nokia, who sees the current planning stage as the perfect opportunity to make the next generation of mobile technology more energy-efficient.

Tech Brew recently chatted with Mukherjee about how advances in AI and visibility into real-time network traffic can make mobile networks more responsive and less resource-hungry.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How will 6G differ from 5G on the technology side, and how do those differences play into energy consumption?

The objective of the 6G world is to bring the digital and the physical world into fusion. 2G was about voice, 3G was about mobile internet, 4G was about videos and social media, 5G has been about video uploads. It is expected that the second half of 5G, around 2025 to 2026, is going to be about industrial automation.

Keep reading here.—KG

Electrification is key to decarbonizing transportation, one of the biggest contributors to planet-warming greenhouse-gas emissions.

But “electric” doesn’t always mean “clean.”

That’s one of the themes of a new report by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, “Minimizing Mining Impacts on the Road to Zero Emissions Transport.” The report, commissioned by environmental nonprofit Earthworks, provides policy recommendations to reduce the environmentally and socially harmful mining impacts associated with electric vehicles, even as it encourages the transition away from fossil fuel-powered transportation.

“This report doesn’t say that we shouldn’t electrify transportation at all,” Paulina Personius, international campaigner for Earthworks’s Making Clean Energy Clean campaign, told Tech Brew. “But it says that we should do so in a very careful and considerate way, and also while implementing other solutions that make us a lot less dependent on personal vehicles. At the moment, EVs are one of the principal drivers of mineral demand.”

At the heart of the issue are EV batteries, which use large quantities of materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, and copper. Growing demand for lithium-ion batteries is driving higher demand for these minerals, the report notes.

And that’s where the problem lies.

Keep reading here.—JG

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