China’s 15th “five-year plan” for the battery industry aims to achieve large-scale application of all-solid-state batteries by 2030
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China aims to achieve initial large-scale application of all-solid-state batteries by 2030, with long-life lithium batteries reaching a life cycle of 15,000 times, according to the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–30) for the development of the new battery industry, reported China Daily.
The plan was issued by seven government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission.
All-solid-state batteries offer higher theoretical energy density and safety, and entail lower costs than lithium-ion batteries that currently dominate the electric vehicle sector. Hence, many countries consider them a potentially game-changing technology.
The ministry data show that during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–25) period, the new battery sector's total output value exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($149 billion), capturing a major share of the global market.
New batteries are efficient energy storage and conversion devices or systems centered on new mechanisms, materials, structures and processes, represented by lithium, sodium and flow batteries. They feature rapid technological iteration, broad applications and strong spillover effects.
China's Gotion invests $1.25 billion in Volkswagen battery plant in Spain
China's Gotion will invest $1.25 billion in Volkswagen's battery plant in Valencia under a broader plan to jointly develop a European battery supply chain, reported Reuters.
Chinese companies are boosting their presence in Europe ahead of expected moves by Brussels to shield EU industry from cheaper imports, including electric vehicles from China threatening to slash the market share of Volkswagen and other EU heavyweights, the newswire said. Gotion's investment allows it to take a 49% stake in the Valencia plant of Volkswagen's battery business PowerCo, which will remain the majority shareholder, VW said.
The plant will become a European production hub for lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries.
Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing
Anthropic in its IPO warned potential investors that advanced AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," an extraordinary warning by a company seeking to profit from the same technology, Reuters reported.
The company's IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, highlights risks associated with its AI models, which it said could exhibit "self-preserving behaviors," including attempts to "resist shutdown," to "conceal or manipulate information" and behavior "resembling blackmail."
AI developers have faced flak after their experimental systems defied constraints. In September it was reported that OpenAI model had breached Australia's health-system database. The company detected the “misalignment” two months late and informed the govt three months after the model went rogue, that too via email.
Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger estimated a greater than 10% (ridiculously high) probability that AI could kill humans within the next decade, echoing a sentiment by a former colleague, Jacob Coxon
The company devoted roughly 80 pages of the 261-page main body to risk factors, nearly twice the 48 pages it used to describe its business. Anthropic said models sometimes develop unexpected capabilities during training that may not be discovered until they have been deployed and have resulted in significant safety incidents.
It did not disclose in the filing how much the company was spending on such research. Earlier this month, Anthropic said about 6% of the computing power it used for AI research went to safety work in a sample week in July.
The company, creator of Claude AI models, described safety efforts as "resource-intensive" and said it must divide its limited funds between computing power, expensive AI talent and safety.
AI researchers warn companies rushing self-improving systems despite safety risks
Researchers from OpenAi and Google DeepMind have said AI firms are racing when they should pause plans to develop self-improving AI. Labs should slow down irrespective of competitive dynamic they said. Reuters reported.
"We should be taking very careful steps in AI development but instead what's happening is that frontier labs are racing each other, kind of blindfolded," Juan Felipe Ceron Uribe, an AI alignment research engineer at OpenAI, said in a video. "It's anybody's guess if we're going to end up either curing cancer or losing every job or maybe all dead."
Executives have tried to allay those concerns, though there is also political pressure from President Donald Trump for US technology to maintain a technological edge over China.
AI, data centre backlash, resilience dominate annual Climate Week in NY
This year’s Climate Week, held in New York parallel to UN general assembly, diverged markedly from past years that had been focused more closely on climate targets to discussions focused more on how to power the AI revolution and its electricity-hungry data centers without relying on newly constructed fossil fuel plants, wrote CNN’s Andrew Freedman. The word “climate” was curiously absent from many panel discussions and one-on-one conversations. Instead, there was an overflow of events dealing with the challenge of getting more electricity onto the grid, ASAP, the report said.
The article noted that discussions gravitated toward data centers and AI’s thirst for electrons. The growing backlash to data centers was a prominent topic on panels featuring a bipartisan group of governors, mayors and other officials who are navigating the rapidly changing politics on this issue. There is a resigned acceptance that we are missing the climate targets — particularly the 1.5-degree warming target from the Paris Climate Agreement — and that we now have serious consequences to deal with, even if we manage to quickly and drastically slash emissions in the near-term, the report said.
In sit down meetings, climate professionals from a variety of sectors, including the insurance industry, major food producers, among others, spoke of resilience rather than using the word “climate.” This reflects where we are right now, firmly in the era of climate change consequences.
Big Tech Lobby at work? EU accused of hiding environmental impact of data centers
The European Union has shielded data centers from public scrutiny about how much energy and water they use, according to a formal complaint against the European Commission lodged this week by Lighthouse Reports, Politico reported adding that the EU rules are silent on how much energy and water are used by individual data centers. Public anger against power and water hungry AI data centers is growing across Europe, while energy prices rise.
Lighthouse Reports, conducting cross-border investigations of alleged government and corporate wrongdoing, said EU policymakers are determined "to deny or deter access to, and obfuscate understanding of, how data centers are performing.” The complaint is filed under the Aarhus Convention, a legally binding international treaty that gives the public rights to information and participation in environmental decision-making. The Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee will meet in November to decide on the plea.
The EU has publicly declared its target of tripling data-center capacity to keep pace with the U.S. and China. Meanwhile, as energy prices rise, public resistance to data centers is expanding around Europe.
To limit the environmental costs, the Commission presented a new transparency label to drive investment towards greener facilities, with minimum performance standards expected to follow, the article said.
Europe’s data centers used 20.7 terawatt-hours of electricity and over 8 million cubic meters of water in 2025. That's a 26% increase in electricity use and 52% in water use from 2024. The figures do not fully account for the sector's actual use, as the totals are the result of incomplete data collected by the Commission,” the report said. “The data has only been published in aggregate, following a 2024 law that banned Brussels and EU capitals from disclosing "all information and key performance indicators for individual data centers" amid lobbying from tech giants, which cited commercial interests, the outlet noted.