Some of Europe’s old coal and gas-fired power stations, long destined for decommissioning under climate targets, are finding a new lease on life, not as energy producers, but as data centres powering the AI revolution. Global tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon are partnering with major European utilities to repurpose these brownfield industrial sites into digital infrastructure hubs, leveraging their existing power grid access and water cooling facilities.

This strategic repurposing marks a convergence of industrial decarbonisation with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital services. It also underscores a shifting energy and geopolitical landscape, in which Europe seeks both to meet climate goals and to position itself competitively against the U.S. and Asia in the global digital economy.

The United States is planning to enhance efforts to gather more information about transactions involving Russian oil in an attempt to enforce sanctions, particularly due to concerns about a significant portion of such trade escaping Western oversight. The Group of Seven (G7) countries…

President Donald Trump’s dramatic escalation of global tariffs has dealt a heavy blow to Chinese exporters, many of whom had already begun relocating operations in an effort to escape the brunt of the U.S.-China trade war. But with new levies now reaching Vietnam, Thailand, and nearly every other alternative production hub, Beijing finds itself facing an unprecedented squeeze on both its external trade strategy and domestic economy.

Some Chinese manufacturers moved production to Vietnam last year to avoid the higher tariffs on goods from China. Now, just months later, some of them are preparing to shutter those new factories as steep tariffs on Vietnamese exports make the relocation futile. There is growing sentiment among manufacturers who now see global trade as a high-risk, low-margin endeavor, increasingly resembling the sluggish, saturated domestic market in China.