New challenges need new technologies to tackle them. Here, the World Economic Forum’s
identifies the top 10 most promising technology trends that can help to
deliver sustainable growth in decades to come as global population and
material demands on the environment continue to grow rapidly. These are
technologies that the Council considers have made development
breakthroughs and are nearing large-scale deployment.
1) OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)
Wireless technology can now deliver electric power to moving
vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the
vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field
broadcast from cables installed under the road. The current also charges
an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out of range.
As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles need only a fifth
of the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve
transmission efficiencies of over 80%. Online electric vehicles are
currently undergoing road tests in Seoul, South Korea.
2) 3-D printing and remote manufacturing
Three-dimensional printing allows the creation of solid structures
from a digital computer file, potentially revolutionizing the economics
of manufacturing if objects can be printed remotely in the home or
office. The process involves layers of material being deposited on top
of each other in to create free-standing structures from the bottom up.
Blueprints from computer-aided design are sliced into cross-section for
print templates, allowing virtually created objects to be used as models
for “hard copies” made from plastics, metal alloys or other materials.
3) Self-healing materials
One of the defining characteristics of living organisms is their
inherent ability to repair physical damage. A growing trend in
biomimicry is the creation of non-living structural materials that also
have the capacity to heal themselves when cut, torn or cracked.
Self-healing materials which can repair damage without external human
intervention could give manufactured goods longer lifetimes and reduce
the demand for raw materials, as well as improving the inherent safety
of materials used in construction or to form the bodies of aircraft.
4) Energy-efficient water purification
Water scarcity is a worsening ecological problem in many parts of the
world due to competing demands from agriculture, cities and other human
uses. Where freshwater systems are over-used or exhausted, desalination
from the sea offers near-unlimited water but a considerable use of
energy – mostly from fossil fuels – to drive evaporation or
reverse-osmosis systems. Emerging technologies offer the potential for
significantly higher energy efficiency in desalination or purification
of wastewater, potentially reducing energy consumption by 50% or more.
Techniques such as forward-osmosis can additionally improve efficiency
by utilizing low-grade heat from thermal power production or renewable
heat produced by solar-thermal geothermal installations.
5) Carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion and use
Long-promised technologies for the capture and underground
sequestration of carbon dioxide have yet to be proven commercially
viable, even at the scale of a single large power station. New
technologies that convert the unwanted CO2 into saleable
goods can potentially address both the economic and energetic
shortcomings of conventional CCS strategies. One of the most promising
approaches uses biologically engineered photosynthetic bacteria to turn
waste CO2 into liquid fuels or chemicals, in low-cost,
modular solar converter systems. Individual systems are expected to
reach hundreds of acres within two years. Being 10 to 100 times as
productive per unit of land area, these systems address one of the main
environmental constraints on biofuels from agricultural or algal
feedstock, and could supply lower carbon fuels for automobiles, aviation
or other big liquid-fuel users.
6) Enhanced nutrition to drive health at the molecular level
Even in developed countries millions of people suffer from
malnutrition due to nutrient deficiencies in their diets. Now modern
genomic techniques can determine at the gene sequence level the vast
number of naturally consumed proteins which are important in the human
diet. The proteins identified may have advantages over standard protein
supplements in that they can supply a greater percentage of essential
amino acids, and have improved solubility, taste, texture and
nutritional characteristics. The large-scale production of pure human
dietary proteins based on the application of biotechnology to molecular
nutrition can deliver health benefits such as muscle development,
managing diabetes or reducing obesity.
7) Remote sensing
The increasingly widespread use of sensors that allow often passive
responses to external stimulae will continue to change the way we
respond to the environment, particularly in the area of health. Examples
include sensors that continually monitor bodily function – such as
heart rate, blood oxygen and blood sugar levels – and, if necessary,
trigger a medical response such as insulin provision. Advances rely on
wireless communication between devices, low power-sensing technologies
and, sometimes, active energy harvesting. Other examples include
vehicle-to-vehicle sensing for improved safety on the road.
8) Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering
Pharmaceuticals that can be precisely delivered at the molecular
level within or around a diseased cell offer unprecedented opportunities
for more effective treatments while reducing unwanted side effects.
Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to diseased tissue allow for the
micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while minimizing
their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials.
After almost a decade of research, these new approaches are finally
showing signs of clinical utility.
9) Organic electronics and photovoltaics
Organic electronics – a type of printed electronics – is the use of
organic materials such as polymers to create electronic circuits and
devices. In contrast to traditional (silicon-based) semiconductors that
are fabricated with expensive photolithographic techniques, organic
electronics can be printed using low-cost, scalable processes such as
ink jet printing, making them extremely cheap compared with traditional
electronics devices, both in terms of the cost per device and the
capital equipment required to produce them. While organic electronics
are currently unlikely to compete with silicon in terms of speed and
density, they have the potential to provide a significant edge in cost
and versatility. The cost implications of printed mass-produced solar
photovoltaic collectors, for example, could accelerate the transition to
renewable energy.
10) Fourth-generation reactors and nuclear-waste recycling
Current once-through nuclear power reactors use only 1% of the
potential energy available in uranium, leaving the rest radioactively
contaminated as nuclear “waste”. While the technical challenge of
geological disposal is manageable, the political challenge of nuclear
waste seriously limits the appeal of this zero-carbon and highly
scalable energy technology. Spent-fuel recycling and breeding
uranium-238 into new fissile material – known as Nuclear 2.0 – would
extend already-mined uranium resources for centuries while dramatically
reducing the volume and long-term toxicity of wastes, whose
radioactivity will drop below the level of the original uranium ore on a
timescale of centuries rather millennia. This makes geological disposal
much less of a challenge (and arguably even unnecessary) and nuclear
waste a minor environmental issue compared to hazardous wastes produced
by other industries. Fourth-generation technologies, including liquid
metal-cooled fast reactors, are now being deployed in
several countries and are offered by established nuclear engineering
companies.
