Smart Grids, Passive Cooling, and Cancer Vaccines: WEF Names the Technologies That Will Shape the Next Decade

WEF Report: From Self-Cooling Materials to AI World Models, Here Are the Tech Breakthroughs to Watch

The World Economic Forum has released its 14th annual list of breakthrough technologies poised to reshape the global economy, singling out connected power grids, materials that cool surfaces without energy, and AI models that learn from the physical world as some of the most transformative innovations of the near future.

Published in its “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024” report, the WEF highlights advances spanning pharmaceuticals, energy, and artificial intelligence. Chief authors Frederick Fenter (Frontiers) and Jeremy Jurgens (WEF) note that many of these technologies are becoming more personal—designed around a single patient or context rather than a standardized whole. Others are becoming more distributed, producing food, energy, and critical materials closer to where they are consumed. “A third trend is that many of these technologies do more with less, producing cooling without energy, proteins without herds, and chemistry without continuous waste,” they write.

The report also acknowledges that some innovations directly address the negative legacy of past technology. For example, new methods to destroy “forever chemicals” (PFAS molecules) tackle a problem created by their original invention. The WEF provides strategic forecasts for each technology to 2031, identifying the regulatory and technical hurdles that stand in the way of large-scale adoption.

What the WEF’s Tech Outlook Means for Power Grids, Pharma, and AI

The Power Grid of the Future Is Distributed—and Battery Chemistry Is Changing

The report envisions a grid where every building, vehicle, and appliance can store energy, return it to the network, and help balance supply and demand in real time. The biggest enabler is a shift in battery cell technology: lithium-ion batteries reliant on cobalt and nickel—minerals tied to specific geographies—are being replaced by cells using more accessible materials like sodium and lithium-iron-phosphate. Last year, lithium-based batteries surpassed nickel-based ones in electric vehicle market share for the first time. New purpose-built chips are also emerging to route energy in these distributed networks. For traditional electricity distributors, the transition could force a move from selling energy to managing distributed systems, with key risks being battery degradation, unclear revenue models, and cybersecurity.

Passive Cooling Materials Could Slash Energy Bills, but Only if Building Codes Catch Up

Materials that achieve radiative cooling without any energy input are especially relevant as heatwaves intensify. Added to paints, roof coatings, and even electricity cables, they reflect more than 95% of incoming sunlight before it turns into heat—using microscopic air pockets as mirrors—and can drop surface temperatures below ambient air. The WEF notes that two of the world’s largest construction markets, China’s and California’s, have already integrated these materials into green building standards. In the UK, a special cable coating keeps electricity lines cooler, boosting capacity. The biggest barrier is regulation: authorities must add these materials to building codes before they can be widely adopted, shifting cooling from an ongoing operational expense to a design-phase decision.

Destroying PFAS: From Niche Cleanup to a Global Health Imperative

Forever chemicals are now found in every human body and even in the Arctic. The strong carbon-fluorine bond makes them nearly indestructible, but the report outlines three emerging destruction methods: supercritical water oxidation that breaks PFAS into harmless compounds; electrochemical oxidation that strips electrons directly from the molecules, ideal for concentrated industrial waste; and UV-driven catalysts that target the carbon-fluorine bond. Regulation is already driving deployment. The EU limited PFAS in drinking water in 2020, and since 2023, Michigan has been destroying PFAS from landfill leachate. Japan’s Daikin, a major PFAS producer, recently completed a large-scale UV destruction test. Shifting destruction to on-site treatment could lower costs compared to capturing and shipping waste for incineration, but capacity will remain limited for years.

Personalized mRNA Vaccines Rewrite the Pharma Playbook

Building on mRNA advances from the COVID-19 pandemic, personalized cancer vaccines work not by attacking tumors directly but by teaching the immune system to recognize them. After a biopsy, a patient’s tumor mutations are sequenced to identify antigens, and a custom mRNA vaccine is manufactured. The WEF notes that this “same diagnosis” no longer means “same treatment,” and the production model will run parallel to traditional mass-produced drugs. For pharma companies built around identical doses at scale, business models will need to change. The expense is significant—early treatments exceed $100,000 per patient—and the central challenge over the next five years will be whether health systems can deliver these vaccines broadly without making precision medicine a privilege.

World Models: AI That Understands the Physical World, Not Just Words

Current large language models learn from text; world models learn from multi-sensory data—video, depth sensors, pressure readings, motion capture—to build internal representations of how the world behaves. This lets them make predictions and generalize to never-before-seen situations. Nvidia’s Cosmos platform, trained on 20 million hours of real-world data, is a leading example. The WEF predicts these models will appear first in sectors that generate continuous data, such as manufacturing and logistics, later expanding to construction and elder care. The report describes a port worker whose morning inspection is already obsolete because a world model has tested tomorrow’s loading sequence against tide forecasts, wind patterns, and container weights—and revised the schedule twice. Risks include model biases, flawed conclusions, and deployment in organizations that favor stability, clashing with the models’ need to constantly update assumptions.

How Energy, Pharma, and AI Leaders Can Act on the WEF’s Tech Forecast

• Energy companies: Pilot sodium-ion and lithium-iron-phosphate battery storage to reduce dependence on cobalt and nickel, as highlighted by the report’s finding that lithium-based chemistries now dominate EV batteries. Partner with chip designers to develop hardware for distributed grid management.
• Building material manufacturers: Seek certification under China’s or California’s green building standards, which already reference passive radiative cooling materials, to gain a first-mover advantage ahead of wider regulatory adoption.
• Chemical and remediation firms: Evaluate on-site PFAS destruction units using supercritical water oxidation or electrochemical methods following Daikin’s successful large-scale UV test—potentially lower-cost than off-site incineration.
• Pharmaceutical CEOs: Prepare for the operational shift toward small-batch, agile mRNA manufacturing. Traditional mass-production facilities may need to be complemented by localized, rapid-turnaround lines for personalized vaccines.
• Logistics and manufacturing leaders: Launch pilot projects with AI firms like Nvidia to integrate world-model platforms that use real-time sensor data to optimize scheduling, loading, and routing—starting in non-safety-critical environments to mitigate bias and reliability risks.