Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024

The World Economic Forum's 2024 report highlights ten emerging technologies, including AI for scientific discovery, carbon-capturing microbes, and elastocalorics, emphasizing their roles in enhancing global connectivity, mitigating climate change, and advancing medical treatments.

• AI is transforming scientific research by enabling the analysis of vast datasets and the mining of literature to accelerate discoveries in disease prevention, green technologies, and life sciences.
• Privacy-enhancing technologies, specifically synthetic data and homomorphic encryption, are being developed to allow the secure sharing of sensitive datasets for global research without compromising individual privacy or data sovereignty.
• Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) use metamaterials and smart algorithms to manipulate electromagnetic waves, which can increase energy efficiency and data rates in wireless networks, particularly for 6G systems.
• High altitude platform stations (HAPS), operating at approximately 20 kilometres above Earth, can provide internet access to remote regions and bridge the digital divide for over 2.6 billion people who lacked service as of 2023.
• Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) combines data collection and transmission into a single system, reducing device congestion and enabling environment-aware networks for smart grids and urban planning.
• Immersive technologies and digital twins are being applied to the construction industry to reduce waste and carbon emissions, which currently account for 40% of global CO2 emissions.
• Elastocaloric heat pumps use materials that emit heat under mechanical stress and cool upon relaxation, offering a more energy-efficient cooling alternative that avoids the use of environmentally damaging refrigerant gases.
• Engineered microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, are being developed to capture CO2 from the air or industrial exhaust and convert it into high-value products like biofuels, fertilizers, and animal feed.
• Alternative livestock feeds derived from insects, algae, and food waste aim to reduce the environmental impact of traditional soy and maize production, which drives deforestation and biodiversity loss.
• Genomics and CRISPR-Cas9 technology are enabling xenotransplantation, as evidenced by the first successful transplantation of a genetically edited pig kidney into a living human in March 2024.

APA

World Economic Forum (2024). Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2024.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024. 2024. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024 |date=June 2024 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2024top, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2024}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2024}, month = jun, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }