The Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025

Where lithium-ion batteries are solid structures that need their own space, structural battery composites (SBCs) are a weight-bearing material – like carbon fibre or epoxy resin – that can also store electrical energy. This technology could make electric vehicles lighter and more efficient and could also be applied to aircraft, as potential applications include fuselages.

SBCs are yet to achieve widespread adoption for a number of reasons, but if safety regulations and standards can be developed to support widespread use, they could have a significant impact environmentally and economically.

What if you could generate power from the difference in saltiness of two water sources? That’s what osmotic power systems promise with the potential to generate clean, renewable, low-impact electricity.

Although first proposed in 1975, recent advances in materials and system designs have brought the idea closer to reality. There are two types of osmotic power systems: Pressure Retarded Osmosis, which uses a semipermeable membrane to enable water to move from low to high salinity; and Reverse Electrodialysis which uses ion-exchange membranes to move positive and negative charges between the two sides of the membrane, creating a charge in the process.

Bernard Meyerson, CIO Emeritus at IBM, put it more simply in a recent Radio Davos podcast: “Naturally, the Earth tries to reach equilibrium, which is a fancy way of saying, if you’ve got a lot of excess water on one side and a lot of excess salt water on the other side, the water will migrate over to the side with the salt to dilute it, until we get equal amounts on both sides – equal salinity. In doing so, it generates pressure because water is moving across the membrane.”

“A renewed wave of technological innovation of nuclear energy is now underway,” write the authors explaining this technology. After a period of relative inactivity in terms of the construction of new nuclear power plants, production is ramping up.

From alternative cooling fuels to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), there are a number of technological advances aiming to lower costs, simplify designs and boost power generation from nuclear in countries around the world.

The ultimate goal is to achieve nuclear fusion – fusing hydrogen atoms to release huge amounts of energy – something the international ITER project in France has been working on for years. If achieved, it will provide “a transformative solution to our global energy challenges”.

Scientists hope that by turning helpful bacteria into tiny medicine factories they can treat disease from inside the body. The impact? Cheaper and more effective long-term care.

This is done by introducing genetic code, which contains instructions for producing therapeutics, into living probiotic systems, such as microbes, cells and fungi. The systems could also be programmed with switches to control production on demand.

Bypassing the need for producing drugs in a laboratory means a 70% reduction in production costs. What’s more, the approach provides a stable and prolonged supply of treatment for patients who would normally need a regular injection – as in the case of diabetes treatment.

“Imagine if you had engineered living therapeutics, these little bio-factories inside of you, and they could supply that glucose as needed by the body,” says Mariette DiChristina, a dean at Boston University, in the Radio Davos podcast. “It would be more like what your body would do naturally if you didn’t have that illness.”

A recently developed class of drugs, that were originally made to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity – technically known as Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists or GLP-1 RAs – are showing promise in the treatment of brain-related diseases, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

GLP-1 RAs have been shown to reduce inflammation in the brain and encourage the removal of toxic proteins. Left untreated, both are related to the development of the above conditions. More than 55 million people globally live with dementia, so there are significant social, as well as economic benefits, for such drugs. For instance, as DiChristina says: “Think about the caregivers and the time they need to spend [on care] that maybe they could also be spending on other kinds of life-affirming work.”

These devices detect and quantify specific biochemical parameters – consider for example disease markers or chemical changes in water to detect pollution – autonomously and continuously. With wireless communication and self-sustaining power sources, they enable real-time, ongoing monitoring.

The technology has already seen some success with specific applications, most notably a wearable glucose monitor for diabetes management. However, thanks to advances across a number of fields, the technology is now starting to address other targets and applications, such as menopause care and food safety.