34 emerging technologies that could change the future

Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

23 December 2024 | Steve Ranger

The European Innovation Council (EIC) has released its 2024 Tech Report, featuring a list of 34 emerging technologies across green tech, healthcare, materials and space.

The 34 technologies on the list were selected through a combination of EIC’s own data and reviews led by EIC programme managers to identify areas with significant potential for future advancement. The analysis included both proposals funded by EIC and others at technology readiness levels one to four, which covers fundamental research up to proof-of-concept.

The EIC is the EU’s flagship programme to support deep-tech from early-stage research to market scale-up, and has a budget of over €10 billion.

“With the pressing need for the world to transition to a more sustainable and resilient future, identifying and nurturing transformative concepts in their early stages has never been more critical,” said Jean-David Malo, director of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency.

The green tech section of the report showcases early “potentially transformative” innovations in agriculture and food, energy systems, climate and environmental technologies, and in the built environment.

“These domains are critical for Europe’s transition toward a sustainable, resilient future and reflect the importance of deep tech in addressing food security, energy transition, climate change mitigation, and other pressing global environmental challenges,” the report notes.

The green tech list highlights 12 areas of significant potential innovation, including:

  • Plant-based biomanufacturing and metabolic reprogramming
  • Tri-parental plant breeding for resilient farming
  • Biohybrid sensors for precision agriculture
  • High-temperature thermal energy storage
  • Enhanced energy density in sustainable fuels for aviation
  • Thermal management innovations from electric vehicles to data centres
  • Artificial CO2 photosynthesis and biomimetic solar energy conversion
  • Innovative urea production through electrosynthesis
  • Nanostructured materials for removal of persistent, mobile and potentially toxic compounds from water and soil
  • Dynamic aeraulics for optimisation of indoor air quality
  • Robotics to drive automation in architecture, engineering, and construction
  • Data-driven virtual worlds for built environment digital twins

For example, under green tech the report notes that the combination of plant-based biomanufacturing and metabolic reprogramming can help preserve crop yields, improve food security, and provide cost-effective, scalable, biosafe, and environmentally sustainable production of proteins, enzymes and biopharmaceuticals. Plant-based biohybrid sensors sees living organisms as sensing devices - a step away from traditional silicon-based or other non-biodegradable sensors.

The health section of the report focuses on innovations in health biotech and therapeutics along with medical devices and diagnostics; here the report picks out six areas of opportunity.

  • Metabolomics for discovering new disease mechanisms and targets
  • In-situ bioprinting for regeneration of internal tissues
  • Targeted protein degradation for novel drug development
  • 2Ultra-high-dose-rate FLASH radiotherapy
  • Digital biomarker-based health status prediction
  • 3D and 4D bioprinting for personalised wound treatment

The digital, industry and space list includes a number of innovations based around advanced and next-generation materials. They include:

  • Advanced manufacturing with single-atom photocatalysis techniques
  • Computational approaches for high-entropy materials
  • Low-impact and bio-based materials for sustainable electronics
  • Ultra-thin 2D and ultra-wide band gap materials for power-efficient electronics
  • Brain-inspired computing with neuromorphic chips
  • Emerging non-charge-based memories for specialised semiconductor applications
  • Innovative photonic integrated circuits
  • Quantum compilers for enhanced circuit optimisation
  • Fault-tolerant quantum computing
  • Miniaturisation and integration of quantum systems
  • AI powered by graph technologies
  • Hybrid approaches in agentic AI
  • Edge AI
  • Novel technology for very low Earth orbit satellites
  • LiDAR instruments for atmospheric and environmental monitoring
  • Flexible printed circuit boards for multi-level space sub-systems

Plant-based biohybrid sensors sees living organisms as sensing devices - a step away from traditional silicon-based or other non-biodegradable sensors. These sensors are environmentally friendly, non-toxic, biodegradable, and capable of reducing CO2 emissions the report said. 

More science and innovation news

Get the more science and innovation news every month in Chemistry & Industry magazine. You can subscribe to C&I here.
Show me news from
All themes
from
All categories
by
All years
search by