I
believe that (barring some major tragedy like a nuclear war caused by
some crazy dictator— event that I consider highly unlikely) humanity,
in the next several decades
progressively, will improve its quality of life, thanks to 5
Megatrends that are partially in existence since several years and are
accelerating.
By
the end of this century all human beings will have the conditions and the
opportunity to enjoy a much better quality of life on our Planet. (By the way, my generation is too old to see much of
the progresses, my children’s generation will see quite a lot, and their
children’s generation will see the full changes.)
The 5
MEGATRENDS are the following:
1. A decline in the world total fertility rate
2. An acceleration in productivity thanks to Artificial Intelligence
and Ultra-Wide Band technologies.
3.
The fast replacement of fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources of energy.
4.
The rapid growth of the zero emission vehicles (mostly electric) and
Self-Driving Vehicles (SDV), for the mobility of people and goods
5. The new Humanoid Robots
to complement or replace humans in several tasks.
1. Total Fertility
Rate (the number of children generated by each women in her fertility
age)
- The world total fertility
rate (TFR) has declined rapidly in the last several decades: it was 4.98
in 1960 and world population was 3 billion people; today the TFR Is 2.44
and the world population is 7.6 billion people.
- There are some projections
for the future. My believe is that the decline will be faster than most
estimates.
- I believe that the world
TFR will reach the replacement level of 2 by 2050 with a world population of
9.5 billion. The population will continue to grow very slowly and will peak at
10 billion by 2070 than will start to decline and by 2100 will be back to the
present level of ~ 7.5 billion.
- The decline will continue
in the next century until the world population reaches ~ 5.0 billion people to
stabilise at this level, with appropriate policies of family
planning.
- The largest part of the
population growth from now to 2070 will occur in Africa.
2.
The acceleration of productivity increase.
- According to a study from
McKinsey, the acceleration in the productivity increase, due to the new technologies,
will eliminate by 2030 some 800 million jobs globally (mostly in
developed countries) with only some 70 million jobs created by the new
demands in society.
- This would create huge
problems of unemployment in developed countries, aggravated by the immigration
from the poorest countries.
- The only way to solve this
problem should be (and I believe it will be) a progressive and
continued reduction in the yearly working hours - in the next 2 decades
this decline will occur mostly in the developed countries and then will progressively
extend to all others.
3. The fast replacement of fossil fuels.
- The most important
Renewable Energy (RE) sources include Hydro, Wind, Solar (thermal,
thermal dynamic, photovoltaic, biomass).
- The
total installed capacity of RE in the world at the end of
2017 was 1236 GW, up more than 2.5 times from the 437 GW of 2010.
- With the rapid decline in
the cost of renewables and the cost of storage, I believe that by 2030 the
total installed capacity of RE will reach 10 TW.
- The present installed
capacity of RE is more than adeguate to provide the energy needs of 360 M
people. (1 TOE - ton of oil equivalent - is equivalent to 5347 KWh, and
the average energy consumption in the world is 2 TOE per person. Therefore, 2
M TOE =~ 10 TWh can largely supply the energy needs of 1 M People. The present
installed capacity of RE is greater than 1.2 TW which generates in a
year - assuming an average of 3000 hours a year in the mix of RE - ~ 3600
TWh, therefore largely sufficient to satisfy all the energy needs of 360 M
people).
- If, as I believe, the
installed RE capacity in 2030 will reach 10 TW (i.e. ~ 8.5 times the
present capacity) it will be adequate to serve the energy needs of ~ 3 B
people.
- By 2040 all the world
energy needs will be supplied by RE (there
will not be in the world any more use of carbon or oil. Some gas consumption
will remain, but the CO2 emissions will be compensated by tree plantations
and carbon sequestration).
4.
The rapid growth of zero emission and SDV (self.
- Today zero-emission
vehicles are still a niche market, while the SDV are still in experimental
phase. Today there are only about 5M e-vehicles in the world. But the shipments are growing rapidly and will
accelerate with technological improvements.
- There
are 3 major factors that are limiting the spread of zero-emission vehicles:
1. The cost of the cars
because of the low volumes and the cost of batteries. However the
costs of both cars and batteries are declining rapidly thanks to the
increase in the volume of shipments, and all automakers are making huge
investments to increase the production capacity.
2. The autonomy of the
battery. Today the autonomy is of only about 200 Km. However, new
drastic developments in the technology of batteries will bring
the autonomy to about 500 Km by 2025 and to 800 Km by
2030.
3. The time of recharging and
the network of recharging points.
- This issue is being
addressed and a vast network of recharging points are being built
around the world. There will be slow recharging points where recharging
will take a few hours in the residential home garage, points
of fast recharging of 15 to 20 minutes in areas such as supermarket
and company carparks, and very fast recharging points of less
than 5 minutes in major roads and highways.
- The progressive improvement
of those 3 limiting factors will accelerate the adoption of zero- emission
vehicles (that I believe will be mostly electric but also hydrogen powered cars
can be part of the mix).
- By 2030, I believe that
more than 50% of all vehicles shipped will be zero-emission and by
2040 all new vehicles shipped will be zero emission.
- The SDV will start volume
shipments in the second half of next decade, initially as means to assist the
driver that will still be in the car, and later totally SDV.
- By the year 2030 all
zero-emission vehicles will also be SDV.
5.
The new humanoid robots.
- It
is expected that the first humanoid robots will be on the market by 2025
and will be very expensive. For example a domestic humanoid robot will
be programmed for tasks like cleaning the house, cooking, gardening...
- The
first robots will appear in developed countries were there is
generally a population decline and therefore more need - and many rich people
can afford them.
- Robots
will grow in number and in capability and will look more humanoid.
- By
2040 there will be millions of robots in homes, farms and
agriculture and in manufacturing sites.
- They will relieve humans of the most repetitive and
heavy tasks, leaving humans more free time and creative duties.
