Consider the arc of change unleashed by just one technological device.

In 2007 a new gadget called the iPhone burst onto the market. In the 18 years since, the smart phone has reinvented the world. Almost 7 billion people hold in hand a device that instantly sends messages across the globe (roughly 23 billion of them a day), navigates journeys, pays bills, records videos, takes photos, provides entertainment, trolls the internet, serves as a means of distraction and disruption, pings the important and frivolous news of the day, and so captures attention that has raised concerns about its impacts on interpersonal skills, societal cohesion, and the mental health of young people. The phone call, eclipsed by so many other possibilities, can feel quaint.

The smart phone offers an apt emblem of the power of technology to transform in profound ways. As the world confronts the climate crisis, it is little wonder that it is leaning ever harder onto technology, what futurist Alvin Toffler called that “great, growling engine of change”.

The breakneck pace of technological innovations contrasts vividly with sluggish political progress and backsliding. The gap between political pledges and progress is wide and growing. Greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak. Global temperatures continue to rise to record levels. 

We live in a time of proliferating technologies that are “indistinguishable from magic”, as the futurist, explorer and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke put it. The world has the know-how to edit human genes, devise a World Wide Web of information, and create artificial intelligence. Yet, nearly a century and a half after the invention of the lightbulb, humanity has yet to find the wherewithal to bring more than a billion people out of utter dark. Now the world seeks the technological ingenuity to fix the unanticipated fallout from the wonder technology of another age that discovered how to harness the power from burning fossil fuels.

And so the question surfaces: Can the world “technovate” its way out of the intertwined climate, environment and sustainable development crises?

Technologies “indistinguishable from magic”

According to the  International Energy Agency, almost half of the carbon dioxide emissions reductions to achieve net-zero in 2050 will depend on technologies currently in prototype or development phases. Rising to the challenge:

New battery technologies are coming on to cram more energy into ever smaller, lighter spaces, resist degrading, and reduce costs. Solar power innovations are pursuing ways to put panels on flexible surfaces and windows, to generate power at night and during rain, and place solar panels in outer space. Wind energy research is devising ways to generate more power with bigger blades, taller towers, technologies that tap both very high and very low wind speeds, and steering mechanisms that help avoid reducing windflows to downstream turbines. 

Yet the technological vanguard, with its whiff of science fiction, also raises new and frightening concerns, even among the people working on them (see solar geoengineering to deflect the sun’s rays). Indeed, in 2024, when computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on machine learning, he greeted the news saying soberly, “I am worried that the overall consequences of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”

Going beyond the “move fast and break things” mantra

Engineering answers to climate change requires a powerful combination: a vision of what could be; a technology that makes the vision feasible; an approach that makes the technology economically viable; and an environment, itself a potent elixir of economic incentive and political will, that makes it possible to scale things up – and at speed.

Which technologies will find the mix to take off this year and in the coming years?  Which will prove elusive, rendered the next cold fusion?

The world is waiting to know, for example:

• Will green hydrogen – the linchpin for hard-to-abate manufacturing emissions – overcome growing concerns about its costs? Can the technology surmount storage and distribution costs?
• Will carbon storage and removal techniques – such as direct air capture and other measures to capture, use and store carbon – prove their worth? Can they surmount prevailing impediments to their affordability?
• Will long-term power storage solve the conundrum of intermittency of renewable power? Can innovators solve cost impediments to enhance the viability of technologies such as pumped-storage hydropower, grid-scale batteries, and compressed air and gravity systems?

 “Smarter than humans”

And then there are the questions posed by artificial intelligence, poised to become the defining technology of our age.

Yesterday, it seems, AI was a distant notion. Today it is an everyday work tool. And tomorrow? AI is said to have the power to accelerate the already breakneck pace of innovation for anything and everything: to limit climate change, pioneer new medical treatments, tailor education for each student’s level, and boost worker productivity and national GDPs. Jack Clark, co-founder the AI safety and research company, Anthropic, and former Policy Director of OpenAI, summed it up by saying: “Smarter-than-humans technology could deliver ‘a century of scientific progress in 10 years.’”

AI also has the power to accelerate the reshaping of societies in profound ways by widening existing digital divides and inequalities, both within and between countries. Like the industrial revolutions that have preceded it, the Age of AI will be a disruptive force, almost certainly increasing the productivity of some humans and replacing others – even those in high-skill roles long considered immune to automation.

Daron Acemoglu, one of the trio of Nobel Prize winners in economics in 2024, argues that steps must be taken to redirect how AI is being used and developed so that it does not empower corporations and governments at the expense of workers and citizens. Left unregulated on its current trajectory, AI may spark innovation, but with enormous social, economic and political costs. On his list: “damaging competition, consumer privacy and consumer choice; excessively automating work, fueling inequality, inefficiently pushing down wages, and failing to improve worker productivity; and damaging political discourse, democracy’s most fundamental lifeblood.”

Indeed, AI’s power requires power. The related electricity demand is projected to soar – with one “worst-case scenario” in the scientific journal Joule suggesting that Google’s AI alone could consume as much electricity as Ireland. Indeed, when major players, such as Google, Amazon and OpenAI all announced their intention to use nuclear power for these needs, the decisions were interpreted an influential signal, the leading edge of a “nuclear renaissance”.

One measure of AI’s potential to wield power comes from the geopolitical stage. This single technology is the sole focus of a series of myriad global summits and initiatives that aim to make it safe and inclusive.

Which future and in whose hands?

But then technology itself has always translated into power. New technologies are a tool of countries that seek for their aims: to wield geopolitical influence, gain economic advantage, display military might, control the narrative and their own citizens. Moreover, with agendas largely set by a handful of Big Tech firms, one may ask whether the priority will be the public good or the corporate bottom line.

How will these technological trends play out in 2025 and beyond?

The opportunities and risks are many. Will advances make it possible for poorer countries to “leapfrog” old, polluting technologies? Or will wealthier people and countries move ahead, leaving the poor even further behind?

Will new technologies be used to foster greater well-being and bridge development gaps? Or will new technologies merely amplify old problems in new ways, creating new weapons of war and cyberwarefare, and tools for disinformation and censorship campaigns?

Will the mining of critical minerals – the “new oil” for the green transition – break with the poor environmental record of fossil fuel extraction practices? Or will it lead to “green colonialism”?

In an interview in 1949, Alan Turing discussed his work on a computing device, a “mechanical mind” that could perform a calculation of such length and intricacy had once been considered impossible. Turing, who would come be regarded as the father of computer science, uttered a phrase now printed on the Bank of England’s £50, polymer-made notes. The words have a timeless quality. “This,” he said, “is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is going to be.”

Listen to the podcast episode

Will innovations in technology during 2025 help the world “technovate” its way out of the intertwined climate, environment and sustainable development crises? Or will new technologies be used in ways that exacerbate already growing social, economic and political divides?

In this episode, our three expert guests share their hopes, concerns and insights about key matters surfacing at the fast-advancing technological frontier. Featuring: Kelly Levin, Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change for the Bezos Earth Fund, SEI Senior Research Fellow Somya Joshi and SEI Senior Scientist Miquel Munoz Cabré.

This episode is part of SEI’s Currents in sustainability series, a podcast by Stockholm Environment Institute, where we examine the forces shaping our global path towards a sustainable future.

Drawing on insights across SEI’s HQ and seven research centres, we explore our key foresights on issues underpinning transformative change.

Listen and subscribe to the series on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Amazon Music and Audible.