Sketched, sustainability in 2024
Before taking a short holiday break, this week we revisit key trends from the past year across technology, the consumer, the economy, sustainability, and financials.
For many years, policies seeking to prevent obesity were focused on personal responsibility and behavioral changes, rather than addressing the dominance of pre-packaged and convenient, yet unhealthy products in the commercial food system. Faced with rising healthcare costs, governments are increasingly taxing and regulating producers of unhealthy foods. In the UK, obesity already costs the National Health Service GBP 6 billion annually, a figure that is set to reach more than GBP 9.5 billion by 2050.
Source: Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 2023
Women’s health encompasses both sex-specific conditions and conditions affecting women differently or disproportionately, yet it is too often oversimplified to include sexual and reproductive health only. The distinction matters, as despite having longer life expectancies than men, women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health. A new report published by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey Health Institute seeks to address the root causes of the women’s health gap. They estimate that closing that gap could boost the global economy by at least USD 1 trillion annually by 2040.
Green = increase in productivity, blue = fewer health conditions, pink = fewer early death
Source: McKinsey, January 2024.
Improving public transport is one of the key challenges to decarbonize mobility. The good news is that the relatively small volumes of city buses have made them easier to electrify. As a consequence, in more than half of European countries, over half of bus sales in 2023 were already fully battery electric. Furthermore, the adoption of zero-emission vehicles has been well ahead of EU targets, and all new EU city buses could be zero-emission by the end of the decade.
Source: Transport & Environment / Chatrou CME Solutions, June 2024.
Unlike the spinning blades of a wind farm, or the vast array of solar panels seen from afar, the humble transformer does not get the attention it deserves. Boxed away in containers, electrical transformers are largely hidden from view. Yet without transformers, the electrical grid would not operate. Large pieces of electrical equipment built from steel, transformers ‘step-up’ or ‘step-down’ power and allow it to be transported across high voltage transmission lines. Wood Mackenzie reported that transformer lead times have been increasing – from around 50 weeks in 2021 to 2.5 years in 2024.
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), November 2023
Both air and liquid cooling are being used by data centers to cool servers. Cooling optimizes server performance and prevents servers from overheating. But changes in server cooling are needed considering how AI servers have much higher thermal density. Technology consultancy Omdia forecasts that worldwide data center cooling sales will double from USD 8 billion in 2024 to USD 16 billion in 2028. The share of liquid cooling is forecast to increase from 17% in 2024 to 33% in 2028.
Source: Omdia, October 2024.