Social Good Engineering Magazine: GineersNow Social Innovation GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 001 | Page 24

What does
the Year 2050
have in store
for Engineers ?
D
o you ever wonder
what the world
will look like by
the year 2050? Is
the technology
too advanced for
us? Will it make
the world a better
place? Or will the
world look just
like those dystopian films we see in the
big screen? Will there be more robots
than people?

Technology is advancing at
a rapid pace and affecting all industries
and sectors in one way or the other. It is
likely that technology will have brought
to reality things by 2050 that only exist
in fiction now. It will also have certainly
made a major impact in the sectors of
energy production and engineering. In
fact, researches have already uncovered
certain remarkable possibilities will come
into being by 2050.

For example, engineers at
the Stanford University have already
developed a plan that can transform
the United States into a nation that uses
only renewable sources of energy by the
year 2050. The plan details the actions
that need to be taken by each of the 50
states of the country in order to achieve
the transformation. There are aggressive
changes required in the energy consump-
tion patterns and also the infrastructure.
Nonetheless, the plan is feasible from an
economic and technical standpoint.

Is it the end of the coal indus-
try then? Clean energy for all? What will
the green activists complain about then?

Similar plans are afoot in
London, UK. A plan has been proposed
which can bring about major changes in
the infrastructure so as to make the city
sustainable for over 11 million people,
the projected population of London in
2050. One of the major concerns has
been water shortage, others being energy,
waste, transport and resource manage-
ment.

Some of the largest engineer-
ing groups in the world have stated that
we already have technologies which
are capable of reducing the greenhouse
gases in the planet by as much as 85%
by the year 2050. Another prediction
being made for the year 2050 is that the
world will have a total population of
9.5 billion. In order to feed such a large
population, researchers are suggesting
the use of genetic engineering and high
performance computing to increase the
photosynthetic efficiency of the plants.
This method can boost food production
and crop yields.

With all these plans for cleaner
energy and sustainability, do you think
engineers and scientists can make them
happen by the year 2050? Only time can
tell.
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