15 November 2026 8:20 am
Global Construction Demand Set to Rise Significantly

Global Construction Demand Set to Rise Significantly

Oct 20, 2026

Construction site with skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE.  by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels

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Global construction demand set to rise more than 70% by 2050

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Published by WORLD CEMENT – 20 October 2026

David Bizley David Bizley, Senior Editor

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Concrete has a critical role to play in delivering the resilient infrastructure society needs
Annual concrete demand from utilities, transport and social building sectors alone will reach 20 billion tonnes by 2050
Governments and policymakers need to establish supportive regulatory environment to drive the transition to low-carbon cement and concrete
Global construction activity is forecast to rise more than 70% by 2050, reaching US$16.6 trillion, driven by five megatrends: population growth and urbanisation; infrastructure and housing deficits; climate adaptation; sovereignty and strategic resilience; and high-tech infrastructure, according to a new report by Oxford Economics for the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA).

 

The report, titled “Concrete’s Enabling Role in Building a Sustainable and Resilient Future”, shows that the world already faces a significant infrastructure shortfall and this is set to increase. Construction activity almost doubled over the past 25 years and will continue to rise materially over the next 25 years, but delivery is failing to keep pace with demand. To address this will require more effective planning and procurement, committed and visible infrastructure project pipelines, deeper public-private collaboration, reliable access to essential materials such as cement and concrete, expanded construction capacity and long-term capital.

Low-carbon cement and concrete also have a vital role to play in enabling a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable future. Concrete underpins the infrastructure systems that drive economic and social outcomes, primarily due to its scalability, durability and local availability. Reflecting this, Oxford Economics estimates that annual concrete demand from utilities, transport and social building sectors alone will reach 20 billion tonnes by 2050. It also supports local economies, jobs and regional industrial capacity.

Thomas Guillot, Chief Executive of the GCCA, said: “The world faces a defining challenge: how to close the infrastructure and housing gaps and build the climate adaptation capability that we need. Concrete is already the foundation of modern life, and the industry is transforming rapidly to meet the increasing demand for sustainable construction solutions. Through innovation, investment and collaboration across the value chain, we are delivering lower-carbon cement and concrete that will help societies build the resilient and sustainable infrastructure needed for generations to come.

“However, to achieve the industrial-scale transformation that our world needs, we need governments to help stimulate demand for low-carbon materials, enable waste-derived fuels, promote circularity, and back the deployment of carbon capture technologies.”

Adrian Hart, author of the report at Oxford Economics, commented: “The world is entering an extraordinary period of infrastructure demand. Population growth, urbanisation, climate change, geopolitical uncertainty and new technologies are fundamentally reshaping what we need to build, where we build it and how we build it.

“Our research shows global construction activity will increase by more than 70% to US$16.6 trillion by 2050. Concrete will be central to meeting this challenge, not just in delivering the infrastructure and housing the world needs, but in supporting economic development, improving living standards and building more resilient communities. The challenge is to deliver more infrastructure and greater economic value, while also reducing emissions and improving sustainability.”

As the world’s most used construction material, concrete has an essential role to play in meeting future growth in demand for infrastructure and housing. The report also outlines several critical strategic considerations for governments, policymakers and industry, including:

  • Recognising the positive social and economic contribution of cement and concrete to local and regional communities
  • Harnessing innovation to improve productivity in concrete design, production and construction
  • Integrating resilience alongside sustainability and decarbonisation; including the industry’s role in delivering durable long-life assets that can withstand growing climate and physical pressures
  • Embedding resilience into insurance frameworks and infrastructure business cases
  • Developing data systems and reporting to support evidence-based infrastructure decisions
  • Managing rising costs while maintaining capacity to meet growing global demand for infrastructure, housing, and adaptation assets

It is critical that the cement and concrete industry is positioned as part of the solution to a more demanding global infrastructure challenge: enabling development, supporting resilience, strengthening communities, reducing emissions across the value chain and maintaining the physical systems on which economies depend.

You can read the report here https://gccassociation.org/concrete-enabling-sustainable-resilient-future/

 

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100% Renewables Is Doable: A Path Forward

100% Renewables Is Doable: A Path Forward

Oct 19, 2026

A vast array of solar panels in a solar farm, illustrating renewable energy and sustainability. by K via pexels

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100% renewables is doable, even in oil countries

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Oil- and gas-producing countries could strengthen their economies by accelerating domestic renewable energy deployment while maintaining fossil fuel exports, according to LUT University professor Christian Breyer. In an interview with pv magazine, he pointed to Norway as an example of how electrification can maximize the economic value of fossil fuel resources, while arguing that Russia’s political choices are preventing it from exploiting similar opportunities.

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Emiliano Bellini

By Emiliano Bellini

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Expanding renewable energy is not necessarily at odds with the economic interests of countries that depend heavily on oil and gas exports. On the contrary, replacing fossil fuels in domestic energy consumption with renewable electricity could allow these countries to increase export revenues while developing cleaner and more efficient energy systems at home.

These are the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at LUT University in Finland, who identified Norway as a particularly successful example of this approach. The country has combined substantial oil and gas production with extensive renewable electricity generation, widespread electric vehicle adoption, and increasing electrification of heating.

“The most clever oil and gas producing countries do so, see Norway,” Christian Breyer, professor for Solar Economy at Finland’s LUT University, told pv magazine, referring to investments in renewable energy and electrification.

He explained that reducing domestic fossil fuel consumption allows exporting countries to retain more of their oil and gas production for international markets. At the same time, electrification can improve the efficiency of domestic energy use and reduce emissions. “This allows them to export more fossil fuels whereas domestically they have a highly efficient and clean energy system,” he said, describing the strategy as economically advantageous.

However, Breyer argued that Norway remains an exception rather than the rule. Many fossil fuel exporters have yet to fully exploit the economic opportunities associated with their energy resources, particularly when it comes to developing renewable electricity generation and electrifying domestic demand.

The development of renewable energy in fossil fuel-exporting economies does not necessarily send contradictory signals to importing countries, according to Breyer. He noted that several Middle Eastern countries have begun investing in large-scale solar PV projects without undermining their oil and gas export businesses.

In his view, the continued demand for fossil fuels is largely independent of whether producing countries accelerate their own energy transitions. He compared fossil fuel dependence to other forms of addiction, arguing that consumers may continue purchasing products despite being aware of their long-term economic and environmental costs.

The situation in Russia presents a markedly different picture. Although the country has developed some solar and wind power capacity, renewable energy deployment has remained relatively limited compared with its resource potential. The expansion of the sector has also stalled since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Breyer suggested that Russia could, in principle, benefit from the same strategy pursued by Norway and increasingly considered by other fossil fuel-producing economies, including countries in the Middle East, the United States, and Canada.

Such a transition could reduce domestic fossil fuel consumption and create additional economic value from the country’s energy resources. Greater deployment of distributed renewable energy systems could also contribute to electricity supply diversification and, with appropriate grid design and storage, improve resilience against disruptions.

However, Breyer sees the main obstacles as political rather than technological or economic. He is skeptical that international sanctions or Russia’s increasing technological dependence on China would, by themselves, fundamentally change the country’s renewable energy prospects. Instead, he argued that progress would depend on policy decisions prioritizing long-term national economic interests.

“It would require clever policy making to the advantage of the country and its people,” he said.

Breyer was particularly critical of the economic and human consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, arguing that the destruction of economic value, loss of life, and damage to the country’s international reputation illustrate the consequences of political decisions that run counter to long-term national interests.

“Rational advantageous choice are often not considered if irrational ruling is prevailing,” he said.

For Breyer, the contrast between Norway and Russia illustrates a broader challenge facing fossil fuel-exporting countries. Their resource wealth provides an opportunity to finance renewable energy deployment, electrify domestic energy systems, and improve economic efficiency. Whether that opportunity is realized ultimately depends on political priorities and the willingness of governments to pursue long-term economic benefits.

Breyer and his colleagues presented the results of their research in the paper “Sustainable energy transition options for Russia,” published in Energy Reports.

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MENA Should See AI Data Centres for Sustainability Needs

MENA Should See AI Data Centres for Sustainability Needs

Oct 18, 2026

Above is an aerial view of Riyadh at night featuring the iconic Kingdom Centre Tower, by Abul Lais via Pexels

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MENA urged to classify AI data centres as critical loads

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) has called for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries to classify artificial intelligence (AI) data centres as “critical dynamic loads”. This recommendation aims to address rising electricity demand, water scarcity, and extreme heat threatening the region’s AI infrastructure ambitions.

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Highlights

  • WEF urges MENA to classify AI data centres as “critical dynamic loads”.
  • MENA’s electricity capacity needs 40 per cent increase by 2030, but only 15 per cent projected.
  • AI server racks consume 30-100 kW, compared to 3-10 kW for traditional web workloads.
  • Cooling accounts for over 40 per cent of data centre electricity use in MENA.

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Urban Planning Can Benefit from AI: Opportunities Ahead

Urban Planning Can Benefit from AI: Opportunities Ahead

Oct 17, 2026

A stunning aerial view of Monopoli, Italy, showcasing its grid-like urban layout during the day. by K via pexels

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Urban planning can benefit from AI but must not lose critical judgement and local specificity, warns UNECE

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UNECE SDGs

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Urban Planning Can Benefit from AI: Opportunities Ahead

Image credit: Thomas/stock.adobe.com

AI is going to permeate urban planning as it has in other forms of intellectual work, including the generation of urban design forms. Exploring its opportunities and challenges, a new paper by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) notes that AI can widen access to high-quality planning support, lower some entry costs, and help municipalities explore sustainability options with greater speed and clarity. At the same time, it can weaken professional capacity, standardize urban imagination, reproduce dominant cultural assumptions, and create new forms of dependency if adopted without institutional safeguards. 

As highlighted in intergovernmental discussions informed by the paper at UNECE’s Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management in Geneva this week, the most important issue is not whether AI will plan cities better than humans and make the planning process less costly and more efficient, but whether municipalities can use AI to enlarge their planning capacity without surrendering their critical judgment, cultural plurality, and institutional autonomy.

Like in many other areas, the paper notes that AI can advise, forecast and even out-predict human judgement on narrow questions, but it cannot bear responsibility for the consequences of a decision. AI does not experience the lived cost of a plan gone wrong, nor is it accountable to the residents affected by it, bringing risks for municipalities. 

For resource-constrained cities, AI may indeed democratize access to analytical and design capabilities; but without strong public governance, the same tools could centralize expertise elsewhere, narrow the range of legitimate urban futures, and make weaker municipalities more dependent rather than more capable. 

In the context of Urban Development, Housing and Land Management policy, the task is therefore to shape conditions under which AI becomes a public instrument for better planning rather than a shortcut that erodes the very capacities planning requires. That means treating innovation, capacity-building, pluralism, and procurement sovereignty as a single agenda rather than separate concerns.

The paper suggests a balanced framework to address these concerns, resting on five principles:

1. Support vs. substitution. AI should assist evidence synthesis, scenario exploration, design generation, communication, and administrative burden reduction, while elected officials and qualified planners retain responsibility for framing problems, weighing values, and making final decisions. 

2. Capacity vs. scale. Municipalities should invest in staff literacy, governance procedures, and evaluation capacity before large-scale deployment, particularly where departments are already under-resourced. 

3. Plural datasets & contextual evaluation. Tools should be tested against diverse urban contexts and assessed for their treatment of minority, informal, and nondominant planning forms, rather than evaluated only on generic technical performance. Architectural forms are a common, shared resource for humanity, and there should be public oversight over how the relevant models are trained.

 4. Open standards & exit options. Procurement should minimize lock-in through interoperability, portability, auditability, and clear rights over data and outputs. Multilateral organizations and development finance could fund open-source, public interest planning platforms, both to keep decision-relevant data, models, and infrastructure from concentrating in a few private hands beyond public scrutiny and to give low-resource municipalities access to these systems on public terms. 

5. Participation & accountability. Because AI is entering the normative core of planning, residents and affected communities should have meaningful routes to understand, question, and influence how these systems are used.

In the discussions, Norway shared practical applications of AI to support planning administration and public participation in local governments. One example focused on the use of AI to analyze large volumes of public consultation submissions by automatically classifying comments, identifying recurring themes, grouping similar inputs and generating summaries for planners. This helps reduce administrative burdens and enables planning authorities to process stakeholder feedback more efficiently while maintaining human oversight of final assessments. A second example highlighted the use of AI to analyze extensive planning archives accumulated over decades, making historical planning documents more searchable and accessible by extracting and structuring information from large collections of unstructured records.

The United Nations Innovation Technology Accelerator for Cities (UNITAC) presented an example of the use of AI and Earth observation technologies in Namibia to monitor urban growth and land-use change through the analysis and comparison of satellite imagery over time. These tools enable authorities to identify patterns of urban expansion, track the pace of informal urbanization and assess areas requiring infrastructure investment, thereby enhancing the timeliness and accuracy of spatial data, providing a stronger evidence base for urban planning and decision-making. At the same time, the it was stressed that technological solutions alone are insufficient. Effective application of AI requires the integration of local knowledge, community engagement, institutional capacity and government ownership, with local planners and communities playing a critical role in validating AI-generated outputs and ensuring that planning decisions reflect realities on the ground.

 

Read more on : Artificial Intelligence Housing and Land Management Sustainable Development

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Countries Most Vulnerable to Fossil Fuel Phaseout Insights

Countries Most Vulnerable to Fossil Fuel Phaseout Insights

Oct 16, 2026

Wide shot of an empty Conoil gas station in Nigeria, showcasing fuel pumps and canopy. by Bashir Hussaini Ahmed via Pexels

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Countries most vulnerable to fossil fuel phaseout generate just 6% of global output, climate analysis finds

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by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan

Phys.org – 15 October 2026

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Countries highly vulnerable to the phase-out of oil, gas and coal account for just 6% of global economic output, countries in Africa stand to benefit from their vast solar energy potential, and the economic interests of the U.S., Europe and China are affected by climate policy in surprisingly similar ways. A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published in Nature Sustainability now shows, for 169 countries around the world, how the fight against global heating affects national assets—and what geopolitical challenges and opportunities arise as a result.

The comprehensive dataset compiled by the research team shows how climate policy affects national assets in four ways: it reduces demand for fossil fuels, potentially leading to losses in oil, gas and coal revenues; it reduces climate-related damage to the national economy; it creates new economic opportunities for solar and wind energy development; and it increases the value of a country’s capacity to absorb and store CO₂ from the atmosphere—whether “naturally” via forests or “managed” through the stewardship of natural areas.

“Based on our data analysis, we can map how countries could gain or lose from different aspects of decarbonization by the end of this century, depending on the level of ambition in climate policy,” reports Guanna Pan, PIK researcher and lead author of the study. “We explore geopolitical tensions that may arise from some countries experiencing losses, but we also show how national interests can foster international cooperation, and how this can be further strengthened through targeted incentives.”

Five groups of countries with similar interests

To better understand potential economic gains and losses across countries, the research team has identified clusters—that is, groups of states in which climate policy generates similar economic opportunities and risks, and potentially shared interests. According to the study, 19 fossil fuel–dependent countries would potentially oppose ambitious measures.

By contrast, 51 countries in the Global South have a strong interest in a rapid climate transition as they would otherwise face particularly severe climate damage. Likewise, 13 countries “with high potential for renewable energy”—the majority of which are in Africa—and 17 countries “with high carbon sequestration capacity” would also naturally favor swift action in the fight against global heating.

However, these four clusters do not carry all that much political weight: the group of oil-, gas- and coal-dependent countries accounts for only 6% of global economic output, and the three groups of countries that especially stand to benefit from climate protection account for only 13% combined.

The remaining 81% of economic output is accounted for by the fifth cluster—the 69 “economies with moderate impacts”—which includes the EU, China and the U.S. In this group of countries, the economic benefits of climate policy are, in absolute terms, considerable in many cases, particularly due to avoided climate damage. Calculated as a percentage, however, they are not as large as in the three clusters of strong winners.

Climate policy safeguards long-term prosperity

In summary, the research team notes that humanity as a whole must take a collective interest in climate action, but that the differences in gains and losses between countries need to be fully understood. The study provides the necessary guidance and concludes with the recommendation that, where interests diverge, climate cooperation should be strengthened through “package deals.” This means that concessions on climate protection for hesitant countries should be linked with promises regarding trade or research and development; it could also mean simply offsetting losses through financial transfers.

“In view of the current resurgence of opposition to a committed climate policy, it is important to recognize that climate policy does not merely devalue certain assets—namely those of fossil fuel suppliers,” emphasizes Ottmar Edenhofer, PIK director and one of the co-authors. “Our study also demonstrates quite precisely how new assets are simultaneously being built up. Overall, climate policy revalues the capital stock of economies in a new and sustainable way, thereby safeguarding long-term prosperity.”