Six industry experts explore the technology trends that will shape the future of primary industries, from mining to energy generation, and what’s on the minds of CIOs.
Chris Gorton - SVP and Managing Director EMEA, Syniti
Let me share a word of caution. Yes, new technologies have the potential to make a big difference in some of these critical industries. But all too often, tech trends fail to deliver on their promise.
Now sometimes that will be because the promise was too ambitious, or the rest of the organisation simply wasn’t ready for such a major change.
Many times, however, that failure to deliver comes from something much more fundamental. No matter how advanced or innovative your tech, if you use poor quality data your results will be poor, too.
But although data quality is so crucial to the success of a transformation or implementing a new technology, it’s often an afterthought. A task that gets pushed back until the only option is to lift and shift out-of-date, inaccurate data.
Because under the pressure of delivering a project on time, it’s easy to lose sight of why that project is happening in the first place. The go-live becomes the focus and the business outcomes are forgotten.
My advice? Adopt a Data First approach. Focus on your data early, so that you can spot issues before they become problems that could sink your project. Here are some steps to take:
Get to know your data: Understand which data your new technology needs to produce the best results, along with who owns it and who works with it. Talk to the people who work with it now, find out what happens when the data is inaccurate or out-of-date and how that impacts your business outcomes.
Set meaningful goals: Once you understand your data, it’s much easier to set accuracy goals. For example, some data must be completely accurate for the best results, while other data might not need to be updated quite so often. When you set your goals, think carefully about how they align with overall business outcomes and agree review points so that you can adjust your approach if needed. Forgetting to consider how your transformation and your data support the business risks your project failing to have the impact it promised. .
Get your governance right: Without rules and guidance in place, it’s easy for errors to slip in. All the work your teams have put in to clean up the data is wasted, and a few months down the line it’ll have to be done all over again. Introduce and enforce robust guidance to make sure your data stays accurate and usable. And make sure this governance links back to your business objectives: if you fail to connect your data to your business outcomes, your new technology is simply an expensive way to generate unpredictable and unwanted results.
In the rush to introduce new technologies, it can be tempting to focus solely on the tools and systems themselves. But without high-quality data, even the most advanced solutions will fall short. By prioritising your data, you’ll be laying a solid foundation for more accurate insights, smoother implementations and better long-term business outcomes.
Jack Kennedy - Climate/Deeptech Investor, Founders Factory
Mining is one the world’s oldest industries, with evidence of metal being extracted over 10,000 years ago. While the process has evolved to become far more efficient, the focus remains unchanged: how do we extract more metal with less energy and less impact?
The next wave of innovation is already underway, and mining is set to play a critical role in driving the global transition to a net-zero world. From widely known metals like lithium (powering EV batteries) to copper (an excellent conductor) to lesser-known neodymium (used in magnets for electric motors), the demand for critical metals is expected to grow 2x to 5x by 2030.
Much like the original industrial revolution, a convergence of new technologies is enabling us to meet this demand. From automation to AI, it’s an exciting time to invest in this sector.
Here are a few key trends we see emerging in the mining industry:
AI for mineral exploration: Mining isn’t immune to the hype around AI, but in this case, it has a big role to play in the industry. Finding new mineral deposits can be more art than science, but AI can help to drive greater efficiency. Advanced predictive models can locate deposits down to a few hundred metres, enabling precision mining that reduces both landscape disruption and energy consumption.
Industrial electrification: Refining metals into their end products requires extremely high temperatures. Traditionally, fossil fuels have filled this role, but new technologies that can finally meet these temperatures are emerging as a replacement. From thermal storage to industrial heat pumps, companies are now retrofitting these carbon-intensive processes with more sustainable, low-emission alternatives.
Synthetic biology to reduce waste: As much as 70% of copper can be trapped in low-grade ores, making traditional extraction methods like smelting inefficient. Advances in synthetic biology are providing a solution. Startups like Endolith are engineering microbes to extract copper from these ores, offering a faster, more effective, and less harmful solution than conventional methods.
Duncan Bain - Senior Energy Advisor, SAS
The energy sector is undergoing a transformative shift, driven by the accelerating adoption of renewable sources and the increasing decentralisation of energy generation. In 2025, more businesses, industries, and even households will be generating their own electricity, primarily through solar, wind, and other renewables.
However, with this shift comes the critical challenge: maintaining grid stability. To meet this challenge, the industry will require more accurate and sophisticated energy forecasting than traditional methods can provide.
Conventional load forecasting approaches, which have historically relied on past consumption patterns, are becoming insufficient in this new era. The variability of wind and solar generation, combined with emerging energy consumption trends like electric vehicles (EVs) and smart appliances, introduces significant unpredictability into the grid. To address these challenges, the industry is increasingly turning to multimodal, AI-powered forecasting systems. These advanced models analyse real-time data across multiple variables – such as weather patterns, energy production, and consumption behaviour – to better predict supply and demand.
Cloud-based analytics allows energy providers to respond rapidly to fluctuations. For instance, they can quickly adapt to increased demand during hot summer days or reduced renewable generation during cloudy or calm periods. This responsiveness is essential to keeping the grid stable and avoiding outages. The ability to accurately predict consumption patterns is becoming more critical, particularly as consumers are offered incentives to adjust their energy use through demand-response programmes. These behavioural shifts make understanding human motivations and responses to dynamic pricing essential for grid management.
These tools will allow energy companies to integrate and analyse real-time data from both renewable generation sources and consumers. This will help optimise the use of renewable energy, store excess power during low demand, and reduce reliance on fossil fuels during periods of low renewable generation. For example, solar photovoltaic systems, which are expected to grow rapidly, can stress the grid due to the intermittent nature of solar energy – especially when sunlight is low. Advanced forecasting will help balance these fluctuations, enabling providers to store excess energy during the day and redistribute it during the night or cloudy periods.
The transition to renewable energy generation will also depend heavily on the development of smarter grid management solutions. Strategic energy management, powered by AI and advanced forecasting, will be crucial to ensuring that the supply of energy which is generated matches demand in real time. This will minimise both grid stress and wasted energy, ultimately advancing the widespread adoption of renewables. By 2025, the energy industry will be more reliant than ever on these advanced forecasting tools to support the transition to a low-carbon, resilient energy generation system. With improved grid management and better integration of renewable energy, the path to a sustainable, reliable energy future, which meets the evolving demands of the modern world, will be within reach.
Andy Hassall, Associate Director, and Chris Burke, Executive Director, Morson Projects
Digitalisation and automation are shaping the future of the energy industry to optimise assets, enabling more agile management and enhancing resilience.
The use of smart grids to control and manage electricity distribution more efficiently are improving reliability and flexibility, with sensors, meters, and other devices collecting data and adjusting electricity flow in real-time. Meanwhile, remote monitoring and control of energy generation assets is reducing the need for on-site personnel, improving overall safety and efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is also enhancing efficiency and optimising resources, with IoT devices increasingly being used to monitor equipment performance, manage energy usage, and optimise energy production. The sector is also benefitting from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning too, with AI and machine learning algorithms being deployed to optimise operations, predict equipment failures, and improve overall efficiency. These technologies can analyse vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends that can help operators make better decisions and the more we use them, the more adept they become in helping operators achieve optimisation goals.
Digitalisation and automation are also driving the development of energy storage solutions, enabling better integration of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind by storing excess power for later use when demand is high.
While the use of digital technologies and automation is unlocking huge potential for optimisation, sustainability and improved resilience, the skills gap in the renewables sector remains a significant challenge. As demand for renewables grows, there is a pressing need for skilled professionals to design, build, and maintain the infrastructure needed.
One of the main reasons we’re facing such skills shortage is the rapid pace of technological advancement. Many professionals with a background in traditional energy generation may not have the necessary skills or knowledge to work with renewables technologies. Add to this the lack of education and training programs specifically focusing on renewable energy, and its easy to see why we do not have a workforce with the necessary skills to meet the growing demand for renewable energy.
At Morson Group, our engineering businesses – Morson Projects, Waldeck and Emantics – are putting a clear and urgent emphasis on developing skills for the energy generation sector, with a multi-faceted approach that includes a thriving early careers development programme (ECDP), along with cross-skilling and upskilling of experienced engineers.
Addressing the skills gaps requires a strategic focus to meeting the needs of the industry right now, and thinking about the longer term, too. That’s why we’re collaborating with educational institutions to promote careers in engineering and attract young talent to the field and help them really understand the breadth of opportunities in the energy sector. Our ECDP offers hands-on experience and mentorship to young engineers, enabling them to take an active role in projects while developing their competencies so that we’re leveraging and developing their potential at the same time from day one.
It’s also vital that we attract more diverse talent into the sector, so we’re partnering with industry organisations to support initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion in engineering, and we’ve also created the Morson STEM Foundation to support young people from all backgrounds to explore and pursue pathways into engineering.
It will take time for that future talent to come through. In the meantime, the sector needs to protect and develop the talent we already have. At Morson, we’re doing that by offering training and development opportunities for existing staff to upskill and stay competitive in the industry, as well as offering flexible work arrangements and career advancement opportunities to retain skilled employees.
We also need to tap into global talent to help bridge the UK skills gap in renewable energy. Countries around the world have been investing in renewable energy projects and initiatives, supported by skilled professionals to support these efforts. By recruiting talented individuals from different parts of the world, we can benefit from a diverse range of perspectives and renewables expertise and use knowledge sharing across borders to enhance the energy sector globally and maximise the potential of existing and emerging technologies.
Reijo Pold - Founder, Value.Space
The next few years will be characterised by a burst in the application of satellite technologies across industries globally, with mining among them. The sector plays a crucial role in supporting efforts to build green economies worldwide but faces headwinds regarding maintaining vital infrastructure that guarantees business continuity without costly and potentially catastrophic failures.
The reality is that 2024 has already seen at least five significant incidents involving mining infrastructure, including tailings storage facility (TSF) failures. Two reasons suggest that TSF failures will continue to occur, and the consequences can be disastrous for businesses, the environment, and communities.
Existing TSFs are being stretched to receive increasing amounts of tailings while the facilities are aging. On the other hand, changing climate patterns are now testing the limits of these structures, which may not have originally been designed to withstand the increasingly severe weather events. This creates a lot of compounding risk. Without a significant leap in monitoring the infrastructure, World Mine Tailings Failures, a non-profit organization tracking tailings facility failures worldwide, forecasts that TSF failures will continue in the years ahead, with an expected 13 catastrophic TSF failures between 2025 and 2029 at a cumulative cost of $32.5 billion.
We are fortunate that satellite technologies, enabling remote structural assessment and monitoring of TSFs, have matured and become cost-effective at this critical time. Satellite surveys can measure millimetre-scale movements on TSFs, allowing the detection of material deformations that may indicate existing or developing structural risks. The data is updated every two weeks, with historical timelines reaching back up to a decade.
These assessments can be conducted globally, continuously, and simultaneously for thousands of sites. This means that engineers can pinpoint areas that need investigation and focus their attention and resources where they matter most, saving time and capital while ensuring the facility’s continuous performance.
Indeed, recent Gartner research forecasts that by 2028, 80% of major managed land assets globally will be under active satellite monitoring, compared with just 10% in 2022. This change will not only benefit the mining industry but will also help to reduce risks to communities and the environment worldwide.
