Understanding the transformative potential of solar thermal technology for urban sustainability

Today, more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas, marking a significant change from the predominantly rural life of past centuries. Urbanization is most pronounced in better-developed regions, where more than 80% of inhabitants live in urban areas, while in many less-developed countries, the majority of the population still lives in rural areas (Ritchie et al., 2024). Projections indicate that by 2050, 68% of the global population will live in urban areas, adding about 2.5 billion people to urban centers, with nearly 90% of this growth concentrated in Asia and Africa. India, China and Nigeria are expected to account for 35% of this increase, highlighting the critical need for sustainable urban planning and infrastructure development to manage this unprecedented growth (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019).