One projection has it that megaprojects (in excess of $1 billion) will constitute 24 percent (up from 8 percent) of global GDP by 2027, by building global infrastructure, space industries, ocean industries, bridge-tunnel projects, extreme physics challenges (terraforming, mass energy storage) or controlling extreme weather (Frey, 2017). Going forward, it is not inconceivable that many future giga-projects (in excess of $10 billion) will deal with upgrading infrastructure to meet the challenges of climate change, or indeed will be climate adaptation projects. One of the largest ongoing projects, China’s South-North Water Transfer Scheme was projected to cost $62B with planned completion in 2050 (WaterTechnologyNet, 2003). It has already cost more than that (Fessenden, 2014). That project is not without its critics and has not solved China’s water problems (Akhtar, 2022). It has, however, displaced millions of people, and caused massive land use disputes. Infrastructure is politics. Gigaprojects typically also cause significant loss of life at some stage.
Reducing Risks By Going Modular
To fix many of these cost and risk issues, it would be necessary to make the projects more modular (Flyvbjerg, 2021). I would add that any gigaproject should really be discussed in the United Nations and should not merely be a national concern. There are more than 1,400 semiconductor chip fabs worldwide (SEMI, 2022). Yet, the world has a shortage of advanced microchips. The challenge is that high end semiconductor chip fabs cost between $10 billion and $20 billion (Farshchi, 2022). The world has two world-class ones, one in Taiwan (TSMC) and one in South Korea (Samsung). Three more are being built in the US. Intel
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