Infrastructure Supporting Economic Growth

Electricity consumption is often viewed simply as a measure of population or industrial activity. Increasingly, it reflects something much larger. As economies become more digital, automated, and electrified, electricity infrastructure is emerging as a foundational requirement for growth, industrial competitiveness, and operational scalability.     As a result, energy infrastructure is increasingly shaping where growth can occur. Economic competitiveness is becoming increasingly tied to the ability to generate, distribute, and sustain reliable energy capacity at scale. In many industries, energy availability is no longer just an operational consideration. It is becoming a limiting factor on expansion itself. That shift is already influencing where data centers are built, where manufacturing capacity expands, and where long-term infrastructure investment is concentrating.     That distinction matters. AI infrastructure, cloud computing, advanced manufacturing, semiconductor production, electrified transportation, and data-intensive operations are all accelerating electricity demand at a pace many energy systems are struggling to scale alongside. The question is no longer simply which economies consume the most electricity. It is which are best positioned to support the next generation of industrial, digital, and AI-driven growth. 

We spent decades designing cities to get rid of water as fast as possible. Now we're seeing the consequences: flooding, heat, water shortages, and stressed ecosystems. The interesting shift is that many communities are starting to view water differently, not as something to move away, but as an asset to work with. Rain gardens, permeable pavement, green roofs, wetlands, and urban trees can help reduce flooding, recharge groundwater, cool neighborhoods, and improve quality of life. The most resilient cities may not be the ones that fight nature the hardest, they may be the ones that learn how to work with it. Water isn't waste. It's infrastructure. #Stormwater #GreenInfrastructure #WaterResources #UrbanPlanning #Sustainability #20MinRule Image source: Biotonomy

𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫. A water problem can begin as low rainfall. A dry season may first appear as a rainfall deficit. But very quickly, it can become a water-supply issue, an agricultural issue, an energy issue, a public health issue, a fiscal issue, and sometimes a governance issue. That is why water security is never only about pipes, reservoirs, wells, treatment plants, or rainfall totals. It is about how water moves through economies, ecosystems, infrastructure, institutions, and households. When water systems are stressed, the impacts spread quickly. A utility disruption affects schools, hospitals, businesses, and households. Drought affects food production, energy generation, livestock, tourism, and public health. Flooding affects roads, drainage, housing, wastewater systems, water quality, and local economies. Groundwater decline affects agriculture, domestic supply, ecosystems, land stability, and future investment. Pollution affects treatment costs, fisheries, recreation, public health, and trust in institutions. This is why water resilience has to be planned across sectors, not managed as a narrow technical issue. The real question is not only:   How much water is available? It is also:   Who depends on it?   Which services are exposed?   Which institutions are responsible?   What data are decision-makers using?   What actions is triggered when conditions change?   What investments are delayed because the risk is not visible enough? For climate-exposed and resource-limited contexts, this matters even more. The same agencies and technical teams may be managing water supply, drainage, agriculture, land use, public health, disaster risk, infrastructure, and ecosystem protection with limited staff and limited room for error. In that context, water security depends on more than infrastructure. It depends on: • Monitoring systems that decision-makers trust • Clear allocation and service priorities • Maintenance budgets • Risk-informed land-use planning • Drought and flood triggers • Source protection • Utility performance • Public communication • Institutions that can act before stress becomes crisis Water is a sector. But water risk is systemic. That is why strong water planning has to connect hydrology, infrastructure, finance, governance, ecosystems, and service continuity. This is also where advisory support can help: translating water risk into decision-useful data, investment priorities, institutional roles, and implementation pathways. Where have you seen water problems spill over first: food, energy, health, infrastructure, ecosystems, or public finance? #WaterSecurity  #ClimateResilience  #WaterManagement #EnvironmentalGovernance  #Infrastructure  #DisasterRiskReduction #InternationalDevelopment

10 Truths Nobody Tells You About Working in Water (With data, not just conviction.) After 10+ years working across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Armenia, and Jordan, here’s what the data actually shows. 1. Everyone wants transformation, until it takes time. 30–50% of water supply projects fail within 2–5 years (60% in Sub-Saharan Africa). Why? Not bad pipes but weak institutions and no plan for maintenance (UNDP, Well Aware) 2. “Capacity building” is a euphemism for deeper problems. Over 80% of countries report not having enough trained WASH professionals. But no training fixes low salaries, interference, or political fear (UN Water). 3. Most utility problems aren’t technical: they’re institutional. Globally, 30–35% of water is lost as non-revenue water. Often due to poor incentives, not engineering flaws. (SIWI, Kamstrup) 4. Donors say they want reform but on their schedule. 43% of WASH experts cite donor timelines as a barrier to sustainability. Reform takes 10 years. Most projects last 3. (IssueLab, UN Water) 5. The people closest to the work often have the least say. Frontline utility staff are rarely consulted in planning sessions. We call it "local ownership" but rarely practice it. (EDF, UN Water) 6. It takes years to align ministries that barely talk. 65% of countries have cross-sector water plans; only 34% implement them effectively. Inter-ministerial Excel sheets can feel like a breakthrough. (OECD) 7. Some reports gather dust before they’re printed. Yet over time, even the shelved ones shape decisions. Strategies ignored in 2020 may unlock change in 2025. (Ngene et al., 2021) 8. Infrastructure always wins the budget argument. Only 14% of water aid goes to policy & governance: 29% goes to big infrastructure. Governance is still seen as “too intangible,” even when pipes fail without it. (Aid Atlas) 9. There’s no clean slate, all systems are shaped by memory. Reform means negotiating with legacy decisions, not redesigning from scratch. Change fatigue is real, and it lives in the back office. (Water NSW) 10. And yet, some days, the whole thing shifts. A quantum leap. In Phnom Penh, NRW fell from 72% to 8%; revenue grew ten-fold. One honest team, one reform, one moment of alignment (EIB). We don’t work with clean diagrams. We work with history, tension, and fragile trust. But when governance works, it holds. Which of these hit closest to home for you? Repost to help your network,. Follow Yulia Titova for more water insights.

I took this picture in Carlisle in 2015: yet again an electricity sub-station was underwater. For years critical infrastructure of this kind was meant to be better protected. But time after time we keep seeing how increasingly intense rainfall exposes the inadequacy of Britain's flood protection. A superb new report by Public First explores a new angle: the impact of flooding on the economy. Immediate damage costs around £2.4 billion a year. But that's not the end of it. When workplaces are flooded, it takes an average of ten days for staff to be able to get back to work. That adds another £290 million. And then there are long term losses caused by disruption and an undermining of business confidence. Investment decisions get delayed. The report reckons that this can depress the economy to the tune of £6.1 billion over the following decade. Turn this around and there's an overwhelming case to invest now to reduce pain later. Every pound spent on flood defence saves £8, with the government saving £3. But as Emma Howard Boyd CBE points out in a foreword, the current government's commitment to flood protection runs out next year. This needs attention now. Emma describes the anger and betrayal that people feel when flooding strikes. And we know that the risks of flooding will get worse. There is plenty that can be done to minimise the impacts. In addition to national investment, which is a critical starting point, there's the task of raising local awareness of the many solutions that exist. That's where the indomitable campaigner Mary Long-Dhonau OBE comes in, travelling to flood-risk areas in her FloodPod vehicle. She says "people are often broken by the experience" of flooding, that it's increasingly ruining lives and that "it’s time we prioritised sorting this out.” Well said. I'll post a link to the report in the comments.

Storm Chandra hit the UK on 27 January. Within hours, the M48 Severn Bridge closed. Over 130 flood warnings were activated across England. Commuters, hauliers and supply chains were rerouted or stopped entirely on ground already saturated by two named storms in the same month. This wasn't a freak event. It was a preview. Yesterday's Financial Times analysis has mapped the roads that keep the UK economy moving, and what it found should concern every business leader, investor and policymaker in the country. Almost one in three of the main roads into Greater London is at risk from river flooding, four in ten in Birmingham, and more than half in Greater Manchester. The M6. The M62. The M5. Already closing during extreme rainfall. When they go down, the consequences don't stay local: → Workers can't get to work → Supply chains stall → Businesses lose revenue → Emergency repair costs escalate. And it's not just roads. Around 1,000 electricity substations are located in flood-risk zones, exposing homes, businesses, hospitals and transport networks to simultaneous disruption. Here's what makes this structural, not cyclical: Extreme winter rainfall in the UK has increased fivefold since 2010. The climate these assets were built for no longer exists. Warmer air holds more moisture, resulting in heavier downpours. Degraded landscapes mean faster runoff and less time to respond. The Environment Agency now estimates that nearly four in ten English roads are in areas at risk from flooding. With climate projections applied, that rises to nearly half by mid-century. This is now a national economic resilience problem hiding in plain sight. Natural flood management, restored catchments, smarter infrastructure. These aren't green add-ons. They're the economic infrastructure of the next decade. Every pound spent on flood protection avoids an estimated £5 in damages. The question for government and long-term investors isn't whether we can afford to act. The UK economy runs on infrastructure built for a climate that no longer exists. FT article linked below: The English roads at risk of being underwater https://lnkd.in/exv7mDhq

The shift from "smart" to "autonomous" infrastructure isn't optional – it's essential for the electrification of everything. When electricity grids started accepting renewable power from volatile sources in the 1990s, smart systems with dashboards and sensors were the answer. They’ve been a great success, enabling energy savings and managing decentralized power. But today’s challenges demand more than human decision-making supported by data – they require systems that act autonomously in milliseconds. The distinction is like GPS versus an autopilot. GPS tells you where to go; the autopilot flies the plane. As fluctuations in supply and demand bring existing grids to their limits, depending on dashboards is like flying through turbulence by hand. Autonomous buildings juggle multiple power sources minute-by-minute. Autonomous grids detect faults and reroute power in milliseconds using digital twins. The business case is compelling: smart buildings command higher valuations and higher rent, while saving on energy costs. Autonomous buildings can bring even more benefits. For grid operators, digitalized networks can double existing asset capacity and cut transformer upgrade costs significantly. The technology exists – AI, digital twins, and advanced semiconductors. What we need now is scale. Without autonomy, electrification risks stalling. With it, we get resilience, profitability and accelerated clean energy transition. #AutonomousInfrastructure #SmartGrids #DigitalTransformation #AI #Electrification

Across the continent, from large scale investments in Nigeria to emerging markets in Central Africa, the infrastructure conversation still too often begins with deficit and risk. New IFC - International Finance Corporation research shows that this narrative is incomplete. Looking across decades of infrastructure equity investments in emerging economies, the analysis surfaces a simple but powerful insight. Well prepared and well governed infrastructure does more than deliver services. It anchors productivity, enables firms to grow, and sustains jobs at scale. The lesson is not that infrastructure is risk free. It is that risk behaves differently when projects are prepared early, structured clearly, and backed by credible institutions. When uncertainty narrows, long term capital remains patient. And when capital stays, projects endure, firms expand, and jobs follow. For Africa’s young and growing workforce, this is a strategic imperative. Mobilizing private capital for infrastructure is not only about closing financing gaps. It is about building the foundations for durable employment and shared prosperity. I invite you to explore the full IFC research on the financial returns of infrastructure equity and what it means for mobilizing private capital for jobs and growth in Africa. Read here: https://lnkd.in/eM2Mqy6K #IFCAfrica #Infrastructure #PrivateCapital #Jobs #Nigeria #CentralAfrica #DevelopmentFinance Ethiopis Tafara , Sarvesh Suri, Dan Croft, Fatoumata Sissoko-Sy IFC Africa

Every ₹1 spent on highway construction adds ₹3.21 to India’s GDP. That’s not an assumption. That’s based on numbers. And when you think about it, it makes complete sense. Better roads mean trucks spend less time stuck on the way. Fuel costs come down. Goods reach markets faster. Farmers can sell their produce more easily. Small businesses can reach customers beyond their local areas. Even daily travel becomes smoother. At the same time, infrastructure creates work at multiple levels. From engineers and construction workers to drivers, suppliers, warehouse teams, and local vendors. One project generates direct jobs on the ground and indirect jobs across many supporting industries. All of this quietly improves income, efficiency, and opportunity. From logistics and trade to employment and consumption, a single road supports thousands of livelihoods. What feels important is understanding that infrastructure is not just about construction. It’s about enabling movement. Economies don’t grow only through ideas or discussions. They grow when people and goods can move faster, more cheaply, and more safely. That’s why infrastructure often goes unnoticed, even though it plays such a powerful role behind the scenes.