Crumbling Infrastructure Needs Sustainable Investment

We’ve been hearing a lot about our infrastructure over the past few years: How much of it is falling apart, how much worse it is in the U.S. than elsewhere, and how much we have to gain from improving it. Sustainable investment might just be the best way to do this.

President Obama has been vocal about the need to improve the country’s bridges, highways, power grids, water systems and public transportation, dedicating stimulus funds to the cause and returning to the issue again and again in his public remarks.

迈克尔下坡agrees on this point too. In fact, he is so convinced that the demands on infrastructure – both in the US and around the world – must translate into across-the-board improvements and expansions that he co-founded a firm in 2007 that invests almost exclusively in that space. That firm, Capital Innovations, now oversees more than $2 billion in assets. It concentrates on investments in timber, agriculture and infrastructure, though Underhill says the investment team devotes roughly 90 percent of its time to infrastructure.

它不仅仅是基础设施投资，迷人的弱者的利益 - 更具体地说，是可持续的基础设施投资。投资者需要一种方法来削弱可能的基础设施投资的宇宙，他对那些有能力忍受的项目和公司，他认为他可以通过将可持续性过滤器作为投资过程的一部分来帮助他们这样做。他只允许他公司的投资组合那些公开交易和私营公司以及项目，展示环境领域的最佳实践，气候变化，社会问题，健康和安全，治理和透明度。

“I didn’t see anyone else offering investors this type of unique platform to invest in hard assets, which is why I wanted to start it,” says Underhill, who in 2010 was a co-founder of the Infrastructure Steering Committee, an arm of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment initiative that aims to shape policy, publish research, and report to the PRI about infrastructure investing. In October, he presented at the UN PRI conference in San Francisco as the authority on sustainable infrastructure.

Underhill says that, as he sees it, all that’s required is a run-through of figures on population growth to come to the conclusion that stresses on infrastructure systems demand swift attention – and investment. A recently released Eurosif white paper on infrastructure reports that the world population is expected to shoot from 6.8 billion in 2008 to 9.2 billion by 2050, with nearly all the growth happening in urban areas.

“When you look at the numbers, inevitably you get to the amount of energy that’s needed in China or India,” says Underhill. “Or the amount of water in India, or transport needed in Brazil.” He hastens to add that such growth also means that the right infrastructure projects must be invested in – which is where the sustainability angle comes in. “Energy investing in China is very attractive, but investing in natural gas rather than new coal-fired power plants is a much more sustainable solution.”

Underhill says that all of Capital Innovations’ investments go through an internal sustainability filter. In general, the investment committee focuses on top-down fundamentals and bottom-up local market intelligence to identify the opportunities it wants to pursue. The firm seeks out companies that the team believes utilize incentive structures and capital allocation processes that encourage employees and executives to do what’s best for the company long-term.

“这是一个解决这些治理原则的公司的问题，以便他们可以控制赔偿指标等事情，并为人们提供正确的事物，为人们提供正确的事物，”欠坡说。“换句话说，他们已经到位了什么样的资本分配计划？不仅支付员工，还要支付预算。当他们的股价下降时，他们该怎么办？他们试图在经济上工程师吗？他们拿出贷款吗？或者他们踏上了盘子，购买了一些自己的公司库存，以便长期尝试投资公司吗？“

Examples of companies and projects that have made it through this filter, and with whom Capital Innovations currently invests, include SBA Communications, an independent owner and operator of wireless communications towers in the US; Empresa Nacional de Electricidad (Chile), the nation’s largest electric utility company; and Sithe Global Power, a gas-fired power plant in Toronto.

据欠渠道，他与之合作的机构投资者（资本创新主要管理机构投亚博赞助欧冠资者的定制单独账目）最常被为基础设施投资，因为其力量作为通货膨胀对冲，而且由于它向投资组合提供了多样化。

But zoom out from the investors’ perspective and the investment theme may offer even more significant selling points. According to the Eurosif report mentioned above, more than $2 trillion will be required annually to finance world infrastructure by 2030 – a disturbingly large number, especially since government spending in the area has been decreasing for the past 20 years. Private investment will be key as ballooning population growth and changing demographics continue to apply increasing pressure on the world’s infrastructure.