Engineers should bridge gap with financiers to unlock investment

The updated report from the Institution of Civil Engineers, Financing Low-Carbon Infrastructure, suggests that civil engineers can bridge the gap for investors who lack the technical insight to interpret evidence and decide whether a project is worthy of investment.

It comes as delegates at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt debate how to turn the money pledged by pension funds, finance institutions and governments in Glasgow in 2021 into shovel ready projects. Global spending on physical assets to achieve net zero is expected to average $9.2tn per year between now and 2050.

Despite an appetite in the private sector to invest in green infrastructure, the report found that many projects fail to attract funding, partly due to the high initial construction costs and the long timelines associated with seeing value from infrastructure projects. The report also notes anxiety among investors around the risks and the quantifiable carbon reductions of some projects, especially those that use untested technologies.