The World Infrastructure Forum (WIF) inaugurated its international meeting this Wednesday in Madrid with a first day in which voices from the business, financial, academic and institutional worlds agreed that climate resilience, capital mobilization and technological innovation must be placed at the core of infrastructure planning.
In the session dedicated to digital infrastructure, the experts analyzed the challenges posed by the growth of data centers in terms of energy availability, water resource use and territorial planning.
In this context, the managing director and group partner of Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Amir Ganaba, highlighted that the main challenge in Europe is carrying out projects on time and called for predictable regulatory frameworks and adequate access to the electricity grid.
On this point, the principal research scientist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Deepjyoti Deka, called for transparency in water and energy consumption, while the CEO of ACS Digital y Energía, Vicente Maraña, said that these facilities should be considered critical infrastructure and not mere real estate operations.
The president of Vinci Highways, Belén Marcos, defended the contribution of private capital in the modernization of roads and maintained that sustainability strengthens business profitability, after indicating that her entity has increased its performance by more than 70% and reduced its direct emissions by 25% since 2018.
In the panel focused on market dynamics, the director of investments in Energy, Metals and Minerals of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Ignacio de Calonje, explained that the geopolitical and macroeconomic situation has conditioned the advance of decarbonization to direct economic viability.
For his part, the Sustainability Director of Acciona, José Luis Blasco, explained that electrifying internal processes has yielded returns in periods of less than four years, while the Sustainability Director of Ferrovial, Valentín Alfaya, praised the introduction of asphalt resistant to extreme temperatures to reduce maintenance costs.
In the area of financing, the head of the Blue Dot Network Secretariat at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Edwin Lau, has stressed that accrediting climate adaptation parameters reduces financing costs in projects.
Likewise, the head of Sustainability Business Transformation at BBVA, Elvira Calvo, has advocated incorporating resilience into public procurement specifications and using development banking to attract private investment.
Along these lines, the managing director of BCG, Jonathan Jameson, and the chief climate economist at the World Bank, Stéphane Hallegatte, have urged public resources to support nature-based solutions and the structural benefits that are not directly borne by private investors.
Regarding supply chains, the corporate affairs manager for Western Europe at Cemex, Antonio Cases, and the researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute Guillaume Arditti have warned about pressure on the demand for critical materials such as copper and lithium, opting for concrete recycling and long-term public-private agreements.
The day concluded with a debate in which the head of investments at Allianz Global Investors, Marta Pérez, the senior vice president of Aecom, Rodrigo Mascaró, and the strategy director of Acciona, Alejandro Jiménez, agreed on the urgency of attracting technical talent to energy networks and perfecting risk assessment models to guarantee the future viability of assets.