Save The Date - Private Infrastructure and Sustainability: Does Private Equity Promote Firms’ Sustainable Performance?

Infrastructure is by nature a sector subject to sustainability scrutiny. The United Nations estimates 
that infrastructure generates about 79% of total global GHG emissions and is expected to represent 
about 90% of the $82 billion global climate adaptation costs to 2050. Furthermore, infrastructure is 
increasingly subject to disruptions due to climate change and related economic losses. 
So it comes as no surprise that in the last few years, sustainable fundraising has constantly grown, 
reaching a peak of $1.1 trillion in 2022. Behind this trend, there are a number of factors explaining the 
growing importance of sustainable infrastructure investments, among others escalating crackdowns 
from regulators, the need to avoid possible litigation from environmental campaigners as well as 
reputational damage, evolving stakeholder expectations and growing investor scrutiny.
Against this backdrop, the integration of sustainable investment principles into investment decisions 
has recently ignited a policy debate about the role of finance in addressing global challenges and 
balancing financial performance with broader societal impacts.
Academic research is not conclusive on whether sustainable investing is compatible with the fiduciary 
duty of financial advisors, fund managers, and institutional investors to act in the best interests of 
their clients or beneficiaries.
This annual event, the third of the new five-year partnership under the Antin IP Associate 
Professorship in Infrastructure Finance, presents the preliminary results of the research on these key 
issues and focuses on how private investors in infrastructure contribute to more sustainable corporate 
performance of their portfolio investments. At this event, we will also present the findings from the 
fourth issue of the Observatory on Infrastructure Pricing, which centers on the related topic of climate 
change and impact on the returns of infrastructure as an asset class