Since the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), reactions have been mixed, with both praise for the agreements and the progress made, and disappointment that necessary commitments to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees were not attained.

Infrastructure investing has become an increasingly popular destination for institutional capital in the past three years. That is partly due to the ability of the asset class to provide investors downside protection as market values continue to grow to high levels. It is also in part thanks to the macro trends of the energy and digital transitions, which are in the early stages of attracting capital to create decarbonized and more high-tech societies.

The COVID-19 pandemic laid many things bare. Among them, the ability of certain infrastructure assets to withstand an exogenous shock; and unfortunately, the fragility of others. Lower-risk core infrastructure assets, such as regulated utilities, were cemented as steadfast investment opportunities, while value-add and opportunistic assets, such as toll roads and airports, were thrown on shaky ground.

Inflation is a subject that, until recently, has gotten comparatively less interest from investors than others. That is largely because during the past 30 to 40 years, inflation has been on a downward and moderate trend and tracked around the expected 2 percent rate in the United States and at generally moderate levels globally.

Investors with mature private investment programs tend to have private exposure to major developed markets, such as the United States and Europe. While many of these investors have added Chinese exposure to their private programs over the last decade, interest has recently increased in less-trafficked Asian markets and more specialized European strategies. We expect this interest will continue to expand next year.

strongly at an all-time high. The infra300® index, which tracks a representative global sample of unlisted infrastructure equity investments worth more than $250 billion, breached the 9,000-level after rising 4.58 percent in fourth quarter (local currency returns).

The GLIO Index fell –3.4 percent in January after closing 2021 up 14.9 percent. Most sectors declined (in USD terms) in January, with the exception of energy transportation and storage, which added an impressive 8.5 percent. Electric (–2.9 percent), gas (–0.2 percent) and water utilities (–9.5 percent) all fell back in the first month of the year.