Driving the future of clean energy: how transport infrastructure can power a green, inclusive economy

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act heralds a new era in the way we live, work, and impact the environment. Delivering the Act has required careful political balancing—prioritizing job creation and economic renewal while accelerating the nation’s clean-energy agenda.

The task ahead is substantial, and we must acknowledge infrastructure’s outsized influence on climate outcomes, given that it accounts for around 79 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. If delivered effectively, investment in greener transport infrastructure has almost unbounded potential to help drive a modern, inclusive, net-zero economy.

Amid calls to “electrify America,” it’s encouraging to see the Act identify green transport as a priority and back it with significant funding that spans charging infrastructure, fleet vehicles, and public transit. $66bn has been set aside for passenger and freight rail (a well-known priority of President Biden), with a further $7.5bn for clean school buses and ferries and $7.5bn for electric vehicle (EV) charging.

The key now is ensuring programs are commercially viable so the sector can fully capitalize on this window of opportunity—and that value frameworks are in place to deliver maximum social benefit.

Coordination for change

While the federal government’s financial and policy support is welcome, it must be paired with a clear, durable vision for the sector and an end-to-end approach to delivery. Transport infrastructure presents a unique challenge that needs to be addressed strategically, systematically, and in an integrated way—requiring coordinated action from everyone involved, from developers to long-term asset owners and operators.

Through our own engagement with multinational organizations with major freight footprints, it’s clear there is strong commitment to driving carbon efficiencies across the value chain—supported by significant investment in EV fleets and alternative delivery models.

While bold private-sector progress on decarbonization should be recognized in its own right, there remains an untapped opportunity for deeper public-private collaboration to bring enabling infrastructure forward at scale.

Federal funding will need to be complemented by stronger private investment. But for that investment to happen, investors need early visibility into a clear, credible pipeline of work.

A major part of the solution will be energy storage, which is set to play a key role in green transport programs. Storage can support the growing expansion of renewable generation—ranging from offshore wind to hydrogen and bioenergy—not least following the federal government’s record-breaking $4.37bn sale of six offshore wind leases off New York and New Jersey.

“All segments of the sector need to cooperate and talk to each other, understanding how green energy capacity will come on stream alongside EV networks.”

Transformational programs also require talented people from a diverse workforce that reflects communities across the United States. President Biden has signaled a commitment to ensuring that the new jobs created by a clean, modern energy economy are well-paid and unionised.

The Act extends prevailing wage protections to all energy infrastructure provisions, including construction of EV charging stations on highways and in communities.

Now the challenge for organizations is to proactively broaden their talent pipelines, build the skills needed for tomorrow, and deliver lasting socioeconomic benefits to local communities in the process.

No community left behind

This is where inclusion and social value come into sharper focus. With opportunity comes real disruption—particularly for legacy communities and manufacturing bases, especially in the automotive sector in major design and build hubs such as Detroit.

The path to net zero must be understood as a transition, and it must avoid sidelining the skills and people who power today’s transport industries. America’s coal miners and energy workers, for example, have powered the country for more than a century.

The Act invests in places impacted by shifting energy markets, including directing billions of dollars for advanced energy manufacturing facilities and clean energy demonstration projects to communities where coal mines or power plants have shut down (closures that include two of the United States’ largest coal-fired plants in Georgia).

The legislation also invests $21bn in environmental remediation, creating good-paying union jobs in hard-hit energy communities—cleaning up Superfund and brownfield sites, reclaiming abandoned mines, and capping orphaned gas wells.

“The administration is embracing an ambitious tech-first solution with the launch of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool in February this year, to map and identify the communities most in need of clean energy and infrastructure investment.”

However, there is growing recognition that the tool could expand the factors that feed into it. Because no indicators of race are directly incorporated into the algorithm, commentators suggest this may limit its ability to fully identify and support underserved communities positioned to benefit most from investment.

It’s vital that continued attention is paid to supporting people across the broadest range of disadvantage factors.

Driving value through the supply chain

For this Act to succeed—and to deliver a step change in the U.S. decarbonization agenda—the private and public sectors must take a collaborative approach to innovation and rigorously assess sustainability credentials at every stage of the investment journey.

The delivery supply chain should generate opportunity and prosperity for underrepresented business communities. This is where the work of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) can once again play a pivotal role—helping ensure skills requirements are matched with delivery capability and measurable social benefit.

The MBDA has demonstrated potential through its memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy on energy savings performance contracts (ESPC). The Department has mandated that all large-company winners of the ESPC competition must establish mentor/protégé partnerships, with two partnerships for each winner.

“That translates into 30 major programmes and will go a long way to onboarding advanced tech minority businesses that have renewable energy and climate friendly solutions.”

The Federal Procurement Center has a mandate to bring in strategic alliance partners with the capability to deliver. Technology can lead here as well. For example, one partner company we are aware of has a proprietary search-algorithm database that can identify minority business enterprises in a region or state operating in a particular sector.

By carrying out this analysis, companies can be identified and supported quickly—then brought to the MBDA’s attention to help secure financing through the infrastructure bill.

The gauntlet has been thrown down for the infrastructure sector to shape the future of green transport while delivering lasting social benefit to communities. Now the sector needs the vision—and the program, people, and procurement strategies—to turn these ambitions into reality.