New Study: 350 trillion available for change

Download the report here [1 meg]

In February 2007 I read an article in Strategy + Business that said that “The world’s urban infrastructure needs a $40 trillion makeover". I thought the article was interesting and wondered if a similar assessment could be done for investment in services that today are provided in a high carbon way and tomorrow must be provided in a low carbon way. I wanted to see if it was possible to assess the size of the investment flows that must be re-directed and also what new services that would win on this. The idea was to move from the studies that focus on incremental improvements in existing systems to understand the room for new ways of providing services (smart buildings that are net producers, teleworkiing instead of cars, etc)

I contacted Virin Doshi at Booz, Allen and Hamilton (that Booz and company was called then), and we had a great meeting in London a few month later. He put me in contact with Dan Gabaldon. We drafted a project plan and worked on and off on the report for many months.

Three years later the report is finally done. Dan left Booz and I left WWF, but now the report is out…. Maybe not as exciting as I originally hoped it could be, but a first step towards a service and market opportunity approach for the global urbanization investments. So while the available sum is now official (350 trillion dollars) the assessment is still based on incremental uptake of new solutions.

If there is anyone who is aware of an institution that can to calculations that captures system change please let me know.