Report
The Two Energy Superpowers
China is setting the clean-power cost curve. America is setting the hydrocarbon supply curve.
Research theme
Cities and Infrastructure
Whether ambition can become physical capacity.
- 57.8%World urban populationShare living in urban areas
- 91.9%Electricity accessWorld population with access
- +1.4%Urban population growthWorld, annual
What we study
Housing
Zoning, construction costs, and supply.
Transport
Transit, ports, freight rail, and logistics.
Energy Systems
Generation, transmission, interconnection.
Building Capacity
Permitting, procurement, and labor supply.
What we believe
Infrastructure investment can raise a city's productive capacity.
Capital that raises a city's productivity, in housing near jobs, in transit and ports, in transmission and generation, compounds; capital that merely relocates activity does not. Data centers, factories, and housing now fail at the same point, the wait for a grid connection, a permit, or a zoning variance, and cities are where those waits are measured because they force land, labor, capital, and policy into one place.
Interconnection queues are the new zoning.
Gigawatts waiting for a grid connection determine where data centers and factories can be built at all.
Housing supply is productivity policy.
Cities that cannot add homes near jobs export their workers and import their inflation.
Time is the largest line item.
Permitting and connection delays add financing costs and postpone the returns from new capacity.
Featured Research
Latest Research
The Two Energy Superpowers
China is setting the clean-power cost curve. America is setting the hydrocarbon supply curve.
The Uninsurable Map
Climate risk reaches balance sheets through insurance before it arrives as a disaster.
Who Pays For The New Downtown?
Office conversion can create housing. Cities still need to know what their incentives buy, and who keeps the value they add.
The Crosscurrent
A war premium in energy and a capital boom in artificial intelligence are splitting the world economy into two circuits that one interest rate cannot govern.
The New York Premium
A city moving more, growing safer, and becoming more expensive at the same time.
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Key questions
Where does infrastructure compound productivity?
What keeps a city affordable and productive?
Who can still build at useful speed?
How do local constraints become national ones?