Pandemic-accelerated trends are new investor opportunities

It is easy to forget that trends such as digitalisation and decarbonisation were on the collective agenda before the pandemic. But the health crisis has certainly accelerated such changes.

“We saw a lot more demand for working remotely, and that’s obviously going to pose some uncertainties in terms of how many people will work from home, how many commuters we’re going to see as well as overall business travel,” said Tania Tsoneva, senior director, global infrastructure research, CBRE Investment Management.

“But digitalisation and decarbonisation are opportunities as well for transportation infrastructure and we’re going to see permanent cost savings because of digital technologies,” she told Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts.

Tsoneva said that creation of sustainable transport is going to be an area where we will actually build back better and sustainable transport investment will flow.

She added that sustainable transport will be at the forefront of decarbonisation efforts because emissions in the sector have risen over time and some of the sub-sectors are hard to decarbonise.

But the electric vehicle rollout and electrification of rail will mean exponential growth of opportunities with the International Energy Agency forecasting that more than 80% of vehicles will be electric by 2050.”

Tsoneva explained that there will be opportunities in electric vehicle infrastructure and charging. But she added: “In the medium to long term we’re definitely going to see a lot more emphasis and use of biofuels as well as green hydrogen.”

Click on the video to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.