Summit Recap

Sustainable infrastructure: The best ideas from the 2022 GII Summit

Tokyo, October 19–21, 2022

The 9th GII Summit will take place in Dubai on February 27–29, 2024

Industry leaders gathered in Tokyo for the eighth Global Infrastructure Initiative Summit. Here are some of the best ideas across the energy transition, digital and analytics, workforce development, and more.

The pathway to sustainable infrastructure is neither straight nor short. But its successful navigation to reach net-zero emissions is the unrivaled business challenge of a generation of leaders.

Since 2012, the Global Infrastructure Initiative Summit has convened many of the world’s most senior leaders to connect and collaborate in pursuit of smart, resilient, and future-ready infrastructure. The eighth GII Summit took place in Tokyo, October 19–21, 2022, and focused on creating the pathway to sustainable infrastructure.

And indeed, the top of the CEO agenda is now unavoidably—and rightfully—dominated by sustainability. Meaningful strides in decarbonization, the energy transition, social equity, resilience, digital transformation, and talent acquisition will require bold commitments, matched by action and collaboration across the value chain.

Best ideas

Decarbonization and the energy transition

Drive energy outcomes at an ecosystem level: combine carrots (incentives), sticks (regulation, taxes, carbon pricing) and tambourines (praising and supporting successes) to move the needle
Break ground now—the next 5–10 years are crucial, and going from brown to green is just as important as developing green infrastructure
Embed carbon and resilience into the time, quality, and cost equation
Establish a capital stack across the public and private sector, trading reduced risk for the private sector up front for outsized government returns later in the life cycle

Digital and analytics transformation

Radically reduce waste, then digitize processes via people-first design
Understand cybersecurity as a cost of doing business
Establish collaboration incentives—adopt common data standards, foster transparency, co-invest in tech
Protect the digital economy (and its expected growth) through physical asset investment—bring together tech, power generation, and fiber to drive upgrades and expansion

Leadership and workforce development

Reimagine the value proposition for the industry—promoting purpose, addressing hybrid vs onsite challenges head-on, and strengthening the role of apprenticeship
Access a more diverse talent base through nontraditional talent, sharing a version of the future earlier, and ensuring underrepresented populations can see themselves in leadership
Radically transform how work is done to increase quality and productivity—doing more, in different ways, with different capabilities

Project development and delivery

Put the team first: Collaboration, not contracts, delivers successful projects
Get serious on moving capital project delivery methodologies into the manufacturing age
Standardize the standardization process—international standards and shared operational best practices
Create responsibilities for project outcomes, not individual slices of the value chain
Courage: state and live by the ambition to deliver every project at technical limit cost and speed

infrastructure investment and asset management roundtable

Sector Roundtables

Energy & resources: Achieving project excellence in the race to net zero Engineering, construction and building materials: Decarbonizing the built environment Delivering hydrogen gigaprojects Navigating the transition to net-zero investment portfolios Harnessing net-zero fleets

Our GII partners

We partner with leading organizations that are equally committed to being at the forefront of shaping the global infrastructure agenda.

Recent Summits

2022 GII / Tokyo

October 19-21, 2022 – The world’s leaders in infrastructure and capital projects gathered in Tokyo to align on a pathway to sustainable infrastructure.

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