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Beyond the Gap: How Countries Can Afford the Infrastructure They Need while Protecting the Planet aims to shift the debate regarding investment needs away from a simple focus on spending more and toward a focus on spending better on the right objectives, using relevant metrics. It does so by offering a careful and systematic approach to estimating the funding needs to close the service gaps in water and sanitation, transportation, electricity, irrigation, and flood protection. Exploring thousands of scenarios, this report finds that funding needs depend on the service goals and policy choices of low- and middle-income countries and could range anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent of GDP per year by 2030.Beyond the Gap also identifies a policy mix that will enable countries to achieve key international goals-universal access to water, sanitation, and electricity; greater mobility; improved food security; better protection from floods; and eventual full decarbonization-while limiting spending on new infrastructure to 4.5 percent of GDP per year. Importantly, the exploration of thousands of scenarios shows that infrastructure investment paths compatible with full decarbonization in the second half of the century need not cost more than more-polluting alternatives. Investment needs remain at 2 percent to 8 percent of GDP even when only the decarbonized scenarios are examined. The actual amount depends on the quality and quantity of services targeted, the timing of investments, construction costs, and complementary policies.Finally, investing in infrastructure is not enough; maintaining it also matters. Improving services requires much more than capital expenditure. Ensuring a steady flow of resources for operations and maintenance is a necessary condition for success. Good maintenance also generates substantial savings by reducing the total life-cycle cost of transport and water and sanitation infrastructure by more than 50 percent.

Infrastructure (Economics) --- Sustainable development --- Cost effectiveness. --- Developing countries.

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This paper explores the investments needed to achieve universal access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, and the additional operation and maintenance costs these investments entail. It also explores the drivers of these costs, by exploring hundreds of scenarios that combine alternative assumptions on the level of service targeted, population growth, urbanization, industrial demand, and technology cost. The main driver of electrification costs is found to be the tier of service offered to newly connected households. The annual investment required to reach universal access varies between USD 14.5 billion per year on average for the basic access scenarios (0.7 percent of the region's gross domestic product per year over the period) and USD 22.7 billion on average for the high-quality scenarios (1 percent of gross domestic product). In the basic access scenario, costs depend mostly on industrial demand, which takes a large share of total demand. In the high-quality scenarios, costs depend on urbanization rates, as it is cheaper to connect urban households to the grid. Investment costs are not sufficient to provide reliable service, and when operations and maintenance are accounted for, total costs increase to USD 39.7 billion on average for the basic scenarios and USD 61.5 billion on average for the high-quality scenarios.

Electric Power --- Energy --- Energy and Environment --- Energy Demand --- Energy Policies and Economics --- Energy Sector Regulation

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This paper explores the benefits and the costs of strengthening infrastructure assets to make them more resilient, reducing the repair costs and infrastructure disruptions caused by natural hazards. Strengthening infrastructure assets in low- and middle-income countries would increase investment needs in power, transport, and water and sanitation by between 11 billion dollar and 65 billion dollar a year, id est 3 percent of baseline infrastructure investment needs. The uncertainty pertaining to the costs and benefits of infrastructure resilience makes it difficult to provide a single estimate for the benefit-cost ratio of strengthening exposed infrastructure assets. To manage this uncertainty, this paper explores the benefit-cost ratio in 3,000 scenarios, combining uncertainties in all parameters of the analysis. The benefit-cost ratio is higher than 1 in 96 percent of the scenarios, larger than 2 in 77 percent of them, and higher than 4 in half of them. The net present value of these investments over the lifetime of new infrastructure assets-or, equivalently, the cost of inaction-exceeds 2 trillion dollar in 75 percent of the scenarios and 4.2 trillion dollar in half of them. Moreover, climate change makes the strengthening of infrastructure assets even more important, doubling the median benefit-cost ratio.

Climate Change and Environment --- Climate Change Impact --- Climate Change Impacts --- Cost-Benefit Analysis --- Environment --- Infrastructure --- Infrastructure Economics --- Infrastructure Economics and Finance --- Infrastructure Investment --- Natural Disasters --- Resilient Infrastructure --- Water Supply --- Water Supply and Sanitation --- Water Supply and Sanitation Economics

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This review examines the literature on the welfare impacts of infrastructure disruptions. There is widespread evidence that households suffer from the consequences of a lack of infrastructure reliability, and that being connected to the grid is not sufficient to close the infrastructure gap. Disruptions and irregular service have adverse effects on household welfare, due to missed work and education opportunities, and negative impact on health. Calibrating costs of unreliable infrastructure on existing willingness to pay assessments, we estimate the welfare losses associated with blackouts and water outages. Overall, between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of GDP would be lost each year because of unreliable infrastructure-electricity, water and transport.

Access to Energy --- Access to Water --- Drinking Water --- Electric Power --- Energy --- Energy and Poverty Alleviation --- Energy Policies and Economics --- Household Welfare --- Households --- Inequality --- Infrastructure --- Infrastructure Economics --- Infrastructure Economics and Finance --- Infrastructure Reliability --- Living Standards --- Natural Disaster --- Poverty Reduction --- Power Outage --- Resilient Infrastructure --- Vulnerability --- Water Supply and Sanitation Economics --- Well-Being