Boards, Power and Pragmatism: Trends shaping 2026

Across the 2026 Infrastructure Investor Global Summit in Berlin, CERAWeek in Houston and MIPIM in Cannes discussions, the message was consistent: boards are operating in a market shaped by (i) power scarcity; (ii) geopolitical friction; (iii) higher capital costs; and (iv) technology-led demand growth, and the market participants´ tone is pragmatic. As one speaker put it, uncertainty is now the norm.

How should governance and capital allocation adapt and evolve when interest rates, regulation, security risks and technology are all moving at once? That is where boards and the C-suite have a decisive role, ensuring strategy is resilient, grounded in operating data and geopolitics, and ready to pivot before perfect clarity arrives.

Energy security resets priorities

One of the strongest cross-market messages was that energy security has moved to the centre. Affordability, resilience and industrial competitiveness are now shaping policy and capital allocation much more directly, and investors recognise that this is influencing what gets built, how it is contracted and which technologies win support.

This is not a rejection of energy transition, which is still key, but a tougher, pragmatic framing of it. Boards should be testing whether their underwriting reflects yesterday's assumptions or whether it properly captures a new world in which flexibility, system reliability and politically durable delivery matter.

Grid access is the real bottleneck

The recurring constraint was not capital but connection. Interconnection delays, project permitting friction, supply-chain pressure and skills shortages are slowing deployment across energy, digital infrastructure and adjacent real assets.

That matters because power demand is no longer behaving in a predictable seasonal pattern. Data centres and advanced manufacturing are reshaping load growth, while more developers and hyperscalers are pursuing interim or behind-the-meter solutions as a bridge to permanent grid access. For investors, data centres are therefore no longer just a real estate story; they are increasingly a power, permitting and execution story too.

The capex cycle is broadening

A second theme is the growing sense that this is becoming an age of robotics, automation and as one investor described it, a “capex super cycle”. That framing is useful because it pushes boards to ask whether projects are genuinely productivity-enhancing and whether AI, automation and robotics are being integrated into operating models rigorously.

The same lens should be applied to hurdle rates and risk premia. If operating models, labour intensity and strategic resilience are being rewritten, capital allocation frameworks need to be updated to reflect this.

Resilience is now investable and needed

Another shift from the margins to the mainstream is the rise of defence and resilience infrastructure. Assets linked to national security, critical networks, cyber protection and broader physical resilience are increasingly being discussed alongside more traditional energy, transport and logistics opportunities.

That broadens the board conversation. The system is only as strong as its weakest node, and in critical infrastructure many of those nodes now sit in private hands, making cyber preparedness, operating resilience and interdependence far more central to investment oversight, and also more scrutinised by regulators.

Credit and execution discipline

Private credit also remained an important undercurrent across infrastructure and real estate conversations. Lenders were candid that geopolitical risk and higher base rates are feeding into pricing, covenant terms and lending appetite, while an open question remains over how available market liquidity will be through the next phase of the cycle.

Collaboration matters

A final thread across the March conversations was a consistent call for better collaboration. In an interconnected global economy, boards have to treat geopolitical risk, energy security and financing conditions as shared system issues. For those in the boardroom and on investment committees, that means engaging constructively with policymakers and regulators, being explicit about trade-offs, and ensuring organisations listen carefully to counterparties and the communities they affect.

True collaboration, however, only delivers lasting value when it is anchored in a common understanding of what the wider ecosystem is collectively trying to achieve.

Three takeaways

1. Re-underwrite for resilience: Security, affordability, grid access and political durability now sit much closer to the centre of value creation and resilience.

2. Challenge capex more rigorously: In a robotics- and AI-led investment cycle, boards need to distinguish productivity-enhancing deployment from expensive enthusiasm.

3. Think in systems, not silos: The most robust decisions increasingly connect geopolitics, power,

   policy, cyber resilience, financing and execution risk from the outset.