Across the globe, governments are in urgent need of long‑duration private capital to fund critical infrastructure. While the policy toolkits differ, the direction of travel is consistent: greater reliance on regulated or quasi‑regulated revenue models, expanded state co‑investment and risk‑sharing, and a renewed focus on accelerating delivery timelines for projects. We are seeing a convergence around a relatively narrow set of mechanisms to attract capital, but also some clear divergence in approaches to managing regulatory risk, pipeline transparency and the political economy of infrastructure.
Set against the increased drive to mobilise private capital at scale, governments are looking to preserve regulatory credibility and policy stability over multi‑decade investment horizons. Current infrastructure investment opportunities are subject to a multi-layered and interconnected web of foreign investment screening, merger control and sector‑specific regulation. While the formal objectives of these regimes differ — spanning national security, competition, consumer protection and public interest considerations — the practical effect is a convergence toward heightened scrutiny of infrastructure assets as strategically critical, long‑lived and politically sensitive investments. Today’s global regulatory landscape is characterised not by wholesale deterrence of investment, but by increased scrutiny of investors, earlier intervention, wider jurisdictional reach and greater reliance on conditions and behavioural commitments. These trends are particularly visible in relation to infrastructure sectors that underpin energy transition, digitalisation, national security and economic resilience.
Whilst the body of this report looks in detail at the key features of each of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the United States, here we have sought to pull together an overview of the themes emerging in infrastructure investment across these jurisdictions. We have identified the principal trends shaping investment conditions across these markets and highlighted the mechanisms through which policy design shapes risk allocation and return predictability. We also examine the challenges that persist in translating policy intent into practical benefits.
Convergence around regulated and contracted revenue models
A defining feature of the current investment landscape is the increasing reliance on regulated or contracted revenue frameworks as the primary mechanism for mobilising private capital into capital-intensive, long-duration assets. This convergence can be seen in the similar policy design of distinct markets such as Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. They have all recognised that merchant exposure alone is insufficient to attract the scale of institutional capital required for the energy transition, network expansion and renewal of ageing public assets.
Three principal mechanisms are being used to give effect to this approach:
RAB‑type models Regulated Asset Base (“RAB”) models are now a dominant feature in many markets. The UK, Spain, France, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands all rely (to varying degrees) on regulated asset base or cost‑of‑service frameworks for networks and essential utilities. In Canada, cost-of-service and incentive-based regulatory frameworks overseen by independent provincial regulators perform the same function across regulated electricity and gas transmission and distribution assets. Such models are consistently regarded by Canada's own public pension funds and other long-term institutional investors as among the most reliable foundations for stable cash flows and investment-grade leverage. These models are consistently viewed by investors as being effective at reducing volume and price risk, supporting investment‑grade debt and compressing the overall weighted average cost of capital ("WACC").
Contracts for Difference (“CfD”) style revenue support has emerged as the preferred mechanism for renewable generation and, increasingly, for newer asset classes such as hydrogen and carbon capture. While the design varies (two‑way CfDs, feed‑in premia, market premiums), the economic objective is consistent: insulating project revenues from wholesale price volatility while preserving competitive market participation.
Availability‑based Public-private Partnership (“PPP”) and concession structures remain a core feature in jurisdictions with established traditions (France, Spain, Italy, Australia, the Netherlands), providing long‑term, contractually defined revenue streams for assets where demand risk is politically or commercially unmanageable at the project level. PPP also is known as P3 in the United States. Elsewhere in North America, Canada also maintains a well-developed PPP tradition, particularly for social infrastructure and conventional transport assets. However, the scale, complexity and strategic nature of the nation-building projects now prioritised at the federal level, increasingly exceed what classic PPP structures can deliver, requiring bespoke contractual frameworks that introduce greater transaction complexity and elevate development risk.
Expanded public co‑investment as a catalyst for private capital
A second structural trend is the expanded willingness of governments to participate in infrastructure investment, not merely as grant providers or enablers, but directly as equity co-investors, guarantors and first-loss risk absorbers alongside private capital. This shift has given rise to a generation of public investment vehicles specifically designed to improve project economics, crowd in institutional capital and signal long-term political commitment to delivery.
The structures and vehicles deployed across jurisdictions reflect the breadth of this approach:
The UK’s National Wealth Fund, Germany’s Special Infrastructure Vehicle ("SVIK”), Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan ("PNRR”) framework and Spain’s Recovery Transformation and Resilience Plan ("PRTR”) (and its announced successor “Spain Grows” (España Crece) fund), Dutch state-owned institutions like Invest-NL and Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation ("CEFC”) and related Commonwealth programmes (among others), collectively, all illustrate a shift towards platform‑based public investment designed to catalyse rather than displace private capital.
These vehicles are predominantly targeted at first‑of‑a‑kind, capital‑intensive or transition‑critical infrastructure where private risk appetite alone is insufficient to mobilise investment at the required scale or cost without structural support, or prohibitively expensive.
From an investor perspective, public co-participation serves a dual function: improving project-level economics through risk sharing and subordinated capital and signalling political commitment to long‑term programme delivery.
A common structural limitation, however, is evident across these vehicles: many operate as financing platforms rather than as project development or procurement pipelines. This means that investors cannot rely on a steady flow of procurement-ready opportunities but must instead engage proactively and bilaterally with public institutions to identify and structure investment opportunities; a dynamic that introduces friction and, in some markets, limits the scalability of deployment. This constraint is particularly pronounced in Canada, where the Canada Strong Fund remains at an early stage of establishment and its governance, investment criteria and co-investment terms have not yet been fully defined.
Planning and permitting reform as a competitiveness tool
Almost every jurisdiction we looked at identifies planning, permitting and consenting delays as a binding constraint on the deployment of private capital into infrastructure — a point increasingly recognised by policymakers. The response, reflected in legislative reform programmes adopted at pace across multiple markets, is the emergence of planning reform as an explicit competitiveness instrument rather than merely an administrative concern.
The legislative landscape reflects the breadth of these reforms:
Germany’s Infrastructure Future Act, the UK’s reforms to the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects ("NSIP”) regime, Spain’s new regime for Strategic Investment Projects, Italy’s legislative simplifications to environmental permitting, France’s Acceleration of Renewable Energies Act ("APER”), the reformed Environment Planning Act in the Netherlands and Australian state‑level fast‑track and priority project regimes all seek to reduce time‑to‑build risk; limit sunk cost exposure at the pre-construction phase; and improve the velocity of capital deployment — each of which affects project Internal Rates of Return ("IRR") directly.
There is broad convergence across markets on the conclusion that permitting reform is now of equivalent strategic importance to competitiveness as revenue support in determining the attractiveness of a jurisdiction for infrastructure capital.
The effectiveness of these reforms, however, will depend heavily on implementation. Across jurisdictions, there remains a gap between legislative ambition and administrative capacity, particularly at regional and local levels.
Persistent challenges: regulatory stability and “soft retrospective” risk
A recurring theme across markets is investor sensitivity to regulatory and policy instability — particularly where changes affect assets already in operation, under construction or financed under a prior framework. Even where reforms are legally prospective, investors consistently treat mid-stream policy changes as carrying effective retrospective impact when they alter the economics of capital committed under a materially different set of assumptions. This has come to be characterised, across jurisdictions, as 'soft retrospective risk'.
The pattern is observable across multiple jurisdictions and asset classes:
Several jurisdictions have experienced retroactive or quasi‑retroactive interventions affecting renewable support regimes, including the UK's shift from Retail Price Index ("RPI") to Consumer Price Index ("CPI") indexation for legacy Feed-in Tariff and Renewables Obligation payments, France's partial and subsequent full uncapping of CfD negative premium repayment obligations, and shifting policy in the Netherlands towards subsidies in respect of electric vehicles and renewable energy production - each of which altered the financial framework underpinning existing investment.
Fiscal and levy interventions, including the UK's Energy Profits Levy and ongoing uncertainty surrounding the trajectory of US production and investment tax credits, have compounded investor concern about the durability of incentive structures over asset lifetimes measured in decades.
Where changes to concession economics, tariff structures or regulatory parameters are legally prospective, investors consistently characterise mid‑stream reforms as “soft retrospective risk” when they alter the economics of capital committed under a different framework.
This risk is especially acute in regulated and quasi‑regulated sectors, where the investment case depends on the durability of long‑term assumptions rather than short‑term market optionality.
The wider implication for markets is significant: regulatory credibility has come to function as a form of capital in itself. Jurisdictions whose frameworks are technically sophisticated, but whose track records of stability are limited, face materially higher risk premia than those offering modestly lower headline returns underpinned by greater institutional predictability. The distinction between formal legal compliance with the prospective-only principle and the investor perception of stability is one that policy makers across markets have not yet fully recognised.
Pipeline transparency: a differentiating factor
The visibility, accessibility and quality of forward-looking infrastructure pipelines have emerged as significant differentiating factors in the competition for international capital distinct from, and complementary to, the quality of the revenue and regulatory frameworks within which individual projects sit.
The variation across jurisdictions in this respect is material:
The UK and Australia but both face criticism around execution gaps and fragmentation across levels of government; investors have specifically highlighted the lack of clarity around which projects in the pipeline are open for private investment and on what basis, a gap that the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority ("NISTA") and equivalent frameworks at the Australian Commonwealth and state level, have recognised and are seeking to address; pipeline publications in their current form therefore have limited utility for foreign direct investment origination in practice.
Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the United States and the Netherlands rely on a patchwork of sector specific strategic plans, ministerial procurement portals and policy documents rather than single consolidated pipelines. Canada presents a structurally comparable position: pipeline information is dispersed across federal departments, Crown corporations, provinces and municipalities, and must be triangulated from multiple sources that differ materially in level of detail, frequency of update and degree of accessibility to international investors. While the Major Projects Office's public identification of designated projects and budget programme disclosures provide a meaningful signalling function, helping investors distinguish federal policy ambition from projects that have reached a level of prioritisation sufficient to anchor capital planning, this transparency is concentrated at the back end of the pipeline, with earlier-stage projects remaining comparatively opaque precisely at the point where private capital could play the greatest additional role. The consequence is that international investors seeking to assess forward deployment opportunities must synthesise information from multiple, inconsistently formatted sources, an exercise that introduces cost, uncertainty and competitive disadvantage relative to jurisdictions with more integrated pipeline disclosure.
Investors consistently view the absence of project‑level, forward‑looking, internationally accessible pipeline data as a competitive disadvantage — particularly for foreign direct investment where information asymmetry between domestic and international participants is most acute.
Across jurisdictions, pipeline transparency tends to be most developed in regulated network sectors (where statutory processes generate a degree of natural transparency) and most limited in greenfield, municipal or emerging infrastructure categories, precisely those areas where the incremental contribution of private capital is greatest and where the absence of pipeline clarity most directly constrains development.
Divergent approaches to PPP and private risk transfer
While PPPs and concession structures remain central to infrastructure delivery in a substantial number of jurisdictions, the degree to which they form a scalable vehicle for private capital varies considerably — and the divergence is widening.
The principal lines of divergence are as follows:
France, Spain, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands maintain well-developed legal architecture for concession or availability‑based PPP models, supported by deep institutional traditions, standardised contractual frameworks and secondary markets in which project equity is routinely traded. These markets provide investors with a recognisable and bankable set of instruments for long-duration, contractually defined exposure.
The UK’s effective withdrawal from the Private Finance Initiative (“PFI”) in 2018 without a replacement framework has created a structural gap for greenfield projects. Notwithstanding various policy announcements, no standardised successor mechanism has been established
Germany and the United States adopt comparatively selective, decentralised or sector‑specific approaches to PPP deployment, limiting standardisation and scale available to investors. Canada occupies a distinct position within this group: its PPP tradition is well-established and has delivered a sustained track record of successful execution in social infrastructure and conventional transport assets, supported by mature procurement models and experienced public sponsors at the provincial level. However, the scale and strategic complexity of the projects now prioritised at the federal level are not readily addressed through existing PPP frameworks, and no standardised federal model has yet emerged to fill this gap. The consequence is an increasing reliance on bespoke contractual structures that increase transaction complexity, lengthen timelines, and constrain the depth of capital capable of participating without additional layers of public-sector support.
The broader lesson across jurisdictions is that PPP success is highly sensitive to the discipline and sophistication of the underlying risk allocation framework. Where risk transfer has been poorly calibrated (placing risks with private parties lacking the tools to manage or price them, or where public sector counterparties have proved unwilling to honour the risk allocation in practice), the consequence has been value destruction and a lasting contraction in investor appetite for future programmes.
The analysis above maps the principal features of the investment landscape: the convergence around regulated and contracted revenue models, the expansion of public co-investment platforms, the drive to accelerate consenting and delivery, and the persistent investor concerns around regulatory stability and pipeline transparency that qualify each of those trends. Collectively, they reflect a global infrastructure investment environment that has become more sophisticated in its use of policy instruments, but also more complex to navigate.
As governments have elevated infrastructure to strategic and critical status, the regulatory frameworks through which investment is screened, approved and supervised have expanded in scope, reach and intensity at comparable pace. Understanding the investment proposition in any jurisdiction therefore requires not only an assessment of the revenue, risk-sharing and delivery frameworks that shape project economics, but an equally rigorous analysis of the foreign investment screening, merger control and sector regulatory regimes through which capital must pass before it can be deployed. It is to that dimension that the second part of this report turns.
Competition and regulatory
Investors in infrastructure will typically have to navigate multiple regulatory frameworks - foreign direct investment (FDI) or national security screening regimes, merger control regimes and sectoral regulatory regimes specific to certain types of infrastructure – resulting in added complexity to deal making and requiring early analysis, strategic planning and stakeholder engagement.
Expansion of FDI regimes — broad scope, selective intervention
Foreign investment screening regimes have expanded markedly in scope in recent years, but intervention remains selective rather than prohibitive.
Foreign investment regimes now routinely capture infrastructure assets across energy, transport, water, communications and digital infrastructure, often irrespective of transaction size or nationality of investor.
Across jurisdictions, the majority of notified transactions are cleared unconditionally and within statutory timelines.
Prohibitions are the outliers and typically flow from investors’ links to high risk jurisdictions such as China and Russia; where concerns arise, regulators overwhelmingly prefer conditional approvals, using tailored, precedent-based remedies to mitigate perceived risks.
Infrastructure transactions account for a significant proportion of reviewed deals, reflecting the breadth of sector definitions rather than a presumption against infrastructure investment.
When conducting FDI review of infrastructure investors, regulators may focus on financial stability, assessing whether investors have the financial strength, management competence, and long-term commitment to maintain uninterrupted delivery of critical services. This is because regulators are keen to ensure the operational resilience of key infrastructure assets, and routinely seek reassurance related to continuity of supply, target governance measures, and integrity of sensitive data.
A common trend is the normalisation of precautionary voluntary filings, particularly where jurisdictional thresholds are ambiguous or where investors seek deal certainty. This is especially evident in Italy, Germany, the UK, Canada and the US, where the risk of call‑in can extend well beyond closing.
However, approaches diverge materially in relation to:
Greenfield investments: notably excluded from France and Germany’s FDI regime but potentially reviewable in the US (with respect to certain real estate transactions), UK and under emerging EU frameworks.
Nationality sensitivity: with jurisdictions such as the US, Italy and Spain baking investor nationality and links to foreign governments into their jurisdictional frameworks, other regimes are formally nationality‑agnostic (e.g., the UK and the Netherlands) and/or may address these concerns in their substantive, acquirer risk analysis.
Transparency: even though some regulators publish guidance and annual statistics, FDI processes are generally opaque with limited public reasoning and visibility over individual cases.
Merger control: pragmatism, politicisation and procedural differences
Merger control regimes are undergoing parallel evolution, though with notable jurisdictional differences.
Overarching trends include:
Greater willingness to accept behavioural remedies in Europe where credible evidence supports their effectiveness, particularly in infrastructure sectors where structural remedies may undermine investment incentives and/or operational efficiency. However, jurisdictions such as the US remain more anchored in structural divestitures with agencies preferring remedies that avoid monitoring.
Many merger control regimes are increasingly influenced by public policy objectives. This has resulted in more explicit consideration of non‑price effects, including access to essential infrastructure, innovation, sustainability and long‑term resilience.
Across jurisdictions, some notable recent trends include:
The EC’s new draft merger control guidelines mark a significant strategic shift, explicitly integrating geopolitical considerations and introducing a framework that may allow investors to successfully leverage scale-enhancing efficiencies and European competitiveness to defend major infrastructure transactions.1
Within the EU:
Jurisdictions such as Italy and France have recently shown a relatively pragmatic approach to remedies with an increasing willingness to consider behavioural commitments, bridging the gap with Spain, where the regulator has traditionally been keen to accept behavioural commitments.
The Netherlands also stands out for explicitly integrating sustainability considerations into merger control, allowing green efficiencies to influence the competitive assessment.
Germany’s expansive merger control regime introduces distinct complexities for investors, utilising a broad "material competitive influence" standard to capture certain minority shareholdings even below 25%, and complex transaction value thresholds that can capture smaller acquisitions.
Despite broadly constructed jurisdictional tests in the UK, the UK government’s focus on the growth agenda has meant that there is currently a greater focus on proportionate intervention and a desire “not to get in the way of investment” for non-problematic cases.
Australia has recently moved to a mandatory and suspensory merger control regime, significantly increasing procedural discipline for infrastructure transactions.
In the US, tension continues between interventionist populism and a desire to reduce regulatory friction. Similarly, in Canada there is friction between the federal government’s broader pro-investment objectives and the increasingly resource-intensive nature of merger reviews.
Since its introduction in 2023, the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) has rapidly become a significant regulatory hurdle that introduces significant cost, complexity, and timeline risks for infrastructure transactions.
For investors, the practical implication is that merger control risk is less about outright prohibition and more about a well-considered, regulatory engagement strategy, remedy design (where appropriate), and process management, taking into account the commonalities and differences across relevant jurisdictions when formulating the strategy for clearance.
Infrastructure as a strategic asset class
A unifying theme across all jurisdictions for both FDI and merger control is the – almost universal - elevation of infrastructure to strategic or critical status, with a particular focus on areas such as the green energy transition and digital infrastructure, including assets such as data centres. The implications for investors include that:
Regulators are paying particular attention to continuity of critical services and long‑term investment incentives, which – while creating a layer of complexity – also raises the prospect of a degree of regulatory support; regulators are generally receptive to transactions that demonstrably advance their policy objectives, provided risks are mitigated appropriately.
Both merger control and foreign investment regimes capture acquisitions of control but may also pull-in minority investments, as well as asset deals, greenfield projects and intra‑group reorganisations.
Regulators are increasingly empowered to review transactions that were not notified or fall below traditional jurisdictional thresholds. These powers are often retrospective, creating residual risk well after closing unless proactively managed. While the practical exercise of call‑in powers remains relatively limited, their existence and associated risk materially affects deal planning, long‑stop dates and conditionality.
Sector‑specific regulators: credibility, independence and political pressure
Across jurisdictions, sector‑specific regulators remain central to infrastructure investment frameworks, particularly in energy, utilities, transport and telecommunications.
Most regulators retain strong reputations for technical expertise and procedural rigour.
Appeals mechanisms — often to specialist courts or competition regulators — provide an important backstop for investor confidence for regulatory decision-making.
Regulators are increasingly tasked with implementing ambitious public policy agendas, including decarbonisation, digital rollout and network resilience. Sectoral regulators may also have standalone change of control requirements and/or support other competition or foreign investment regulatory reviews.
A recurring theme is the growing political overlay. For example, in the UK, Australia and the US, regulators operate within frameworks that are increasingly shaped by government policy priorities, and regulators in jurisdictions such as France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands can also be key delivery agents for national as well as EU-level strategies.
The result is not a loss of regulatory credibility, but a shift toward greater policy alignment, which investors must factor into long‑term assumptions. Regulatory independence, however, remains a crucial factor for maintaining certainty and stability for investors.
The global view
Taken together, the jurisdictions reviewed show convergence, both structurally toward a similar investment proposition and in the way in which the global regulatory environment for infrastructure investment is becoming more complex, more strategic and more interventionist in form - but not necessarily in outcome.
Common themes include regulated or contracted revenue frameworks, public co‑investment as a risk absorption mechanism, and reformed consenting and delivery processes designed to accelerate capital deployment.
Structurally, the key differentiators between markets are no longer the existence of these tools, but the credibility, consistency and durability with which they are applied in practice
For long‑duration infrastructure capital (where investment decisions are made on the basis of assumptions that must hold over decades rather than years), the decisive factors are:
the durability and legal robustness of regulatory commitments over an asset's economic life;
the predictability of policy and fiscal environment across political cycles;
the credibility and effective delivery of planning and permitting reform programmes; and
the availability of a visible, accessible and repeatable pipeline of investable opportunities.
Jurisdictions that can demonstrate credible alignment across these dimensions, rather than those that seek to compete principally on the headline generosity of individual incentive mechanisms, are those best placed to attract and retain the scale of long-duration global infrastructure capital required to meet the investment demands of the energy transition and the renewal of national infrastructure systems.
From the regulatory perspective, most jurisdictions continue to welcome private capital for infrastructure, recognising its essential role in delivering energy transition, digital connectivity and economic resilience. The regulatory challenge for investors is therefore not avoidance, but navigation to minimise uncertainty driven by overlapping yet parallel review regimes and extended call‑in rights.
Success increasingly depends on:
early analysis, devising a jurisdiction‑specific strategy and anticipating and coordinating regulatory engagement across multiple regimes;
engaging early and constructively with regulators, particularly to address any concerns around ownership profile;
designing transactions and remedies within relevant regulatory frameworks that align commercial objectives with public policy priorities; and
pricing regulatory process and conditionality into deal structures from the outset.
In an environment where infrastructure is both an investment opportunity and a policy instrument, regulatory credibility, transparency and engagement capability have become as important as financial structuring in competing for capital.