Today we publish a suite of infrastructure sector insights and a major study into infrastructure delivery in Wales. Together, they form the most complete picture we’ve produced of how our essential systems are performing and allow us to assess whether Wales is set up to deliver the infrastructure future generations will depend upon.
Reading this work, we are reminded both of our strengths and our vulnerabilities. Wales has the values, the legislative foundations and the ambition to lead. Yet too often, our systems struggle under the weight of fragmented responsibilities, short-term funding cycles and capacity limitations that make sustained progress difficult.

Across the sectors, energy, water, transport, digital and the circular economy, a consistent message emerges. We have clarity of ambition and goodwill across institutions, but delivery is constrained by structural issues that cannot be solved within any one department or discipline.

In energy, renewable deployment grows but remains slowed by grid constraints and long connection timelines. Electricity demand alone is projected to at least double, and potentially triple by 2050, a scale of change that makes today’s delays especially significant.

Water infrastructure faces mounting pressures from climate change and pollution. Current projections highlight sea‑level rise of 22–28cm in Cardiff by 2100, along with a possible 3.8°C rise in summer temperatures by 2070, with heavy‑rainfall events becoming significantly more intense. These pressures compound already complex governance and ageing assets across the sector.

Transport systems must decarbonise, serve multiple rural and urban populations, and promote healthy outcomes through active participation.all while dealing with ageing assets, limited investment, and fragmented planning and delivery.

Digital infrastructure has improved markedly but still leaves rural communities underserved. While urban areas benefit from fast, reliable coverage, rural communities still experience inconsistent connectivity, slowing the rollout of digital services and constraining innovation

And while Wales’ recycling record is world-leading, we are far from realising a genuinely circular economy without the repair, reuse and remanufacturing facilities needed to keep value circulating at home.

These sector insights sit alongside our delivery study, which examines real projects and the system conditions that helped or hindered them. The lessons are familiar but now evidenced more clearly than ever. Projects succeed when institutions align, when political sponsorship is clear, when regulators and planning authorities have the capacity to act predictably, when communities are engaged early and meaningfully, and when skilled people are available at the right moments. They struggle when these conditions are reversed, which has been too frequently. Whilst Wales can produce case studies of good practice that demonstrate what is possible, they remain exceptional rather than the norm.

Each new Senedd term feels decisive and ground-breaking as we enter it. The next Senedd could indeed demonstrate success in turning ambition into delivery. But have the conditions that we outline for success been nurtured during the last five years of this Senedd term?

Long-term funding certainty will be critical if we are to rebuild capacity across planning, regulation and specialist services. How to achieve this in the face of UK Government intransigence for multi-annual financial settlements for Wales?

In the absence of that certainty, there is still much that we can do with the powers and budget available to us. Our institutions (including public, private and third sector) must strengthen alignment across land-use, transport, energy and digital planning. Community engagement needs to be deep, honest and ongoing, not an afterthought. If there were any doubts about that, look no further than our own experience in engaging communities about climate change!

As a nation we must shift our mindset from policy production to implementation; learning from what works, adapting where needed, and staying accountable to long-term outcomes, not short-term pressures. Although this approach is more or less mandated through the Future Generations Act, in practice we see too much fire-fighting and insufficient blue-skies thinking.

NICW’s Future Work Programme

We are keen that NICW continues to support Wales through this transition with clarity, independence and ambition. Our future work programme will respond directly to the challenges highlighted in today’s publications, and will focus on areas where long-term thinking can add greatest value.

We will continue to monitor our recommendations on renewable energy, supporting a future where communities share fairly in the benefits of clean energy and where grid capacity no longer holds back Wales’ decarbonisation. Our work on flood risk and climate resilience will deepen, exploring nature-based solutions, long-term investment pathways and the lived experience of communities facing growing climate risks.

Through our Climate Conversations we gathered insights into how people and organisations across Wales perceive risk, fairness and responsibility. These perspectives are vital: infrastructure is only sustainable when people trust in the decisions that shape it.

Throughout all of this, NICW will remain focused on system stewardship: advocating for alignment across institutions, championing decision-making that reflects the wellbeing of future generations and offering an independent voice that keeps Wales’ long-term interests at the centre of national debate.

We will use events, such as the one at which we are launching our reports on infrastructure, to obtain feedback from sector experts. This feedback is a crucial component in helping NICW understand which sectors need the most immediate priorities for work.

A Call to Action

As we share this work, we invite everyone involved in shaping infrastructure in Wales: in government, planning, regulation, industry, local authorities, community organisations and beyond, to engage with the evidence we publish today.

Paraphrasing what Elspeth Jones, our first Nature Guardian, said in January at the Nature Governance workshop;

“We don’t expect you to be perfect. But we do expect you to be brave”.

We want you to challenge your organisations to think longer-term. We want you to work (even more) collaboratively across traditional boundaries. We want you to bring communities into decisions early and with honesty (and we have a toolkit that might help give ideas about how that can be done).

And we want you to commit to delivery that reflects Wales’ values of fairness, stewardship and responsibility to future generations, ideally with a soupçon of greater risk appetite – where appropriate, of course.

Wales has what it needs to succeed: the ambition, the legislative framework and a national commitment to wellbeing that is still unmatched globally. We ‘just’ need the belief that a nation shaped by poetry, landscape and resilience can create an infrastructure as life-giving and enduring as the nature that inspired it.