When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the country will need to invest trillions in infrastructure and energy over the next few decades, most people see a looming bill. Entrepreneurs and investors should see something else — a market opportunity. Because every outage, every broken bridge, and every bottleneck in the grid translates into real losses, around $150 billion annually from power disruptions alone, according to the Department of Energy. Sandra Namukaya, an infrastructure and sustainability economist, argues that solving these inefficiencies isn’t just about keeping the lights on. It’s about unlocking competitiveness for U.S. industries and creating space for startups to scale solutions that meet demand at a national scale.
For Namukaya, the risk is less about any single failing bridge or blackout than about the cumulative fallout. “From an economics perspective, the single biggest risk of failing to modernize America’s infrastructure is the erosion of long-term competitiveness through rising inefficiencies and mounting maintenance costs,” she told me. Outdated grids push up energy bills for manufacturers. Aging transport makes logistics more expensive. Water systems on the brink of failure threaten not just households but also agriculture and tech industries reliant on a consistent supply. These issues function like a hidden tax on growth, quietly eroding America’s ability to compete globally.
Namukaya’s specialty, which includes integrated resource planning, sounds technical, but it operates with a logic that founders would recognize. Instead of chasing the cheapest fix, it forces utilities to stress test portfolios of renewables, storage, and demand-side resources against cost and reliability scenarios. “I’ve worked on a novel approach that added flexibility in how transmission assets are used, giving utilities broader options and making the system more adaptable and less prone to disruptions,” she said. For industry, that’s the difference between constant volatility and predictable energy costs that allow long-term planning.
Her worldview is shaped by work with Uganda’s Ministry of Finance, the World Bank, and Oregon’s Public Utility Commission. She believes countries that treat energy transitions as economic strategy win. “Globally, clean energy is no longer just about climate; it is now central to economic strategy and national security,” she explained. International peers focus on wringing efficiency from existing systems while aligning new generation, interconnection, and storage. The U.S., despite its technological leadership, often stalls in execution, leaving renewables sitting in long interconnection queues. For entrepreneurs, that’s both a cautionary tale and a call to innovate where gaps currently exist.
Families may never see the inside of a transmission plan, but they feel the results on their bills. Residential electricity prices rose nearly 15% in the past two years. Namukaya stresses that smarter planning and competitive procurement can reverse that trend. “Smarter resource planning protects families by making sure utilities choose the most cost-effective mix of resources, whether renewables, storage, or demand-side programs so that energy is reliable without adding unnecessary expense,” she said. That competitive procurement doesn’t just lower costs, it opens markets for startups with scalable, efficient solutions.
The upside of getting this right is enormous. Every dollar directed into renewables, efficiency, and storage creates jobs in construction, operations, and advanced manufacturing. Smarter procurement reduces inefficiencies that eat into corporate balance sheets, while lowering systemic risks for investors. If scaled nationally, Namukaya argues, this approach could reshape U.S. industry by cutting costs, spurring innovation, and strengthening competitiveness. “Twenty years from now, if America fully embraced the kinds of models I work on, the economy would be stronger and more competitive, powered by affordable and reliable energy,” she said.
For business leaders, the takeaway is clear that infrastructure isn’t just a government problem. It’s an economic platform. Without modern, resilient systems, industries face higher costs, startups struggle to scale, and investors see diminished returns. With smarter planning and market-driven regulation, the opposite is possible. We could see lower bills, faster adoption of innovation, and a competitive edge in global markets.
America’s infrastructure gap isn’t just a liability. It’s one of the largest startup opportunities of this decade. Namukaya’s work highlights how better rules and smarter investment can translate into growth, jobs, and resilience. For founders and executives scanning for where the next wave of innovation will take hold, the answer might be hiding in plain sight and include fixing the systems the country relies on every single day.
