Editor’s note: This guest post is sponsored by Glenmede.
Sustainable investing is entering a new phase. For much of the past decade, conversations were framed around broad environmental, social and governance classifications. Today, investors are increasingly focusing on the structural forces reshaping core economic systems and the investment opportunities emerging where those systems face pressure.
At Glenmede, we work with individuals, families, endowments, and foundations to integrate sustainable strategies across public and private markets. Our 2026 Sustainable Investing Outlook highlights megatrends converging in ways that create meaningful opportunities for investors: energy infrastructure for the artificial intelligence economy, health equity and the ownership economy.
Together, these themes illustrate how sustainable investing is evolving, from broad values-based frameworks toward targeted thematic strategies grounded in structural economic change.
Energy expansion to power the AI economy
AI is rapidly transforming the US electricity market. As technology companies deploy more powerful AI models, demand for hyperscale data centers has surged — placing new pressure on energy infrastructure, grid resilience and regional power markets.
Hyperscale data centers require immense computing power and cooling capacity, making them significantly more energy-intensive than traditional facilities. In 2024 alone, US data centers consumed roughly 183 terawatt-hours of electricity — nearly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Thailand. By 2030, that figure could more than double to 426 terawatt-hours, fundamentally reshaping electricity demand.
Data centers are critical to the digital economy, enabling the storage, processing and distribution of vast amounts of data, but their rapid expansion is placing new strain on energy systems. Electricity demand is increasingly concentrated in states such as California, Georgia, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, where large data center clusters are emerging and prompting new regulatory frameworks, such as special rate structures and infrastructure requirements, to help protect grid stability and residential ratepayers.
At the local level, communities are raising environmental and resource concerns. Key questions remain about how incremental electricity demand will be met and how water-intensive cooling systems will affect regional water supplies.
For investors, the implications are clear:
- Rising power costs, project proposals and policy debates provide actionable insight into energy systems.
- Data center concentration creates varied regional opportunity and regulatory risk.
- Meeting AI-driven demand will require large-scale investment in generation, transmission, grid infrastructure, storage, and efficiency.
Investors should closely monitor how the AI data center boom uniquely interacts with evolving U.S. energy infrastructure and diversified power solutions that can support long-term digital growth, affordability, and reliability.
From capital to care: Investing in health equity
At the same time that technological innovation accelerates, the U.S. healthcare system is confronting growing gaps in women’s health, care for aging populations, and mental health. These areas, combined with funding shortfalls and demographic shifts, are reshaping the U.S. healthcare landscape.
Three areas stand out.
First, women’s health remains dramatically underfunded, with only about 4% of global biopharma research and development focused on women’s health conditions, despite women spending significantly more of their lives in poor health than men.
Second, the U.S. is experiencing a historic demographic shift. By 2030, Americans over the age of 65 are projected to outnumber those under 18, placing enormous pressure on caregiving systems, senior housing, and healthcare infrastructure.
Third, mental health challenges are rising. In 2024, roughly 23% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness. At the same time, federal funding cuts and layoffs across agencies, including the FDA, CDC and NIH, have reduced support for mental health programs, substance abuse programs, and related research, widening the gap between need for care and available services.
Addressing these trends will require capital across multiple parts of the healthcare system, including solutions that target the social determinants of health. By diversifying across subsectors, investors can help expand access to care while responding to demographic shifts and gaps left by declining public funding.
Investor considerations include:
- Women’s health: Evaluate regulatory shifts affecting reproductive and maternal care and assess whether investments incorporate a racial equity lens given persistent outcome disparities.
- Aging populations: Analyze the caregiving workforce gap and its implications for home health and senior care models, housing infrastructure, climate resilience, and long-term care financing.
- Mental health: Evaluate clinical efficacy and data privacy standards while considering reimbursement models and regulatory guidance shaping telehealth expansion.
The ownership economy as a pathway to inclusive growth
A third structural challenge is shaping the investment landscape is the growing divide in access to wealth-building assets.
As affordability pressures and wealth disparities persist, ownership-based models, including employee ownership, shared real estate, and small business capital, are emerging as scalable pathways to broaden wealth creation and strengthen long-term economic resilience.
Over the past decade, the costs of housing, healthcare, and education have outpaced wage growth, constraining household budgets and limiting socioeconomic mobility. Financial aid now covers a smaller share of college costs, and homeownership, a key pathway to building wealth, has become less accessible, with the average first-time buyer nearing age 40, about a decade older than previous generations. At the same time, wealth gains have increasingly accrued to those who already own assets, widening existing disparities.
These dynamics have brought renewed attention to the concept of an “ownership economy” — an investment framework centered on expanding access to productive assets. Whether through corporate equity, real estate, or private enterprise, it aligns economic participation with long-term value creation.
For investors, ownership models represent scalable pathways to promote inclusive economic participation while pursuing competitive financial outcomes.
Three wealth-building pathways stand out:
- Corporate ownership: Invest in employee ownership structures, such as employee stock ownership plans or worker cooperatives, that share long-term enterprise value with employees. Employee stock ownership plans give workers an ownership stake in the companies they help build and are linked to stronger productivity, retention, and long-term business stability.
- Real estate ownership: Support shared-equity and community-based models that expand access to homeownership and long-term asset building.
- Small business ownership: Allocate capital to funds and lending platforms that expand financing for historically underserved entrepreneurs and support business succession.
Sustainable investing today requires a more precise lens, one grounded in structural demand drivers, regulatory realities, and measurable long-term outcomes. Across energy infrastructure, healthcare delivery, and pathways to asset ownership, a common thread emerges: the need to deploy capital toward expanding access, capacity, and durable growth in systems under structural strain. Capturing these opportunities requires disciplined research, careful assessment of regional and regulatory dynamics, and thoughtful implementation. When grounded in financial materiality and long-term demand drivers, thematic investing can provide a pragmatic framework for navigating uncertainty while positioning portfolios for the years ahead.
Mark Hays is the director of sustainable investing at Glenmede. Julia Fish, Anju Suresh, Melanie Fornes and Laura Machuca are investment specialists at Glenmede.
Guest posts on ImpactAlpha represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ImpactAlpha.
This material is provided solely for informational and/or educational purposes, does not provide any financial, investment, tax, legal or other advice, and should not be construed as a recommendation to take any particular course of action. Any potential outcome discussed, including but not limited to performance, legislation or tax consequence, ultimately may not occur. Contact Glenmede for more information.
