Congress enacted two sweeping legislative packages to significantly improve the country’s infrastructure, but if funding isn’t extended past the laws’ 2026 sunset dates, the state of affairs will start to fall further behind again, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) May 2024 report, Bridging the Gap.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act provided roughly $580 billion in new funding from 2022–2026 to upgrade surface transportation; aviation; ports and inland waterways; drinking water, wastewater and stormwater; and energy infrastructure.

If funding levels over the next two decades remain the same, the ASCE assumes a “continuing to act” scenario. However, if infrastructure investment reverts to funding levels from before 2022, it would be a “snapback” scenario.

“The long-term effects of underinvestment in infrastructure are having cascading negative impacts to the nation’s economy, reducing business productivity, gross domestic product, employment and international competitiveness,” ASCE wrote.

Conversely, under the more positive continuing to act scenario, maintaining current infrastructure investment levels over the next 10 years would protect U.S. industries from losing more than $1 trillion in gross output and help avoid a loss of more than $600 billion in GDP, according to the organization.

“For decades, our investments at all levels of government and the private sector have failed to keep up with the increasing demands that we have put on our infrastructure networks,” according to the report. “As the backlog of needs grew, Americans have suffered the consequences of that underinvestment. However, by Continuing to Act, the nation now has the ability to make meaningful progress on our infrastructure investment gap and ensure our networks are built for a 21st century economy.”

For energy generation, continued investment over the next 20 years is critical to meeting the increasing demand from the country’s industrial, building and transportation sectors, according to the organization.

“The conversion of industrial processes to clean energy, the transition from fossil fuel heating to heat pump technology, and the replacement of internal combustion engine vehicles with electric vehicles increase pressure to expand the grid,” ASCE wrote. “In turn, the increase in annual energy use in the U.S. is projected to jump by 6,000 to 10,000 terawatt hours, well above the current national demand of 4,300 TWh.”

On top of this, more states are enacting net-zero carbon emission goals that include requirements to buy electric vehicles and build all-electric homes and other facilities. These initiatives, along with federal measures to decarbonize, require massive investments to build out the country’s energy infrastructure to support the increased electric use.

ASCE emphasized that within each of its two scenarios, a gap still exists between funding levels and the total investment needed to completely improve the country’s infrastructure.

Under the continuing to act scenario, $9.6 trillion of cumulative investment over the next 20 years would cover roughly 63% of the total infrastructure needs. Under the snapback scenario, $7.5 trillion of funding would cover slightly less than 50% of the total needs. In both situations, a funding gap remains, at roughly $7.7 trillion for snapback as compared to $5.6 trillion for continuing to act, a difference of more than $2 trillion by 2043.

“Recent federal investments have slowed the growth of our national infrastructure deficit, however the gap has grown too large to single-handedly eliminate with any one source,” ASCE concluded in its report. “Feasible, forward-looking policies paired with collaboration across all levels of government and the private sector will be necessary to further support the nation’s vital infrastructure systems and ensure they can provide service for families and businesses now and well into the future.”