Insights
Views from the inside of energy, real estate, and circularity
Market commentary and analysis from the Orofante team — on the sectors where we advise and invest.
All insights
Circular materials in 2026: the EU decided to pay for the plastic that comes back
On 6 February 2026 the EU voted to give chemical recycling the win it had waited years for, then drew a line under it: the recycled-content premium is set to land on the plastic that comes back, not on the plant that processes it, and only a thin top slice of output will qualify.
Financing waste-to-energy in South East Asia: read the tariff as a risk-transfer instrument
Indonesia just made waste-to-energy look like a standard power deal: one offtaker, USD 0.20/kWh, fixed for 30 years. The cash flow reads cleaner than it ever has; the underwriting got harder, and the financial-close count is why.
What the rPET spread is actually telling you
A widening recycled-PET spread looks like the demand pull the EU's new mandate promised. Through 2025, with the premium near EUR 600 a tonne (ICIS, Q1 2025) and brands cutting recycled content to the legal minimum, it told the opposite story — a feedstock-quality warning.
The AI-infrastructure supply chain: own the connection, not the chip
A data-centre campus that joins the Northern Virginia interconnection queue in 2026 cannot realistically draw utility power before the early 2030s, however fast the building goes up or however much capital the operator commits.
Industrial real estate: the logistics tailwind isn't over
Since July 2025 a 40% US penalty has applied to goods merely routed through Vietnam, against 20% on genuinely Vietnamese output. That rule, not the cap rate, now decides which industrial leases survive a customs audit.
Wind repowering: the quiet value in ageing assets
From 1 January 2026 Europe's wind industry stopped sending old turbine blades to landfill, a voluntary WindEurope commitment, not yet EU law. The decisive question for a repowering deal is now one no public source yet prices: the end-of-life cost of the blades a project takes down, as a share of what it costs to rebuild.
UCO supply: feedstock competition heats up
From 1 January 2026, the same tonne of used cooking oil is worth two prices: close to full value if it was collected in North America, near zero in the US credit model if it crossed a border. Used cooking oil has stopped being one global commodity.
Consumer resilience in 2026: real but rented
The April US data carries the tell on consumer resilience: disposable income fell while spending rose, the gap plugged from savings as the saving rate dropped to 2.6%. That makes the strength real but rented — funded by a thinning buffer, not by income — and it argues for screening consumer names on organic volume, not price-flattered revenue.