The Marquette S-Lab’s 2026 annual report examines how economic development can expand human opportunity while preserving the natural assets that sustain prosperity, bringing engineering, finance and governance together around a practical agenda for durable growth.
The Marquette S-Lab’s 2026 annual report, Development Without Depletion: Engineering Prosperity and Preserving Natural Capital, is now available on the S-Lab website.
This year’s report asks a fundamental question: how can we deliver the energy, water and infrastructure needed for human development without consuming the natural assets on which future prosperity depends?
The distinction between income and wealth runs throughout the report. Economic output can rise while forests, aquifers and other productive natural systems deteriorate. Recognizing that contradiction does not require abandoning growth. It requires a better understanding of what makes growth durable.
The report examines the capabilities of engineering alongside the limits of technological substitution, and considers how finance and governance can turn useful innovations into viable investments. It also highlights applied work emerging from the S-Lab ecosystem, including W+E Forward and the Walker Ranch methane-abatement transaction.
As S-Lab Co-Director, my hope is that the report contributes to a more useful discussion of sustainability—one grounded in the requirements of development and the responsibility to preserve future opportunity.
Read the full 2026 annual report here.
