The new agency, touted as the first of its kind in the world, would supposedly shine a light on alleged human rights abuses by Canadian companies at their foreign operations. Whether investigating the use of forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region, starvation wages at Bangladeshi sweatshops or sickness caused by pollution from mining operations in the Amazon, CORE would bring offenders to heel and help ensure that conditions improved.

Alas, it hasn’t turned out that way.

There has been no shortage of complaints to CORE – 26 in all between March 2021 and early 2023, most of them centred on the use of forced labour by garment companies in China. Yet, as a Globe and Mail investigation found, the agency had not closed the books on a single case as of April 2023. Of the 26 cases brought to its attention, eight were deemed inadmissible, two were withdrawn, and the admissibility of one was still being reviewed. Not one of the remaining 15 had moved beyond the “initial assessment” stage, according to CORE’s latest quarterly report, even though the agency aims to complete that assessment within 90 days. (Besides the Chinese cases, one relates to a company operating in Honduras and another to a company in Bangladesh.)

The agency has been hobbled in a number of ways. The government has backed away from its initial promise to give CORE investigative powers, such as compelling companies to produce relevant documents. Also, CORE has no way of enforcing whatever conclusions its investigations may come to, and its activities remain confined to just three sectors: mining, oil and gas, and garment manufacturing.

An advisory council on responsible business conduct, designed to work in collaboration with CORE, collapsed in mid-2019 when 14 members representing human-rights organizations and labour unions quit on the same day, saying they had lost confidence in the government’s commitment to corporate accountability. CORE’s latest annual report makes no mention of reviving the panel.

“We’re very disappointed right now,” Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, told the Globe earlier this year. “This is not what we had advocated for. We’re not recommending the office to communities that we engage with.”

The agency defended itself in its last annual report by noting that much of its work has “an iceberg effect,” with companies often making long-lasting undertakings that remain “under the surface for a period of time” – an assertion strangely at odds with its early promise of transparency.

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At the “hero” end of the spectrum, we tip our hats to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a non-profit network of 280 journalists in more than 100 countries who collaborate on cross-border investigative projects. The ICIJ’s mission, as its website puts it, is to convince reporters around the world “to set aside traditional rivalries to uncover corruption, abuses of power and grave harms inflicted on the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Best known for exposing the offshore holdings of scores of politicians and public officials via the Panama Papers, its latest investigations reveal the flaws in environmental auditing and certification programs (including the Forest Stewardship Council) supposedly designed to promote sustainable forestry and combat illegal logging. A team of 140 reporters from 27 countries uncovered forest failures from Canada to Taiwan, the U.S. to Turkey.

One branch of the Deforestation Inc. investigation highlighted the failure of European governments to halt imports of Myanmar teak, a richly coloured wood prized for its resistance to sunlight and salt water. Demand from luxury yacht makers has ravaged the teak forests, and the trade has been infiltrated by organized crime and is now riddled with corruption. As a result, several countries have imposed supposedly tight bans on imports of teak from Myanmar. In 2021, as part of a broader crackdown against the military junta in Yangon, the EU also sanctioned Myanma Timber Enterprise, which has a monopoly on the country’s teak trade.

Yet the ICIJ investigation revealed that more than 3,000 tonnes of wood entered Europe from Myanmar in 2021, often routed through countries with lax border controls, such as Italy, Greece, Croatia and Poland. To make matters worse, customs authorities and timber industry associations have turned a blind eye to the illegal trade. None of this bodes well for the historic EU law passed in March that bars imports of coffee, wood, beef, cocoa, palm oil and soy tied to deforestation, says the ICIJ: “[analysis of] enforcement data raises questions on authorities’ ability to comply with the new requirements.”

The report concludes that the global forest-products industry remains largely unregulated despite what “companies tell consumers and investors about the sourcing of their projects and their commitment to helping end the global climate crisis.” Without the ICIJ’s work, chances are that message would never have been heard.

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Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber may be a competent politician, diplomat and business leader. But whether the United Arab Emirates’ minister of industry and advanced technology is well suited to chair the forthcoming UN climate summit, COP28, in Dubai this November is a different matter.

Besides his cabinet duties, al-Jaber happens to be chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the Middle East’s largest fossil fuel producers. “The appointment of an oil company executive to head COP28 poses a risk to the negotiation process as well as the whole conference itself,” 27 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives wrote in January to John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy on climate change. They urged Kerry to put pressure on the UAE to withdraw al-Jaber’s appointment.

“Having a fossil fuel champion in charge of the world’s most important climate negotiations would be like having the CEO of a cigarette conglomerate in charge of global tobacco policy,” added the lawmakers, all Democrats. Indeed, one of al-Jaber’s goals at ADNOC has been to expand the company’s crude oil output from three million barrels a day in 2016 to five million by 2030.

Activist climate groups, including Greenpeace, Global Witness and Climate Action Network International, have also slammed the UAE’s choice. “You wouldn’t invite arms dealers to lead peace talks,” Alice Harrison of Global Witness told the Associated Press. “So why let oil executives lead climate talks?”

However, Kerry and others have stoutly defended the 49-year-old, California-educated chemical engineer. “Dr. Sultan al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company,” Kerry told the AP. “That company knows it needs to transition.”

Al-Jaber’s supporters point to his role as founder of Masdar, also known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, another UAE government-owned business that develops utility-scale renewable energy projects around the world.

It is true that, despite a long attachment to oil, the UAE has invested heavily in renewables at home and abroad, as well as in technologies such as lower-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture. ADNOC became a shareholder in Masdar last year.

Chances are slim that al-Jaber will be replaced. Even so, the furor over his appointment will have served a purpose if organizers of future climate conferences make a little more effort to ensure that high-level appointments pass the smell test.

The post Zero: Why is COP28 letting a fox guard the henhouse? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But hopeful signs of change are emerging there on a local level, encapsulated in a January decision by Warsaw’s city council to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an emerging global campaign that describes itself as “an international mechanism to manage a fast and fair transition away from coal, oil and natural gas.” Warsaw is the first city in central Europe to make such a move.

So far, more than 80 cities and subnational governments have endorsed the treaty. Along with the nation-states of Vanuatu and Tuvalu, the World Health Organization and the European Parliament are officially urging governments to endorse it. California is the latest consider the treaty.

The proposed treaty would align fossil fuel production with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C using three mechanisms: ending the expansion of fossil fuel production, phasing out fossil fuels, and ensuring a “just” global transition that takes account of each country’s ability to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised new hurdles in Poland’s already sluggish efforts to lower its dependence on fossil fuels but has also created an incentive to move faster. Natural gas was poised to play a key role in weaning Poland off coal, providing a lower-emissions “bridge” from coal to renewable sources. However, much of the gas would have come from Russia, and those plans are now in disarray, since Russia stopped exporting to Poland last year.

“In the conditions of economic recession and growing energy poverty, there is a risk that the energy transition may be slower or even stops altogether,” Ernst & Young warned in a recent report on Poland’s energy sector, estimating that the transformation could now cost €135 billion by 2030, equal to about a quarter of total GDP. The estimate includes measures to soften the blow for coal producers.

Nonetheless, progress is being made. Poland has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing solar energy markets, with capacity soaring from 200 megawatts in 2018 to about 10 gigawatts. It also plans to build 5.9 gigawatts of wind capacity in the Baltic Sea by 2030, rising to 11 by 2040.

Michael Poland, an Australia-based climate justice activist who directs the non-proliferation treaty campaign, says that “we applaud the valiant efforts of generations of Polish climate activists [who] demonstrated that climate progress is attainable through collective action.”

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The company’s founder, Lo Kwee-seong, started off selling soy milk door-to-door as a low-cost source of protein at a time when the then-British colony was in the grip of food shortages and malnutrition. Today, Vitasoy is leading the charge to take the cow out of the milk business.

“The original intent of the company was to help make protein affordable,” current CEO Roberto Guidetti told Well magazine in May 2021. “Eighty years later, with the rise of climate consciousness, this story is extremely relevant.”

Guidetti, an Italian who previously headed Coca-Cola’s operations in China, has elevated sustainability goals into what he described to Forbes as “core corporate purpose work, as opposed to just adequate compliance to Hong Kong Stock Exchange guidelines.”

Vitasoy has extensive guidelines for suppliers, covering sustainable farming and fair labour practices, among others. One priority has been to cut the inputs that go into making Vitasoy products, reducing water usage by 22% between 2014 and 2021, fuel by 18% and electricity by 12%. Solar energy systems have been installed at Vitasoy plants in Hong Kong, Singapore and Foshan, China.

The company is also piloting the recycling of its Tetra Pak cartons, though Guidetti acknowledges that “there are some gaps to be addressed … as not every market has the full infrastructure for carton recycling and circularity.”

Vitasoy has been named best in class both on sustainable revenue and sustainable investments in the 2023 Corporate Knights Global 100. Annual revenues doubled to 7.52 billion Hong Kong dollars from 2011 to 2021. While China makes up more than four-fifths of its business, the company also has growing operations in Australia (Vitasoy is Australia’s top plant-based milk brand) and exports to several dozen other countries.

Much of Vitasoy’s growth is explained by shifting consumer preferences as plant-based items like tofu, soy and oat milk gain popularity outside Asia. But Guidetti is confident that his sustainability drive has sharpened Vitasoy’s competitive edge.

“We are not obsessed by short-term growth at the expense of long-term results,” he told Well. “We want to grow faster than the market growth rate, but [to] do so sustainably.”

Find out which company we named Zero of our 2023 winter issue.

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Firms such as Cargill, Conagra and Tyson Foods would all make worthy winners of a Zero award. However, we’ll opt this time for the largest of them all, Brazilian-owned JBS, which employs around 250,000 people in more than 20 countries. It’s hard to think of any business with a more eye-popping record of scandal.

JBS faces frequent accusations that it sources cattle and poultry from illegally deforested land in the Amazon and the Cerrado, a vast swathe of grasslands in the east and south of Brazil. In 2022, the company admitted it had bought almost 9,000 cattle from farms belonging to notorious businessman Chaules Volban Pozzebon, who prosecutors have described as “one of the biggest deforesters in Brazil” and who is serving a prison sentence for conspiracy, extortion and illegal logging.

The company claimed it was the victim of a cattle laundering fraud and said it has since fired several of the executives responsible for this purchase, but the episode was just the latest in a string of reports linking the company to deforestation. A 2022 investigation by Repórter Brasil, a human-rights group, and Ecostorm, a U.K.-based investigative agency, concluded that JBS chickens fed with corn and soybeans grown on deforested land have ended up in British supermarkets.

And the shenanigans don’t end there. In September 2022, JBS agreed to pay US$20 million to settle a U.S. lawsuit alleging that it conspired with other meat producers to inflate pork prices. (Several of the other companies faced similar charges.)

JBS claims to be the first global meat company to commit to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. However, it might be challenging for it to reach its climate goals, particularly after the company announced last fall that it’s pulling out of the plant-based market in the United States. And a study released by environmental groups last spring found that the company’s carbon emissions increased by 50% in the previous five years.

“We care about our role in the world and our responsibility as a global food company,” the company’s latest sustainability report proclaims.

True or not, JBS has much work to do to prove it means what it says.

Find out which company we crowned as the Hero of our 2023 winter issue. 

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Even as environmentalists slam soccer’s World Cup for fudging its green credentials, one obscure English team is winning applause far and wide for its eco-friendly practices.

On the very day that Dale Vince took over as owner of the Forest Green Rovers in 2010, he moved to ban the sale of beef burgers at the team’s stadium in Nailsworth, a village in the Cotswolds, the rolling hills of central-southwestern England. Even bigger changes followed, and not all to the liking of local fans.

The stadium menu soon featured only vegan items, and single-use plastics were banned. Fans were told that if they didn’t like what the stadium served, they were welcome to bring their own food. The pitch is now kept green with seaweed and captured rainwater instead of pesticides, and it’s mowed by a solar-powered robot. The team often travels in an electric bus. Charging stations have been installed at the stadium for fans who drive electric vehicles.

Forest Green competes in the lowly third division of the four-tier professional English football league, yet it has won recognition from the United Nations as the world’s first carbon-neutral football club and been honoured with a “momentum for change” climate action award.

The team was close to bankruptcy when Vince arrived, but, as he told Bloomberg earlier this year, “we’ve attracted a lot of sponsors in the last couple of years that other clubs at our level don’t get.”

Vince, 61, has been an ardent environmentalist most of his life. He quit school at 15, becoming a New Age traveller with a windmill mounted on his trailer. He went on to start a wind energy business, set up the U.K.’s first electric-vehicle charging network, and formed a vegan food company.

While his activism initially drove some fans away, many more new ones have arrived. What’s more, Vince says, “Our fans come here. They see what we’ve done. They go home and they start to change the way they live.”

Forest Green is also winning more matches. A local village team for most of its 133-year history, it was promoted to the third tier of the English league earlier this year.

“I just don’t think there has to be a conflict between the environment and economics and ethics,” Vince says. As if to make the point, work is due to start soon on a new stadium for the team, made entirely from timber. It will be named Eco Park.

Zeros: LIV Golf Investments

Serena Williams, Billie Jean King and Colin Kaepernick are among a growing band of brave sports stars who have shown that sport and politics do – and indeed should – mix. Sadly, that message is taking far too long to percolate into the cloistered world of golf.

It was not until 2012 that Augusta National, home of the Masters, admitted its first women members. Now, LIV Golf Investments, led by the retired Australian star Greg Norman, is thumbing its nose at human rights activists by launching an international tour in competition with the long-established PGA.

Doling out super-generous contracts and prize money, LIV – the Roman numeral for 54, the number of holes played in its events – has signed up almost a dozen of the world’s top 50 players, among them Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.

LIV might deserve some credit if the new tour was just about ending a long-standing monopoly. However, it likely would not even exist without the backing of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has put up US$2 billion of its oil-generated wealth to lure golfers away from the PGA. With assets of US$620 billion, the PIF is the world’s fifth-largest sovereign wealth fund.

Outsiders can only guess at the Saudis’ motivation. Is it their love of golf? A craving for power in the sports world (they also bought control of England’s Newcastle United Football Club in October 2021)? Or part of a wider strategy to flex their muscles on the international stage?

The widely held suspicion is that LIV is above all an egregious case of “sports-washing,” designed to distract from Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations, including the dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the war in Yemen, and the repression of Saudi women and the LGBTQ2S+ community.

Referring to Khashoggi’s murder, Norman told Sky Sports News, “We’ve all made mistakes.” The Saudis, he added, “want to change that culture and they are changing that culture, and you know how they’re doing it? Golf.”

We’re not so sure. As recently as August, a Saudi court sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a doctoral student and mother of two, to 45 years in prison for spreading “rumours” and retweeting dissidents.

Not that Canada is in a position to judge. This country exported more than $1.7 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia in 2021, according to Global Affairs Canada. Most of those exports were combat vehicles. No word on whether Canada is also exporting golf carts.

The post Heroes & Zeros: A small English soccer team is showing the World Cup how to do sustainability right appeared first on Corporate Knights.

So it’s worth noting – and applauding – the decision in early April by Geneva-based Vitol, the world’s number-one independent oil trader, to stop handling Russian oil products by the end of 2022. Researchers at Yale University have counted almost 1,000 companies like Vitol that have voluntarily curtailed or halted dealings with Russia in protest against the invasion of Ukraine.

Some pulled out earlier than others. Vitol’s move was revealed more than a month after the invasion began. For most of the companies – which include such household names as American Express, Apple and Uber – the pain of withdrawal is minimal. Russia’s economy has shrunk to the point where, measured in U.S. dollars, it is not much bigger than many states’. And most Russians outside the main cities are still too poor to afford Western brands.

Even so, some companies have made substantial sacrifices. The London-based oil giant BP has incurred charges as high as US$25 billion by abandoning its 19.75% stake in Rosneft, the Russian energy group. PepsiCo took a write-down of almost US$500 million on its Russian drinks and snacks business.

Putin threatened to auction off shares in any foreign company that refuses to resume operations, in what it calls “the first step toward nationalization.” In McDonald’s case, the burger giant sold its stores to a Siberian businessman, Alexander Govor, in May, who says he paid “far lower than market price.” Govor quickly rebranded the chain under the name Vkusno & tochka and reopened over a dozen locations in June. McDonald’s said it wrote down up to $1.4bn to cover the exit.

Two of the Yale researchers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, wrote in The New York Times that “while it’s impossible to say whether all of these companies are motivated by purely moral concerns, they’ve all gone above and beyond what is legally required by international sanctions.

“We realize that some companies already do business with many other repressive and murderous regimes around the world. But now there’s a chance to draw a line with one country, over one unprovoked war of aggression, and make a difference.”

Acting alone, even corporate giants like BP and Vitol have little hope of hurting Putin, and it’s unlikely that their actions have slowed the invasion. But by joining forces, they have helped isolate his regime and put principle above profit.

Zero: Walt Disney Company

Some companies limply refuse to take sides on the hot political issues of the day. Others bravely speak up. Walt Disney has recently tried to have it both ways but has ended up angering almost everyone.

The first signs of trouble at the entertainment giant emerged in March when word leaked out that executives at Pixar Animation Studios, a Disney unit, were censoring scenes in movies showing “overtly gay affection.” Pixar employees walked off their jobs to protest a decision to cut a same-sex kiss from a movie about Buzz Lightyear, a fictional character from the Toy Story movies. The Pixar bosses quickly backtracked.

Meanwhile, Disney was trying to keep its distance from a growing uproar over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for young students and limits it for older ones.

The law, dubbed the Don’t Say Gay bill, is the brainchild of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who is using cultural wedge issues in an apparent bid to promote his as-yet-unannounced ambition to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Disney has a vast presence in Florida and is the state’s largest private-sector employer. Its CEO, Bob Chapek, initially responded to the Don’t Say Gay bill by asserting that he didn’t want the company to become “a political football.” But, once again, a chorus of protest from employees, the LGBTQ community and other critics persuaded him to change his mind. Within days, Chapek had done a U-turn, acknowledging, “You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.” Disney suspended political donations in Florida and pledged to step up its fight against similar legislation in other parts of the country.

If it thought that was the end of its problems, it was wrong. DeSantis promptly accused Disney of hypocrisy for raking in money from family entertainment but then opposing a law designed, in his view, to protect parents’ rights.

The state’s Republican-controlled legislature has rushed through a law that stripped Disney of a special tax status under which it was able to run a vast area around the Magic Kingdom almost as it wished without interference from local municipalities.

Disney executives have no doubt learned a hard lesson: trying to please everyone is typically not a winning strategy.

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One disturbing consequence of the pandemic has been the mountains of single-use plastic it has generated.

In January, Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical unveiled a bold initiative to tackle this problem with plans for a US$1-billion plant in France that each year will turn up to 160,000 tonnes of plastic waste currently sent to landfills or incinerators into brand-new packaging and textile materials. Some of the world’s largest users of plastic containers, such as Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder and Danone, have signed up as suppliers.

The French plant – like a smaller one under construction in Tennessee – will use Eastman’s polyester renewal technology, which breaks down hard-to-recycle carpets, textiles and containers into their molecular building blocks, then reassembles the material into new plastics. The company claims that the process can be used repeatedly on the same materials with no loss of quality. It estimates that the combination of its technology and France’s renewable energy resources will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared with other recycling methods.

The company’s head of plastics, Scott Ballard, told a Tennessee TV station: “What we’re trying to do is make it easier … for governments to create infrastructure to recycle.

Because with this technology, that waste becomes valuable, [so] we can pay money for it as a feedstock, as opposed to them having to pay to dispose of it.”

Eastman’s project, which will benefit from French government incentives, is an encouraging sign that the fight against plastic pollution is gathering steam. Last November, a study for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that the pandemic has generated more than eight million tons of plastic waste, mostly from hospitals.

More than 70 prominent consumer-goods companies came together in January to call for a global treaty to fight plastic pollution. The signatories, including Unilever, Walmart, Ikea and Coca-Cola, urged governments to adopt a wide range of policies to “keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment, reduce virgin plastic production,” and decouple plastic-production fossil fuels.

Such initiatives are sure to face pushback from powerful fossil-fuel and chemical industries that supply the raw materials for plastics. They would be wise to recognize, however, that the tide is not moving their way. Projects like Eastman’s will hopefully persuade businesses in many other sectors that the future lies in ever more efficient recycling.

Zero: Keurig

Speaking of recycling… Coffee-machine maker Keurig boasts on its website that by using its K-Cycle program, corporate customers can fully recycle every one of its single-use coffee pods. By 2020, the Massachusetts-based pioneer of single-serve coffee makers had diverted 136 million pods, weighing more than 2.7 million kilograms, from landfills by composting the grounds and filters and recycling the plastic and aluminum packaging.

But there’s a snag for those of us who use Keurig pods at home. The company reached a settlement with Canada’s Competition Bureau in January over what the bureau described as “false or misleading” claims about the recyclability of K-Cup pods. Under the deal, Keurig agreed to pay a $3-million penalty, donate $800,000 to a charity focused on environmental causes, and cover the costs of the bureau’s investigation. It must also reword its claims about the pods’ recyclability, and change their packaging accordingly.

Within a few weeks of the settlement, Keurig Canada had put up a banner on its website, noting that “Keurig K-Cup pods may not be recyclable in your area; check with your local municipality for more information.” A link gave more details of the settlement.

Alerted by researchers at the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, the bureau found that Keurig pods are not widely accepted by municipal recycling programs outside British Columbia and Quebec. It also concluded that Keurig’s claims give the impression that coffee drinkers can prepare the pods for recycling simply by peeling off the lid and emptying out the grounds, when, in fact, some recycling programs require more steps.

“False or misleading claims by businesses to promote ‘greener’ products harm consumers who are unable to make informed purchasing decisions,” noted Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell. Such claims, he added, also hurt suppliers of rival products that are less environmentally damaging.

Of course, Keurig is not alone in promising more than it delivers. The University of Victoria group found that Toronto’s solid-waste department recovers about 90 tonnes of coffee pods annually from a variety of brands that clog its recycling system.

The Competition Bureau’s statement announcing the settlement ended on a note of appreciation for the company’s “voluntary cooperation in resolving this matter.” Even better, Keurig and other pod makers could avoid the problem by making only refillable pods.

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One encouraging outcome of the UN climate summit in November was a clear recognition that the days of coal-fired power are numbered. The Glasgow Climate Pact that came out of the summit is the first multilateral climate agreement that explicitly notes the need to move away from the black rock that still generates about 36% of the world’s electricity.

Even so, the pact leaves much to be desired. The final wording was watered down in the face of fierce lobbying by big coal producers and consumers, notably India and China. Signatories committed in the end only to “phase down” rather than “phase out” the use of coal. Given such foot-dragging, the spotlight now falls on who is willing – or not – to back up the Glasgow agreement’s words with action. To their credit, the U.S., the E.U. and, most recently, China have pledged to cut public financing of new coal projects in other countries. That commitment sends a powerful signal to banks that coal has become a risky investment.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has launched a plan to speed up the closure of coal-fired power plants in the region, starting with Indonesia and the Philippines. Under an initiative known as the Energy Transition Mechanism, the bank would help finance public–private partnerships to buy the generating stations. The ADB support would shorten the time that owners need to recoup their investment and depreciation costs, enabling them to decommission plants five to 10 years earlier than their normal lifespan.

Coal currently generates two-thirds of Indonesia’s electricity and 57% of power in the Philippines. The two countries, joined by Vietnam, aim to retire half their coal-power capacity over the next 10 to 15 years. The ADB estimates that would cut 200 million tons of CO2 a year, equal to taking 61 million cars off the road.

Several dozen NGOs across the region described the plan as “a step in the right direction,” but they also expressed strong misgivings. Among them: fears that the buyout mechanism will incentivize operators of older coal-fired plants to extend their planned lifespan and the lack of any assurance that retired coal capacity will be replaced by renewable energy. Time will tell whether these concerns are justified. In the meantime, the ADB deserves marks for putting its money where its mouth is.

Zero: Croatia Airlines

In fairness, we should probably cut some slack to a small company struggling to keep its business aloft in tough times. Yet we would be remiss not to draw attention to Croatia Airlines’ dismal emissions performance at a time when the aviation industry is under growing scrutiny for its role in global warming.

The Zagreb-based carrier, which operates just 13 planes, ranks dead last in the Airline Sustainability Benchmarking Report, published in October by the Centre for Aviation (CAPA), which conducts market research for the aviation and travel industry. Croatia Airlines reported CO2 emissions of 122 tonnes per million passenger kilometres, more than double top-ranked Wizz Air, a low-cost airline based in neighbouring Hungary.

Other poor performers among the 52 carriers surveyed are Turkish Airlines, Japan Airlines and British Airways, while Wizz Air is closely followed at the top of the list by Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines, Ireland’s Ryanair and Norwegian Air Shuttle. Air Canada ranks 15th. The findings are based on 2019 data – in other words, prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aircraft generate about 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. However, “flight shaming” has become a popular tactic among environmental activists thanks to air travel’s high profile and its frequent association with the higher per-capita carbon emissions of the rich and famous.

Robin Hayes, chief executive of JetBlue Airways, has warned that it is only a matter of time before Americans find more environmentally friendly alternatives to flying. “This issue presents a clear and present danger if we don’t get on top of it,” he told analysts in early 2020.

The age of an airline’s fleet can make a big difference to its emissions performance. The Croatians rank 229th out of 258 carriers operating Airbus A320 aircraft and 111th out of 122 operators of Airbus A319s, according to EX-YU Aviation News. The airline ordered four newer – and cleaner — Airbus A320neo models in 2015 but has recently been in talks to cancel the deal because of financial strains.

Fingers crossed that the airline – and other carriers – will soon find more fuel-efficient planes – and more eco-friendly fuel – at a price they and their passengers can afford.

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