The founders of Red Leaf Pulp say they’ve figured out how to make high-quality pulp from agricultural by-products rather than wood from trees, and they’re ready to start producing at scale. The company’s first-of-a-kind pulp mill, slated to begin construction in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the first quarter of 2026, will manufacture what it calls “climate-positive, non-wood pulp” using a process that consumes 95% less water and 70% less energy than traditional mills – all while running on electricity generated by burning biomass from its own waste stream.

“We think there’s nothing in Canada that’s as sustainable as this project, in terms of what we bring in upstream and downstream benefits,” says William Walls, vice president of strategy and development, in a phone interview. He claims that the carbon footprint of Red Leaf’s wheat straw pulp is a third that of regular wood pulp.

Red Leaf has earned the confidence of investors, raising $42 million in five years, most of it from the container company Dart, as well as about $8 million in government funding and a $1-million angel investment. Walls calls it “probably one of the best-funded cleantechs in Canada.” The company used the funding to build a demonstration plant in Alberta, where it has been testing its process and selling its products for different applications. Once operational in 2028, the facility is expected to convert 400,000 tonnes of straw into 200,000 tonnes of market pulp annually.

There’s a lot for investors to like. For example, Red Leaf doesn’t need to develop any equipment to run its patented process for “making the straw act like a wood chip,” Walls says. They use conventional equipment for wood pulp mills made by Valmet, one of the biggest pulp and paper equipment manufacturers on the planet.

Red Leaf sources directly from farmers and accepts all varieties of leftover wheat straw, as well as oats, barley and flax, much of which would often otherwise be burned or left to lie on the field. This creates a new revenue stream for farmers and positions them in a circular economy, while ensuring a reliable supply of pulp for Red Leaf’s new mill.

An opening in the pulp market

The introduction of wheat straw pulp comes amid an ongoing decline in the supply of “economically viable timber,” which has been devastating for Canada’s forestry industry and prompted one B.C. lumber mill to close in November. The main culprits are wildfires, which consumed 17 million hectares in 2022, and invasive insect infestations, which killed 13 million hectares worth of trees the same year. Those disruptions, plus a reduction in the allowable cuts, caused the whole forestry sector to contract by 22% in 2023 and have shrunk the available wood fibre for products like pulp and pellets by more than 40% in British Columbia since 2018. To make matters worse, the United States raised its duties on softwood lumber to 20.6% last July.

The constrained fibre supply in Canada’s forestry sector creates an opening for Red Leaf, but the company sees its role as complementary rather than competitive, spokesperson Elle Kreitz says in an email: “Red Leaf introduces new, non-wood fibre into an already integrated system, helping to relieve supply demand pressures without competing for forest resources.”

The company believes its wheat pulp should telegraph its authentic sustainability, so they’re not going to dye it bright white, which has long been an industry norm. Red Leaf advertises its pulp as possessing a “natural golden tone” – one that doesn’t require a harmful bleaching process to achieve.

A starring role for lignin

Red Leaf also plans to sell the lignin – a component of plant cell walls that gives them their structure – separately as a stand-alone product. Straw has less lignin, so it’s easier to separate out, Walls says. Lignin comes out of the pulp process as a sludgy brown by-product that’s already a popular binder in animal feed and is considered eco-friendly because it diverts waste that would otherwise contaminate waterways.

But Walls sees much more potential for the sticky residue. Non-toxic but also not directly digestible, there is evidence that lignin has some health benefits as a food additive, and it can also be used in other industries as a natural bonding agent for materials manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. There are also emerging applications in batteries and bioplastics.

“It’s like a unicorn. We’re selling it for more than twice as much money as the pulp,” Walls says. “But someday down the road it may be that this thing is called Red Leaf Lignin and the pulp is the by-product.”

Mark Mann is the managing editor of Corporate Knights.

The post This Canadian start-up makes pulp from straw instead of wood, and it’s ready to scale appeared first on Corporate Knights.

One year earlier almost to the day, then-UN Special Envoy on Climate Action Mark Carney gave the keynote address at the Sustainable Finance Forum in Ottawa, in a speech titled “Transformational Leadership.” At the time, Carney’s reputation as a climate leader was gold-plated. Regarded as one of the architects of modern sustainable finance, his Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero had corralled hundreds of major banks, insurers and asset managers to pledge funds for the energy transition. To add to his veneer, he was already being chased by reporters about his prospects for Canada’s top office.

A lot has happened in a year. Carney and his central bank bona fides soon became the hottest commodity on the Canadian political map, for an electorate that was suddenly feeling under siege by a Donald Trump White House. He won the Liberal leadership, then eked out a come-from-behind win in the federal election, upending what had looked to be the dawn of a new Conservative era in Canada.

Now, these two moments – the finance summit and the pipeline deal – mark a full turning for Carney, from climate hero to, in the eyes of some, climate villain. Even so, Carney stated his convictions clearly back at the Ottawa event in 2024. Asked if the federal government should invest in decarbonization in high-emitting industries, Carney said, “I’m suggesting we should run towards that, because that, in the end, is going to have the highest impact on the climate.”

As promised, Carney has now stamped his approval, and his reputation, on so-called decarbonized oil and the infrastructure to move it. It’s a high-stakes gamble, at a different inflection point in the climate battle than the showdowns over the Keystone XL and Trans Mountain pipeline projects. The politics are shifting, as evidenced by the shuttering of Carney’s net-zero banking alliance in October.

The myth of low-carbon oil

So-called decarbonized oil hinges on the deployment of expensive technology to snatch carbon from smokestacks and pump it underground, known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. While there are many CCS projects already operating around the world, albeit mostly for methane gas processing rather than oil, the technology has not been proven at scale as a reliable climate solution. Critics point out that it is costly, inefficient and unlikely to ever exist independently of government subsidies.

Whether CCS turns out to make sense economically, the marketing belies the fact that oil cannot be decarbonized. It is made of carbon, and you still need to burn it to use it, which is when most of the pollution is released. The word “decarbonization” exists to set the widest possible frame around what reducing carbon dioxide emissions can mean. In this case, it means roughly 10% to 20% of the full life-cycle emissions of a barrel, and those reductions come at such a high price that any market for it is conjectural at best.

The Pathways Plus system agreed to in the new MOU, billed as “the world’s largest carbon capture, utilization, and storage project,” will cost approximately $16.5 billion to deploy in the oil sands, and that’s just for the underlying infrastructure to move the CO2 around and store it. The participating companies still need to buy their own carbon-capture units and install them at their extraction and upgrading plants.

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Few in the world of net-zero finance are buying it. Carney is “legitimizing doublespeak,” says Kyra Bell-Pasht, director of research and policy at Investors for Paris Compliance. “By using greenwashing terms like ‘decarbonized oil’ on his pulpit, he is setting a standard of misinformation at the highest level,” she writes in an email.

Carney has already paid a high political cost for backing the oil and gas industry’s plan to increase production in the era of climate consequences. Just hours after the deal was signed, former environment minister Steven Guilbeault quit his new cabinet post as minister of Canadian culture, saying that he could not have looked himself in the mirror if he’d gone along with the prime minister. Two core members of the Net-Zero Advisory Body, which gives guidance to the government on reducing emissions, also stepped down over the pipeline deal: Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, and Simon Donner, the group’s co-chair. The Assembly of First Nations chiefs passed a unanimous emergency resolution echoing coastal leaders who say the project “will never happen,” while B.C. Premier David Eby was more tepid but still dismissed the deal as a “distraction.”

Premier Smith, too, paid a price for collaborating with Ottawa, which Alberta premiers can little afford to be seen doing. She was loudly booed at her party’s annual general meeting just a few days after signing the MOU.

More than half of Canadians still support the proposed pipeline, but any push by Carney would surely be a long, bruising effort, and the prize at the end looks very much in doubt. At the Sustainable Finance Forum in 2024, he told the crowd, “We may be the first generation that understands the risks associated with climate change. We’ll also be the last generation that can do anything about it.” Building an oil pipeline is not something most people in that room would have picked for a next step.

Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal. 

The post Mark Carney trades climate allies for controversial oil-patch solutions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Scale is a challenge when it comes to disclosure. There are around 6,000 cooperatives in Canada, about half of which are non-profits, and many are quite small. They don’t necessarily have the resources to bring a standardized process around sustainability into their operations, Duguid says.

Recognizing the lack of data and the intrinsic barriers, Duguid and fellow researcher Daphne Rixon asked themselves, “Could we help co-ops to do this better?” Together, they set out to build a dashboard to capture the performance of Canadian cooperatives with respect to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the cooperative principles.

The aim is to create an easy-to-use sustainability tool that enables co-ops to better understand their own sustainability performance and impact and share the results publicly, without adding a lot of work. The platform, called ACT (Accounting for Co-operative Transformation), is backed by the Centre of Excellence in Accounting and Reporting for Co‑operatives at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax and will launch next year.

Work by the Corporate Knights research group confirmed the limited visibility on sustainable impact at Canadian cooperatives. Out of more than 140 co-ops or credit unions in Canada with annual revenues exceeding $5 million in 2023 or 2024, researchers found that only 11 reported their sustainable investments and revenue. Ranked by sustainable impact, five of the top 10 were credit unions, which have more advanced sustainability reporting because they operate in the financial sector.

Sustainable impact at smaller co-ops can’t be measured by the same standard as it is at large credit unions, Duguid suggests. “It wouldn’t be fair to the co-op sector to think that a small bike co-op, for example, should be investing sustainably,” she says. “Their raison d’être is to provide sustainable transportation, and that should speak more than their investments.”

Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG) is a prime example of the tension between the commitment to sustainability and the absence of data-driven recognition for this work. Founded in 2001 in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, the worker cooperative generates greenhouse gas inventories and climate action plans for cities, provinces and states across Canada, the United States and Chile. But with only 50 employees/members, most of whom work from home, the company doesn’t have the capacity to publish a sustainability report.

Despite the lack of clarity surrounding sustainable impact, no one doubts the deep links between the cooperative sector and sustainability. “Most co-ops were invested in sustainability long before it became fashionable,” says Daniel Brunette, senior director of cooperation and engagement at Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada. Recognizing the critical role that co-ops play toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives.

Cooperatives are a huge part of the economy. So where’s the training?

Yuill Herbert, founder of SSG, says that the co-op’s shared-ownership model is intrinsically democratic and therefore more likely to pursue sustainable goals. “The co-op is the enterprise manifestation of sustainability,” he says.

Despite the existing core alignment with sustainability, the co-op sector still needs to get on board with reporting, Duguid says. “Co-ops should have been first off the mark with all the reporting about corporate social responsibility and ESG,” Duguid says. “Co-ops do really well in terms of social, economic and community [impact], but environmental can be hard for them to tackle.”

“They were doing that originally, and not just in a greenwashing way, but in a real way,” she says. “But they haven’t done a good job of talking about it.”

Naomi Buck is a writer based in Toronto. Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Meet the top 10 Canadian co-ops that report their sustainable impact appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The International Cooperative Alliance estimates that 280 million people – or about 10% of the world’s working population – are employed by co-ops. Collectively, the world’s three million cooperatives claim 12% of humanity as members. In 2023, the largest 300 cooperatives and mutuals together generated US$2.8 trillion in revenue, according to the World Cooperative Monitor.

But education for cooperative governance is not commensurate with the influence of co-ops. A study published in March highlighted the relative absence of cooperative education at business schools, not to mention in management and economics textbooks. The authors found that “the single most important non-mainstream business model, the co-op enterprise, is currently absent in most business schools most of the time.”

“You can do your MBA and never hear about co-ops,” says Daniel Brunette, a senior director at Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada. The national association has done exercises around getting more co-op education in Canada, but setting up new academic programs at universities is a long, arduous undertaking. The only full graduate degrees offered in Canada are the master’s and graduate diplomas of management for co-operatives and credit unions at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia. Other schools allow students to specialize in cooperatives.

Even in Quebec, which has the most developed cooperative culture in Canada and whose 3,000 co-ops represent some 14% of the province’s economy, many business schools barely mention them, says Rafael Ziegler, a specialist in sustainability management and the director of the Institut international des coopératives Alphonse-et-Dorimène-Desjardins (IICADD) at HEC (Hautes études commerciales) Montréal.

The institute is home to the Portail Co-op, an online library devoted to cooperatives and mutuals, which was developed in part to help address the paucity of cooperative education.

A one-of-a-kind archive

Alphonse Desjardins, the godfather of the credit union movement in Canada, understood the importance of this kind of information-sharing. It was only through contacts in Europe that he came to understand the people’s savings and credit systems that were sweeping the continent in the late 19th century. And after establishing North America’s first credit union in Lévis, Quebec, in 1909, he spent much of the rest of his life explaining – in lectures, articles and letters – how the model could be adapted to different contexts to protect the interests of Quebec’s working and rural classes.

It is fitting that Portail Co-op was made possible by a donation from the Desjardins Group, which is now North America’s largest financial cooperative. Ziegler believes that, with its dedicated librarian and technician, the repository is the only one of its kind in the world.

At HEC Montréal, where Ziegler teaches, the cooperative form is integrated into courses across the program, particularly as it relates to sustainability and the circular economy, subjects that attract significant interest. He sees this as an auspicious confluence, as the values of today’s students are increasingly aligned with those of cooperatives.

The return of the collective economy

Part of the idea behind the Portail is to create an institutional memory for the cooperative movement; its technician spends much of her time digitalizing archival material, from photographs to newsletters to financial reports.

The library’s other function is to offer co-op members and researchers access to the widest possible array of relevant documents. The Portail covers 150 years of cooperative history, in 36 languages and from 84 countries.

Working together with Cooperatives and Mutuals Canada and the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation, the library curates thematic collections about issues and trends like climate change and digital services. “Obviously, we work as cooperatively as possible to distribute the library’s content,” Ziegler says.

Business schools should pay more attention to co-ops, Brunette says, because they breed resilience by their very nature. “The beauty and challenge of collective entrepreneurship is that you have to get people around the same table,” he says. “And that’s how you’ll weather the storms.”

Cooperatives are also much more territorially anchored, Ziegler points out, so they are unlikely to move elsewhere for a competitive advantage. In an era of escalating trade threats and multiplying crises, domestic rootedness is its own kind of asset.

Naomi Buck is a writer based in Toronto. Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights.

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Though not quite a silver bullet in the fight against methane emissions, MethaneSAT was something more like an effective and well-placed spy. But just over a year into its five-year mission, the satellite stopped working.

On June 20, the boxy, solar-powered device passed over the North Pole and made a link with the High Arctic ground station in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. The communication was normal and there were no signs of trouble. But less than an hour later, after travelling half the circumference of the world at 27,000 kilometres per hour, it had gone silent as it hurtled over the South Pole.

EDF has not made contact with the methane-tracking satellite since it mysteriously stopped communicating that day. Subsequent photos taken from space show that the satellite is intact and its trajectory has not changed. EDF has commissioned an anomaly review board to figure out what happened, but the results have not been published.

A new height of ambition

For many, MethaneSAT was a preeminent symbol of human ingenuity in the face of the overwhelming challenge of shifting our entire energy system away from fossil fuels. The project has been lionized in the media and awarded generous philanthropic funding to cover the US$88-million cost to build and launch it into space, including from the Bezos Earth Fund.

Methane, which is responsible for about 30% of global warming, traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. But it also has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere, so lowering its emissions is considered a low-hanging fruit for effective climate action – especially because natural gas consists almost entirely of methane, so the industry is theoretically incentivized to avoid bleeding it off into the atmosphere from leaky operations.

“Despite the scale of the problem, solving it is largely cost-effective,” Dominic Watson, a senior manager on the energy transition team at EDF, has said. Plugging leaks also isn’t overly complicated: “It’s plumbing, it’s not rocket science.”

MethaneSAT’s wasn’t the only satellite tracking methane emissions from space, but it was the only one built specifically for this task, and it could measure methane “over large areas but with enough precision to identify specific facilities and oil wells,” The New York Times has reported. The satellite’s high-precision spectrometer could detect tiny differences in the concentration of methane molecules – as little as two to three parts per billion – from 580 kilometres in the sky.

But providing a critical new vantage on worldwide methane emissions wasn’t the only thing that made MethaneSAT special. It also demonstrated that complex and expensive ventures to combat climate change could be realized outside the framework of government or private industry. The satellite represented, both figuratively and literally, a new height of ambition for environmental non-profits.

Coming in the midst of a dramatic reversal on climate policy by the U.S. administration, MethaneSAT’s untimely ending was a most unwelcome development for the climate movement. The announcement that the satellite had gone dark was met with an online outpouring of sadness and disappointment.

But in New Zealand, which contributed NZ$32 million to the overall project, the response among some scientists has been different. They aren’t sad. They’re mad about it.

A troubled relationship

“We were played like a fiddle by these guys,” says Richard Easther, an astrophysicist who was consulted by the New Zealand government about the project, speaking via video call from his office at the University of Auckland, where he teaches in the physics department.

Easther views his government’s sizable investment in MethaneSAT as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have a huge technical leap in a globally significant area.” New Zealand joined the project in an effort to boost its aerospace sector. Instead, the country “settled for what was always going to be a participation trophy at best,” he argues.

The satellite stopped working just days before students and faculty at the Te Pūnaha Ātea Space Institute at the University of Auckland were scheduled to assume control of the mission, following several months of delays. The failure to transition control to the university at the original deadline in March prompted mounting public frustration and calls for transparency.

Easther is leading the criticism and has called for a no-blame review to understand “how New Zealand blew past so many red flags about MethaneSAT’s operation.” He alleges that the mission operators “kept pumping out upbeat comms even after it became apparent that the spacecraft had major problems.”

Methane trackers pick up the slack as U.S. regulatory pressure evaporates

Easther’s ire is directed mainly at his own government, for spending so much money on a space project without soliciting bids for other projects. “It’s not the result of a competitive call for proposals or a pre-existing need,” he says.

New Zealand does contribute to the world’s methane problem, but its emissions come from livestock – those famous cow and sheep burps – not oil and gas. “If we wanted to understand agricultural methane . . . there’s dozens of other things we could have done and they may have been more effective,” Easther claims.

‘Typical teething issues’

The story behind New Zealand’s involvement with MethaneSAT begins with Peter Beck, who holds the title of “the world’s newest space billionaire.” He is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, the upstart competitor to SpaceX whose shares have gone interstellar in the past year.

Rocket Lab puts satellites into space and has made New Zealand the third-most-frequent country to launch rockets to orbit after the United States and China – a feat that Beck achieved without the benefit of a university degree. New Zealanders are proud of him the way Americans used to be proud of Elon Musk. So when Beck said he wanted to get involved with MethaneSAT, people paid attention.

Rocket Lab’s stunning success in launching satellites was a prime factor that brought the Environmental Defense Fund into partnership with the New Zealand government in 2018. In the end, MethaneSAT grew too big for Rocket Lab, which specializes in smaller launches, and SpaceX won the contract. “If we’d known right from the beginning that Rocket Lab wouldn’t launch it, I am sure the conversation would not have happened,” Easther says.

MethaneSAT’s utility for tracking agricultural methane emissions was also misrepresented, according to reporting by Eloise Gibson, a climate change correspondent for New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ. When EDF approached the New Zealand Space Agency at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment about the idea for the partnership, staff saw it as an opportunity to position New Zealand as a serious player in both space science and climate change, she reported.

Gibson obtained communications by space agency staff at the time. They wrote that “the satellite will be able to detect emissions from agriculture” and “importantly . . . should be able to provide data that would enable more precise measurement of methane emissions in New Zealand and help inform policy related to agricultural emissions.”

They were wrong. New Zealand scientists told the space agency the mission was “hopelessly oversold” for livestock gas tracking and “would not add much to New Zealand’s understanding of its greenhouse gas profile from farming,” Gibson reported. The agency ultimately realized the error, but the rationale persisted in underpinning the nation’s involvement in the project.

Jon Coifman, a spokesperson for MethaneSAT, wrote in an email that the purpose of New Zealand’s research investment was to “gain deeper insight and understanding into the usefulness of high precision methane measurements in understanding agricultural methane emissions” – that is, to study the satellite’s applicability for this task.

Once the satellite was in space, it suffered ongoing technical issues that delayed its scheduled handover to the control station at the University of Auckland. One of its three thrusters repeatedly malfunctioned, and increased solar activity caused it to go into “safe mode” multiple times. Rather than being handed off to New Zealand scientists, control was transferred back to its manufacturer, Blue Canyon Technologies in Colorado.

Craig Rodger, a professor of physics at New Zealand’s University of Otago, has questioned whether solar activity should have been so disruptive: “There have been moments when it’s been interesting in the last year and a bit, but there have not been extreme conditions in the space environment,” he wrote in published comments. “We’re talking about normal, slightly active conditions . . . Typically, people build their equipment to handle that.”

Coifman describes these difficulties as “typical teething issues.” Solar activity has not been attributed as a reason for MethaneSAT’s cessation on June 20.

A report by the New Zealand space agency published on November 7 found that the satellite’s technical failure “occurred in components outside of New Zealand’s control and within the bounds of accepted risk in space missions.” MethaneSAT’s sensor “performed exceptionally well and delivered meaningful science data which New Zealand researchers are using,” the report states.

A different model for satellite development

Easther and others have questioned whether MethaneSAT made the best decisions in the satellite’s development. In a post on LinkedIn, Leigh Foster, former director of space systems at Rocket Lab, accused the project of having failed “to select the right spacecraft manufacturer, and a failure to focus on the right level of technical rigor pre-launch and during [optical alignment, integration and testing].”

Responding to these criticisms, Coifman wrote that the project sought to prove that a non-profit could build and launch a “game-changing instrument using as much off-the-shelf tech as possible,” rather than relying on slow-moving government-run space missions or commercial providers that keep the data private. “MethaneSAT is about transparency,” he wrote. “The data is meant to be open source . . . because we believe that’s the fastest way to turn data into action to protect the climate. The urgency of that purpose means we couldn’t afford the time or money involved in those other approaches.”

Methane emissions are vastly underreported, but they could be slashed quickly

If it had been a conventional NASA-type mission, MethaneSAT would have had “back-ups for the back-ups,” Coifman wrote. But adding those layers of redundancy “would have made it much slower and much more expensive – and totally beyond our reach.”

Even so, MethaneSAT was fully tested before launch according to best practices and protocols, Coifman says.

“The teams at MethaneSAT and Environmental Defense Fund worked with some of the most seasoned professionals in the commercial and government aerospace sectors. We had no reason to doubt their judgement,” Andrew Johnson, deputy head of the New Zealand Space Agency, wrote in a statement to Corporate Knights.

Not a failure

In a blog post earlier this month, Easther excoriated EDF for failing to disclose any results from its investigation into what went wrong with the satellite, writing, “Whatever was learnt has not been shared, a situation that comes as no surprise to those of us who watched this saga play out.”

He’s not alone in seeking clarity. “Even though it appears that New Zealand was not likely involved in the chain of events leading to the underperformance of MethaneSat, we as investors in the project are entitled to an explanation,” Nicholas Rattenbury, another physicist at the University of Auckland, has written in a collection of expert reactions on MethaneSAT’s breakdown for New Zealand’s Science Media Centre.

For its part, EDF rejects the idea that its MethaneSAT project was a failure. “We didn’t accomplish all the things we wanted to, but we’re proud of what we did accomplish,” says Steven Hamburg, EDF’s chief scientist and the project lead for MethaneSAT. The project exceeded expectations in terms of data quality, he says. “We really did push ahead a long way from where others were.”

The high-precision data that MethaneSAT collected in its one year of operation showed what many suspected: that emissions from oil and gas operations are higher than previously estimated or that the industry reports.

The data is also starting to serve its purpose in steering the fossil fuel industry toward methane emission reductions, at least by validating successful regulations. In September, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham revealed that her state’s methane intensity – a measure of escaped gas – is only 1.2% compared to Texas’s 3.1%, despite much steeper increases in production, and that the captured methane was worth US$125 million in additional natural gas production and $27 million in tax and royalty revenue. The difference is attributed to New Mexico’s stronger methane rules enacted in 2021.

Jon Goldstein, associate vice president for energy transition at EDF, said in a statement that the data obtained by the satellite proves “that cutting methane pollution and waste delivers economic benefits while protecting air quality and our climate.”

Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Requiem for a methane hunter appeared first on Corporate Knights.

At the same time, the climate emergency is entering a new and even more dangerous phase as global heating accelerates, sparking mass migration, devastating floods and wildfires, and large-scale die-offs in the ocean.

Meanwhile, money is streaming into renewables and clean technology at a record pace. Last year, global investment in the energy transition passed $2 trillion for the first time, and green funds are soaring. Climate lawsuits are increasing in number and racking up wins, climate risk reporting is becoming more entrenched around the world, and electric vehicle adoption is racing forward in many countries.

How is the next generation of climate leaders responding to these developments?

We sent a survey to young sustainability leaders whose work and dedication has earned them a spot on our annual 30 Under 30 ranking. This list of emerging changemakers is now in its 11th edition, so while not all those surveyed are under 30, they are all millennials or Gen Z. Broadly, we think of them as influential pathfinders in the youth movement for a cleaner economy and a healthier planet.

We make hope through our actions. Hope is a verb, not a noun, and we create it with every step we take towards a better future.

– Dana Decent, director of climate and health at the Definity Foundation

We wanted to know how they are thinking about the future of climate action in Canada. Sixteen people responded to the survey. Here’s what they said.

What levers are most effective for change?

Nine of the 16 felt that policy and politics are the most effective lever for change, followed by science and innovation (3), markets (2) and arts and culture (1). None picked litigation.

“We know that policy/politics is the only arena for real change at scale; it is the way to shift markets and enact broad-scale, multi-sectoral change,” writes Gareth Gransaull, a non-profit leader in Toronto and one of last year’s 30 Under 30 honourees. “There is no single institution besides the nation-state with the power to manage large-scale societal transitions.”

“We can’t give up on the political arena just because it has become more challenging,” Gransaull argues. “We just need to get serious about how to mobilize real grassroots movements to shift the Overton window, influence partisan politics and recapture real democratic control of the government.”

“We need multiple levers acting together, and to think one is more important than others is incorrect,” writes Dana Decent, director of climate and health at the Definity Foundation in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who made the list in 2016. “Alternative levers that are important to reduce emissions and adapt, such as building power in social movements, shifting values and mindsets, or building alternative economies that focus on people and planet.”

Canada’s climate leadership

These sustainability torchbearers say that Canada is seriously dropping the ball on climate. When asked how they would rate Canada’s climate leadership out of 10, more than half picked 5 or 6. The average rating was 4.6.

“Canada has made important commitments and investments toward net-zero, but the pace of action doesn’t yet match the urgency of the crisis,” writes Smiely Khurana, founder of The Sustainable Act and Climate Wellness Network, who was one of 2024’s 30 Under 30 picks. “There’s strong innovation and leadership at local and grassroots levels, but federal and provincial policies still too often prioritize short-term economic interests over long-term planetary health.”

“The current path of abandoning reduction targets in favour of intensity targets and pursuing an energy-superpower approach in international trade can hardly be described as climate leadership,” writes David Klar, a 2018 honouree. “It ignores major developments south of the border, namely the creation of the National Energy Dominance Council . . . By the time Canada’s proposed fossil fuel infrastructure build-out is complete, the U.S. nuclear power sector will likely have significant cost, national security and climate advantages.”

What’s not working?

Sustainability advocates everywhere are reevaluating their strategies. We asked respondents what aspect of the climate movement isn’t working or needs to change.

Tyler De Sousa, a 2023 honouree and the co-founder of Circulr, writes that we need to get past “focusing on climate purity, or the idea that we cannot work with those who don’t fully embrace our beliefs about climate or sustainability.”

Julien O. Beaulieu, a doctoral researcher in the United Kingdom who made the list in 2023 and who served as a judge in this year’s ranking, writes, “We need to stop speaking to the people who are already convinced and focus on the reasons that make opponents and skeptics doubt.”

What’s giving you hope?

We asked respondents what gives them the most hope for the future of the climate movement in Canada.

De Sousa is energized by the increasing interest in electric vehicles and the circular economy. Beaulieu finds hope in the “relentless mobilization from individuals in all spheres who keep doing the hard work.” For Hawa Mariam Keita, a 2021 honouree, hope lies in international cooperation and policies implementation. One anonymous respondent pointed to the election of a growing number of climate-aligned MPs in the latest Parliament.

“Canadians care about the environment and we’ve made monumental progress,” writes Kurtis Layden, a 2022 honouree who is now the director of policy for the minister of fisheries.

“The growing focus on climate wellness, community connection and collaboration across disciplines gives me hope,” Khurana writes. “Seeing more young people, artists and BIPOC leaders bringing creativity, empathy and storytelling into the climate space shows that this movement is evolving into something more holistic, human and resilient.”

“The next generation of Canadian climate founders are incredibly technical, impact-driven and globally ambitious,” writes Leah Perry, a senior associate for the Innovation Fund at Wittington Ventures in Toronto, who made the 30 Under 30 list in 2022. “They’re building companies that prove climate solutions can scale and can compete internationally.”

“I find hope in uncertainty. Outcomes don’t look good, and I fear climate impacts will worsen before we change for the better. But we don’t know for sure what will happen and there is hope in that space,” Decent writes. “We also make hope through our actions. Hope is a verb, not a noun, and we create it with every step we take towards a better future.”

The post How young sustainability leaders see the future of the climate movement appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Leah Gotkin

28, Toronto, ON
Senior manager, climate change – Scotiabank

Leah Gotkin began her career promoting electric vehicle adoption in Canada, then advanced sustainability strategies at Upswing Solutions, with an emphasis on equity and Indigenous engagement. Now at Scotiabank, she drives the bank’s $350-billion climate-finance initiative and supports decarbonization across high-emission sectors.

 

"My courage comes from a belief that climate action can unlock shared value. Everyone has a ‘why,’ and the beauty of working in climate is that competing ‘whys’ can co-exist."

Marissa Louie

25, Toronto, ON
Associate manager, climate reporting – TD Bank Group

Marissa Louie has helped TD Bank Group strengthen its ESG disclosures and has been instrumental in shaping communication around its plan to achieve net-zero by 2050. She led a rigorous review of external disclosure practices to help ensure credible climate-reporting in alignment with regulatory and stakeholder expectations and acted as a lead writer for its the TD and Indigenous Communities in Canada report.

"Sustainability reporting can be a catalyst for change. It’s not just about producing reports – it’s about connecting ambitions, promoting transparency and accountability, and integrating sustainability into business-as-usual."

Samita Rimal

27, Halifax, NS
Specialist, energy transition – Eastward Energy

Samita Rimal became Nepal’s only female graduate of hydropower mechanical engineering in 2019. Today, she leads Nova Scotia’s first green-hydrogen production and blending project. She has also co-founded the Student Energy chapter in Newfoundland.

“Growing up in Nepal’s energy poverty and now leading energy transition projects in Canada, I’ve learned that true progress comes from the courage to question, learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Adrien Roy

29, Toronto, ON
Manager – Quinn and Partners

Adrien Roy has completed more than 60 climate projects focused on baselining greenhouse gas emissions, modelling decarbonization pathways, and building net-zero transition plans and strategies. He has helped set six science-based net-zero targets covering 1.5 million tonnes of GHGs.

“In 2025, the climate battle is shifting from developing new solutions towards implementing existing solutions at scale. It’s become clear that no single person, company or technology will solve the climate crisis independently. The courage needed to win this battle is therefore rooted in collaboration.”

 

Armaan Makhani-Kotadia

22, Waterloo, ON
Youth climate educator and planetary health researcher – McMaster University | The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care | TEDx

At McMaster University, Armaan Makhani-Kotadia has contributed to a campaign to reduce plastic water bottles on campus and install more water refill stations, and he co-founded a fund that awards marginalized students for sustainability initiatives. He is also part of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, contributing to national networking hubs and training resources to address greenhouse gas emissions from healthcare buildings.

“My courage is guiding me to weave together health, equity and climate action – threads too often kept apart. I bring the skill of transforming climate anxiety into agency, helping young people step into their own power as leaders rather than bystanders.”

Annabelle Liao

24, Vancouver, BC
Project lead | founder and director — Kambo energy group | Project Arrowroot

Annabelle Liao has held roles in cleantech at Foresight Canada, climate finance at Vancity, and community wealth building at Social Innovation Canada. Beyond that, she’s volunteered in grassroots and international organizations advancing global climate action and led a team at ClimaTalk that created resources to de-jargonize international climate negotiations. She also founded and is the director of Project Arrowroot, an NGO funded by the Canada Service Corps and Re-Earth Initiative that paves paths to green careers for young people.

“I place my hope in the 95% of young people around the world who are worried about the impacts of climate change and the 85% of Canadian high school students who want more climate education.”

Sehjal Bhargava

28, Saskatoon, SK
Family medicine physician – University of Ottawa, Harvard University

Sehjal Bhargava’s passion for affecting the social determinants of health has led to a focus on climate change and its impacts on health. She has served as Saskatchewan chair and is currently Ontario co-chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. In 2021, she launched PaRx, a program that encourages Saskatchewan physicians to prescribe time in nature to improve patients’ health.

“As a physician, I firmly believe that we are only as healthy as our environment. I am driven by experiences to look outside of the clinic and toward policies that focus on improving the health of people and the planet.”

 

Ali Tapaquon

29, Oskana kâ-asastêki, SK
Principal and founder – Tatâga Inc.

Ali Tapaquon is founder and CEO of Tatâga Inc., a consultancy that integrates traditional ecological knowledge with modern strategy to advance environmental, social and cultural sustainability. Tapaquon developed the Reconciliation Assessment Report – a tool that helps organizations operationalize sustainability through Indigenous rights, knowledge systems and anti-racism.

“My sôhkitêhêwin (courage) comes from the teachings of my culture and Peoples. Our ways are rooted in responsibility and stewardship for the land, waters and skies. I intentionally practise Indigenous strategy to guide organizations in seeing climate action not as a technical fix, but as a relational duty to future generations and to themselves.”

Yazan Zamel

25, Toronto, ON
President – Sustainable Engineer Association 

As an energy-efficiency consultant, energy analyst and now guided projects coordinator at Student Energy, Yazan Zamel champions net-zero energy projects in low-income communities. He has coordinated more than a dozen solar installations in underserved areas, reducing diesel reliance. He is president of the Sustainable Engineers Association at the University of Toronto and founder of the Ray of Hope program that connects refugees and youth with education and jobs.

“I find hope in young people realizing that their voices matter and in communities lighting up with renewable power, which is proof that climate justice is possible when we act together.”

 

Zeina Seaifan

25, Montreal, QC
Scholar-activist – McGill University | Shake Up the Establishment

Zeina Seaifan is a scholar-activist pursuing a PhD at McGill University, researching migration and environmental justice. She now leads the policy committee at Climate Sirens, a feminist climate-justice organization where she mentors 12 women in climate advocacy, and volunteers at Shake Up the Establishment. Seaifan has led national environmental consultations, co-authored policy reports and created accessible educational tools for youth and newcomers.

“Worldwide, climate devastation is informed by the twin flames of colonialism and extraction. We’re advocating for sustainable systems rooted in Indigenous perspectives and other overlooked knowledges.”

Andrea Kilibarda

26, Montreal, QC
 Co-founder, head of client delivery and impact – Climate Finance Advisors

Andrea Kilibarda co-founded a climate-finance advisory firm based in Montreal. To date, her firm has supported the sustainable alignment of approximately $3 billion in assets on behalf of asset owners, collectively targeting a reduction of approximately 500,000 tonnes of financed carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2050. She has also worked with developing countries on plans to align finance with sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are facing the greatest financial challenge of our time: closing the $7.4-trillion annual climate finance gap. I find hope in the growing movement of purpose-driven leaders building a new investment paradigm that reimagines capital as a force for good.”

Rasul Huseynzade

20, Vancouver, BC
Youth ambassador, sustainability champion, policy adviser and human rights advocate – Jane Goodall Institute – Roots & Shoots

A former UN Development Programme champion and UNICEF youth advocate, Rasul Huseynzade has co-founded various youth-led organizations, including The Children’s Union, a regional Fridays for Future and Youth for Climate Turkiye. He currently serves as a youth adviser to the Jane Goodall Institute, Aga Khan Foundation, It Gets Better Canada and The King’s Trust Canada. He is also a climate ambassador for the World Bank Group.

“I had to go through many difficulties, but I feel like this journey shaped me in every way, because it taught me to be a team, it showed me that change doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t just happen; it made me realize that change is a process.”

Astrid Wilson

27, Bella Bella, B.C.
Economic development coordinator – Heiltsuk Economic Development Corporation

Astrid Wilson is intimately involved in supporting sustainable, culturally grounded economic development in her home community of the Heiltsuk Nation, on the central coast of British Columbia. In 2022, she helped organize the Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s Joint Public Advisory Committee gathering, in Victoria, ensuring that Indigenous voices and perspectives were meaningfully included in international environmental dialogues.

Kiemia Rezagian

28, Windsor, on
Engagement and training director – Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Kiemia Rezagian has designed and run an advocacy and mobilization program for physicians, spearheaded by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. The program aims to empower physicians to increase their involvement in climate crisis advocacy. To date, it has trained some 150 health professionals, and its success is based in large measure on Rezagian’s leadership.

“Doctors see every day how unhealthy environments lead to sickness and even death. I’m helping them tell these stories so more people see what is at stake.”

 

Paris Liu

24, London, ONTARIO
Master’s student in environmental policy at Sciences Po; former climate change project assistant at ICLEI Canada – Sciences Po 

Paris Liu co-developed McMaster University’s first climate change civil engineering course and co-founded a national working group through the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students to embed climate education into engineering curricula across Canada. She spearheaded zero-waste programs at McMaster, including Coffee to Compost, diverting more than 270 kilograms of waste from landfill, and co-founded Students for Bike Share, a campaign to secure discounted bike share passes for undergrads.

“I am especially passionate about exploring how low-carbon, resilient solutions can tackle both the climate and housing crises, particularly in post-disaster contexts.”

Sarah Machane

29, Montreal, QC
Innovation lead – CASCADES

Sarah Machane works to embed sustainability into the everyday practices of healthcare providers. Through her role with CASCADES (Creating a Sustainable Canadian Health System in a Climate Crisis) as the innovation and regional lead for Quebec, she has helped reduced unnecessary diagnostics and supported initiatives such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions from anesthetic gases and lowering medical imaging’s carbon footprint.

“For me, courage is about consistently showing up, even when we feel out of place and the challenges feel so much bigger than us. My energy goes into community: strengthening networks, trying to break silos and helping people connect across disciplines.”

Fatou Dieng

29, Montreal, QC
Climate solutions lead – Manifest Climate

As an immigrant, Fatou Dieng has worked to elevate the voices and needs of marginalized communities. As a climate strategist, she helps organizations understand and implement climate-related strategies and regulations. She has advocated at the Quebec National Assembly for the creation of a youth committee on climate and sustainability. In Senegal, she helps steward her family’s farm as a site of resilience, food sovereignty and ecological restoration.

“My courage comes from entering spaces that many of my people cannot access. When I speak of a ‘happy ending,’ I mean not only the fight against climate change and its unequal impacts but also our struggles against oppression, injustice, genocide, and racial and social disparities.”

Samuel and Michael Marty

undisclosed/23, Frog Lake First Nation

Samuel: Renewable relations liaison
Michael: Community energy manager

Samuel and Michael Marty are cousins and proud members of Frog Lake First Nation. With the goal to make their community self-sufficient and not reliant on fossil fuels, they have both been working to advance clean energy initiatives. Through capacity built from Indigenous Clean Energy’s programs, Samuel has been leading clean energy projects ranging from net-zero housing design to community communications that showcase his Nation’s green energy initiatives. As clean energy manager, Michael is advancing projects that reduce carbon emissions while fostering economic self-sufficiency and cultural resilience among Indigenous youth.

“We are all inherently stewards of the land. Mother Earth has nurtured us with the love and generosity only a mother can give. Now, it is our turn to return that love, to care for our planet with the same compassion.”

Samuel

“I find hope in seeing our communities not just adapt but thrive, building resilience, cultural pride and sustainable futures together.”

Michael

Julia Wright

21, Montreal, QC
CEO – MycoNurseries

Fungi enthusiast Julia Wright co-founded a “mushroom club” to grow oyster mushrooms from spent coffee grounds. They have transformed the project into MycoNurseries, a registered non-profit that grows and distributes mushrooms to food-insecure communities while providing experiential education to youth about sustainable fungiculture. Wright also works at McGill University’s Office of Sustainability as a Sustainable Labs intern.

​​“The climate crisis can be overwhelming, but I believe that even small actions, when many do them, can make a difference. I place my energy into acting locally and practically."

Sonia Vinogradova

26, Ottawa, ON
Co-founder – Spark Source Consulting

As co-founder of Spark Source Consulting, Sonia Vinogradova builds what she calls triple planetary solutions: projects that treat energy, ecology and economy as one system. She has led two solar installations on farms in Eastern Ontario, saving 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually and cutting energy costs by 40%. She has secured more than $70,000 in public funding for clean energy and is scaling the model through new partnerships.

“The solutions to create a low-waste, low-emissions economy exist, and I’m implementing them.”

Inaam Chattha

22, Toronto, ON
Medical student – Green Mind Canada

As an immigrant who grew up in a remote Albertan town, Inaam Chattha understands how climate change, mental health and access to resources are deeply connected. He founded Green Mind Canada to create space for young people to talk about climate anxiety. He also wrote three children’s books that help children understand climate emotions and feel empowered to act. He is an Ocean Wise ambassador.

“My courage is guiding me to nurture spaces where young people can share their fears about climate change and feel empowered to act.”

Tianna Philippot

28, Teulon, Manitoba
Founder – Renewable Roots

Tianna Philippot is from rural Manitoba (Treaty 1, homeland of the Red River Métis Nation) and largely credits her connection with the environment to her Indigenous identity. Philippot is the founder of Renewable Roots, an organization dedicated to connecting her community to accessible and sustainable agriculture. Her wheelchair-accessible greenhouse will operate on clean energy in a repurposed container, demonstrating the interconnected relationship of food and energy sovereignty.

“I am continuously understanding the depth of the interconnected relationship between personal and climate resilience. Each exists because of unwavering determination and thoughtful navigation through pain, grief, passion and desire for balance.”

Jumanah Khan

29, London, ON
Owner and director; research associate – White Egret Consulting; Dalhousie University

As program manager for ALUS (Alternative Land Use Services) Elgin, Jumanah Khan led the restoration of more than 400 acres of environmentally sensitive land, managed substantial budgets and coordinated with diverse partners to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem benefits. Her efforts include the diversion of an estimated four tonnes of total phosphorus from Lake Erie and its tributaries. 

“My skills lie in translating data into narratives – helping transdisciplinary knowledge and worldviewsspark community-driven action.”

Clara Phillips

25, Iqaluit, Nunavut
Development project manager – Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corporation

Clara Phillips is the development project manager for Nunavut Nukkiksautiit Corporation, based in Iqaluit – Nunavut’s first 100% Inuit-owned renewable-energy developer. Phillips is currently managing the construction of the Anuriqjuak Nukkiksautiit Project, a wind and battery energy storage project located in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut. The goal of the project is to offset the community’s diesel fuel use by 70% while securing a revenue-sharing agreement with the Sanikiluarmiut people.

“I prioritize listening, an undervalued but essential skill in creating meaningful change and supporting community-led clean energy projects..”

Lara Varty

26, Courtenay, B.C
Coordinator, sector innovation – Foresight Canada

Lara Varty is an integral part of Foresight Canada’s B.C. Net Zero Innovation Network that is helping the province hit its target of a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. She has supported the development of four cleantech innovation clusters centred on mining, water, forest bioeconomy and transportation. Her efforts have contributed to the network’s key accomplishments, including securing $78 million in private cleantech investment, forming 100 new partnerships and launching 26 projects with Indigenous participation.

“Creating space for honest and open dialogue about what barriers are in place in addressing climate issues is the first step in creating change.”

Lily YangLiu

16, White Rock, B.C.
Co-founder/high school student – DMUN Foundation

Lily YangLiu is deputy executive director of the DMUN Foundation, a youth-led, non-profit advocacy platform. She co-developed a climate curriculum with university professors and early childhood educators and has delivered workshops to students across British Columbia. In 2022, she launched Daily Climate News, a bilingual social media series engaging followers in China across WeChat and Xiaohongshu. 

“I try to create spaces where advocacy is not just about sacrifice or urgency, but about community, creativity and resilience, recognizing that we are human, not machines.”

Gordon So

29, Toronto, on
Head of sustainability – Relocalize

Gordon So is an integral part of Relocalize, which creates microfactories that are closer to distribution points, eliminating middle-mile transportation and reducing cold storage needs. So spearheaded Relocalize’s carbon impact analysis in collaboration with the Oxia Initiative.

“Courage, to me, is proving that climate solutions don’t have to wait until 2050. They can transform industries today. I find hope in knowing that when better options exist for both business and the planet, they will always win.”

Alison Gu

29, Burnaby, B.C
City councillor – City of Burnaby

At 24, Alison Gu became the youngest city councillor elected in Burnaby, the third-largest municipality in British Columbia. She spearheaded a policy in her early days at city council that ensures all climate change motions include an equity lens, support reconciliation and be nature-based where possible. Since then, Gu has sat on a task force seeking to reduce building emissions with retrofits and pushed for infrastructure improvements to deal with severe weather events. 

“I place my energy in the fights that teeter the line in being attainable and bold, realistic and impactful. I find hope mostly in loving community, but also in the small wins, knowing that every one has a real impact on people.”

Kimia Shafighi

27, Montreal, QC
CEO and founder – Biocene

Through Biocene, Kimia Shafighi is tackling the urgent issue of harmful algae blooms, which are exacerbated by climate change and threaten water quality, public health and biodiversity in urban and rural aquatic environments. Her innovation removes these blooms from the water and transforms them into valuable biomass, such as biofuel, bioplastics and biocoke, turning a major environmental hazard into a circular economic opportunity.

“Each step forward, no matter how small, reinforces my belief that change is possible. In the end courage is knowing it might not work, but doing it anyway, and doing it together.”

Drew Bernard

28, Lennox Island, P.E.I.
Project manager and housing administrator, L’nu Energy – L’nu Energy

Drew Bernard is a proud Mi’kmaq leader and the energy lead for Lennox Island First Nation, where he is guiding the development of multiple utility-scale solar and wind projects. As co-founder and VP of Awtij Energy, a member of P.E.I.’s Net Zero Advisory Committee, and project manager and housing administrator at L’nu Energy, Bernard has been unlocking energy solutions for homes, fleets and infrastructure across Atlantic Canada.

“I find hope in the rising strength of Indigenous voices across Turtle Island and beyond, and I place my energy everyday in uplifting Indigenous values on the world stage.”

The post Creative defiance appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As wildfires get worse, government spending is rising sharply. Research firms that report on the global wildfire defence market are projecting annual growth rates that range from 8.4% to 12.6%, much of it driven by public funding. For example, the United States’ budget for wildland fire management was $1.9 billion in 2025, a 10% increase from the previous year. For 2026, the U.S. Department of the Interior has asked for $6.55 billion – a 245% increase – citing the increasing frequency of wildfires and devastating disasters like January’s fires in Los Angeles, where losses are estimated as high as $131 billion.

In fact, climate-related disasters have become a major economic driver. Andrew John Stevenson, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, has recently produced research showing that 36% of all the growth in U.S. gross domestic product is from spending on disaster preparedness and recovery.

On October 22, a consortium of national organizations in Canada published an open letter to the federal government asking for a five-year investment of $4.1 billion in wildfire defence. Signatories include Nature Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Mining Association of Canada, Protect Our Winters Canada and World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Across the world, unprecedented conflagrations have spurred federal investments to new heights.

South Korea

This past spring, one of the worst wildfires in South Korea’s history killed 30 people, injured dozens of others and displaced 40,000 people. The fires consumed a 1,300-year-old Buddhist temple. Five thousand personnel and more than 80 helicopters were mobilized to fight the fires. South Korea’s acting president called them the worst in the country’s history.

Coupled with U.S. auto tariffs, the wildfires prompted South Korea’s government to quickly assemble a US$8.6-billion supplementary budget, of which nearly a billion was earmarked for wildfire recovery. The funding nearly doubles the disaster-response wallet and includes major investments for firefighting equipment like helicopters and AI-enabled surveillance cameras.

“We took into account the fact that the scale of wildfire recovery continued to increase and domestic and international uncertainty has greatly expanded since the announcement of the U.S. reciprocal tariffs,” Vice Finance Minister Kim Yoon-sang said at the time.

Australia

The horrendous bushfire crisis of 2019/2020 in Australia affected 80% of the population and caused AUD$2.4 billion of insured loss. More than 17 million hectares were burned and a billion animals are estimated to have perished, along with 33 people.

The fires prompted the Australian government to establish a dedicated National Bushfire Recovery Agency, with an initial $2 billion focused on community resilience and economic resurgence.

In 2023, Australia was struck again by another round of devastating bushfires, which burned substantially more area than the “Black Summer” fires a few years previous, primarily in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Australia’s 2025 federal budget now provisions $1.2 billion for disaster recovery payments. For its part, the northern state of Queensland allocated $4.357 billion over four years for a fire disaster and recovery package emphasizing front-line services. (New South Wales outlined a similar amount over the same period for disaster recovery, albeit primarily addressed instead to major flooding.)

Brazil

In the spring of 2025, Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands were visited by what NASA’s Earth Observatory called “unusually early and intense” fires, which consumed more than 1.3 million hectares.

That fall, the government allocated the equivalent of US$95 million for firefighting efforts. The 2024 fires were so bad, the government declared a nationwide environmental emergency ahead of the 2025 fire season and hired an additional 250 federal firefighters.

Read more of our wildfire coverage

Canadian groups call for dramatic increase to wildfire defence funding

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The added capacity seems to have helped. So far this year, the country reports that it has experienced the lowest number of wildfire outbreaks in the past 12 years. Brazil’s forest secretary at its Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change attributes the decrease to improved weather conditions and “efforts mobilizing local stakeholders, municipal and state governments, with investments in fire departments and an increase in federal-level initiatives.”

This September, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced a US$1-billion investment in the multilateral forest conservation fund called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. Lula has promised that the Brazil-led fund will become operational at this year’s COP30 in the Amazonian city of Belém. The ambition is to raise $125 billion.

But preserving the Amazonian rainforest is only getting harder. Mongabay reports that “rising temperatures and erratic rainfall rendered parts of the western Amazon up to 30 times more fire-prone than pre-industrial levels.”

Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

The post Massive wildfires are forcing governments worldwide to budget more for disaster appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In an open letter, the alliance of groups spanning diverse sectors makes the case for a “national resilience package” worth $4.1 billion over five years, starting with $820 million for the 2026 financial year. “These investments would save lives, protect the economy, reduce emissions, and strengthen community resilience,” the letter states.

The requested funding would cover increased surveillance and monitoring infrastructure, shared fire-suppression capacity between First Nations and different levels of government, and greater investments in training and equipment.

The campaign was spearheaded by the Council for Clean Capitalism – a multi-industry group coordinated by Corporate Knights since 2012 – and signed by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, Nature Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Mining Association of Canada, Protect Our Winters Canada and World WIldlife Fund Canada.

“What makes this funding request different from other federal investments in wildfire equipment, training and resilience over the past few years, is the capacity to coordinate these funds in the most appropriate fashion and engage the local fire departments who must respond to fires in their communities,” says Tina Saryeddine, executive director of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs.

Multiple government departments and offices were contacted for comment on the letter. The Department of Finance declined to comment on what may be included in the 2025 budget.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) wrote in an email that “Wildfires are a global problem, directly attributed to the impacts of climate change, including prolonged drought.” The department says it has committed $800 million for wildland fire resilience since 2019, including $463 million for initiatives announced in the last two years, including $254 million for a multi-year equipment fund.

Through the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, NRCan says it is working in partnership with provinces and territories to advance a wildland fire-prevention and mitigation strategy that serves as “whole of society approach to reduce wildfire risk and build safer, more resilient communities.”

The scale of the challenge

Canada is already spending heavily on wildfire suppression: more than $1 billion every year, with indirect costs adding another $500 million to that.

But the signatories argue that Canada must dramatically step up its spending if it hopes to respond adequately to the continued increases in wildfire intensity. “Meeting this challenge requires multi-billion-dollar, capital-intensive commitments in surveillance, suppression, and training – not incremental dollars,” the letter states. “Without this scale of investment, suppression capacity will continue to be outstripped by climate-driven fires.”

According to wildfire expert Mike Flannigan, wildfire severity and frequency have quadrupled since the 1970s. Roughly 8% of Canada’s forests have burned since 2023.

Canada’s forests are on fire. Where are the next generation of Canada’s water bombers?

– John Gradek, lecturer, McGill University

The research group at Corporate Knights estimates that wildfires have caused more than $30 billion in economic damages over the past five years, including business losses, property destruction and health system impacts. In 2023, during the most destructive fire season on record, 98% of Canadians were exposed to hazardous “smoke days” from wildfires. During that year in Ontario alone, health damages surpassed $1 billion in a single week.

Canadian wildfires also contribute substantially to global warming, with wildfire emissions now averaging 600 million tonnes annually, according to calculations by Corporate Knights researchers. Much of those emissions come from peatlands that release ancient carbon when they burn, accelerating climate change.

Canada’s fire funding

Canada’s capacity to fight wildfires is stretched thin. For significant parts of the 2023 and 2025 fire seasons, Canada was at National Preparedness Level 5 (NPL5), meaning that nearly all of the country’s domestic resources were maxed out.

The federal government’s recent investments in fighting wildfires have been comparatively small, despite the severe strain on firefighters, who say that they are understaffed and overworked and that they lack adequate equipment like water bombers. A Toronto Star investigation found that there are 100 fewer wildfire fighters in Ontario than there were 10 years ago.

“As resources dwindle, you just kind of start getting into that mindset of like, ‘OK, well, we have to figure out a way to make this work,’” Noah Freedman, a wildfire crew leader in northwestern Ontario, told CBC in July. “And the more we do that, the more we kind of push those limits, especially with the lack of experience that we have – that’s when mistakes start happening.”

In March, the federal government announced a $16.3-million investment over the next three years to train firefighters under its Fighting and Managing Wildfires in a Changing Climate (FMWCC) program. The new funding covers 25 projects across the country.

Wildfire season used to last three or four months, but the drier, hotter, windier conditions associated with climate change have extended it.

– Marco Lizotte, wildland firefighter

FMWCC was launched in 2022 with $346.1 million over five years, and all that money has been awarded. Likewise, Natural Resources Canada launched a Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative in 2023 that was worth $285 million, which has also already been awarded.

The Emergency Management Assistance Program has a funding stream called FireSmart, which provides money to First Nations to help them prevent and prepare against wildland fires.

Areas of investment

Among the recommendations in the letter, the signatories are seeking $400 million over five years to improve wildfire surveillance. While Canada will launch a dedicated satellite for this purpose in 2029, a complementary and continuous surveillance layer is also required, they argue. Such a system would include wildfire detection drones, high-frequency satellite feeds and support for Indigenous fire guardians.

The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs emphasizes the importance of establishing a national fire administration that would “integrate fire and life safety considerations into federal policy, strengthen prevention, and improve the federal response to emergencies.”  Such an administration would complement rather than replace the existing Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, whose role is to coordinate wildfire agencies at the provincial and territorial level.

The groups signed on to the letter are also seeking $2.5 billion over five years to expand and modernize aerial and ground fleets. “Canada’s forests are on fire. Where are the next generation of Canada’s water bombers?” says John Gradek, a lecturer on aviation management at McGill University, in an email. “Production stopped in 2016 . . . leaving us with an aging fleet ill-suited for today’s wildfire demand. We need 40 to 50 new water bombers to meet the scale and severity of modern wildfire seasons.”

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The letter also seeks investment of $1.2 billion over five years to scale up training and equipment programs. New recruits face physical dangers and extreme conditions.

“The expectations on Canada’s firefighters have risen dramatically in the last decade,” writes Marco Lizotte, a wildland firefighter in Northern Ontario, in an account for Maclean’s. “Wildfire season used to last three or four months, but the drier, hotter, windier conditions associated with climate change have extended it.”

A separate delegation unrelated to the letter campaign is travelling to Ottawa to call for stronger wildfire response, Marco Chown Oved reports in the Toronto Star. “These are not the kind of fires we used to fight,” Adam Lynes-Ford, who is leading the delegation, said. “These are fires of a different scale. This is a challenge of a different scale. We need a different-scale approach.”

*Updated with comments from Natural Resources Canada

** This article was amended to include the Canadian Association of Fire Chief as signatories to the campaign, as well as a quote by executive director Tina Saryeddine and more information about the proposed national fire administration. 

Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

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The reason that discount airlines tend to rank higher is hard to celebrate, even for the most climate-conscious travellers. While other factors contribute meaningfully to reducing emissions, low-cost airlines perform best because they tend to squeeze more people onto their planes.

Cirium’s analysis shows that increasing the number of passengers is currently the number-one way to decrease the carbon intensity of flying. Densely packed planes have lower per-passenger carbon emissions for the same reason that carpooling is a climate solution. By the same token, flying business class triples the carbon intensity of plane travel compared to economy seats.

“Airlines now face a genuine tension between passenger comfort and environmental performance,” Mike Malik, Cirium’s chief marketing officer, said at a presentation for journalists.

Closer quarters aren’t the only reason budget airlines perform better on emissions intensity. Low-cost carriers also tend to use newer airplanes with better fuel efficiency. “Seat density and fleet age matter more than almost any other factor airlines can control,” Malik wrote in the report.

“Because they want to be efficient, they renew their fleets more often,” says Olivier Paillot, general manager for the Americas at OpenAirlines, a software company that specializes in fuel savings. “OpenAirlines has 80 airlines using our solution, and of those, the low-cost airlines are by far the most efficient.”

The intricate path to emissions reductions

To calculate carbon intensity, Cirium uses a metric called “available seat kilometres” (ASK), which multiplies the number of available seats by the distance travelled. By this measurement, Wizz Air of Hungary takes top spot in the global ranking with 53.9 grams of carbon dioxide per ASK. Frontier Airlines in the United States came second, followed by Pegasus in Turkey.

Looking only at the world largest airlines, Ireland’s Ryanair was number one, with an ASK of 63. Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines were second and third in this category, at 68.9 and 74.4 respectively.

Canada’s most carbon-efficient carrier is Flair Airlines with an ASK of 55.5. WestJet’s is 65.4, and Air Canada’s is 68.1.

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Cirium uses a modelling tool called Emerald Sky to calculate airline emissions, which draws on a wide variety of data about aircraft design, passenger and cargo loads, flight operations and more. Emerald Sky is accredited by the Rocky Mountain Institute under the Pegasus Guidelines, an emissions measurement and reporting standard for the aviation sector. The comparisons are validated for use by banks and financiers for net-zero-aligned investing strategies.

There are other ways that airlines can effectively bring down their emissions, such as by making subtle adjustments to flight operations. OpenAirlines shows airlines how to find small efficiencies that together add up to larger savings, such as by adjusting how the plane ascends and descends, turning off one engine after the plane has landed, removing magazines and screens to eliminate weight, and more. Altogether, Paillot says the company can help airlines achieve up to a 5% reduction in fuel consumption.

Operational efficiencies are the fastest and easiest to deploy, Paillot says: “The fuel that’s saved, it’s saved today.”

Notably, the use of sustainable aviation fuels, or SAFs, was not a distinguishing factor in the Cirium ranking, because they currently account for only 0.53% of fuel demand. Even so, the International Air Transport Association’s plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions relies heavily on SAFs. According to the resolution passed in 2021, advanced biofuels and other alternative fuels are supposed to contribute 65% of the reductions in emissions by 2050.

Mark Mann is the associate editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

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