In a January analysis, the London-based think tank Ember compared the energy makeup of China and India at similar personal income levels and uncovered a massive difference. At $11,000, India’s current level and China’s 2012 level when purchasing-power parity is accounted for, India generates only 40% as much coal power as China did. Solar makes up 9% of its energy, compared to “negligible” amounts for 2012 China. India is the world’s most populous country, with almost 1.45 billion people, and China is second, with 1.4 billion.

But solar isn’t the only reason India is on a different trajectory: Ember is one of several global energy watchers drawing attention to the role of zero-emission bikes and tuk-tuks — three-wheeled motorized rickshaws — in the country’s accelerating green shift.

India remains the world’s second-largest net oil importer, half of which is used for vehicles. But Ember suggests that use has nearly peaked, compared to China at the same economic stage. “Road transport oil demand per capita is significantly lower, thanks first to smaller, lighter vehicles and now to the rise of electric vehicles,” write Kingsmill Bond and Sumant Sinha. Altogether, India is using cheap electric technology to “industrialise without the long fossil detour taken by China and the West.” With the country eyeing zero emissions by 2070, further electrifying road vehicles through policies designed to boost ease of use and adoption will play a critical role.

India can’t follow the same net-zero pathways that Western nations have embraced by encouraging EV adoption – only 7.5% of Indians own four-wheel passenger cars. By 2030, the Indian government’s policy think tank NITI Aayog and the Colorado-headquartered Rocky Mountain Institute have projected that 80% of two- and three-wheeled vehicles sold in India could be electric, compared to 30% of private automobiles. The IEA calls electric two- and three-wheelers “the most affordable and accessible entry point into electric mobility.” Not only do they not require significant charging infrastructure, but many of these smaller EVs can easily charge using standard sockets.

Navigating roadblocks

But there are speed bumps. Public charging and battery-swap infrastructure lags in India, especially outside of major cities like Delhi. With only about 25,000 public charging stations and 2,600 battery-swapping kiosks nationwide as of last April, rapid development is needed to reach zero-emission-vehicle goals.

Last year, Cardiff University professor Peter Wells told Polytechnique Insights that India was “lagging behind its ambitions.” Sales figures tell only part of the story. For instance, though nearly 60% of new two-wheelers sold are electric, their overall share was still only 5% in 2024. (Electric three-wheelers are more prevalent, at 50%.) EV performance in India is also still new enough to leave unsettled questions that could affect widespread adoption. “Long charging times, high ownership costs, and limited range can increase the risks for business owners investing in this new technology,” Wells said.

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In an International Council on Clean Transportation report on electric two-wheelers, Zifei Yang writes that buyers “are generally highly price-sensitive and upfront cost is often the main factor in purchase decisions,” since two- and three-wheeled EVs still cost more than gasoline models. But, Yang adds, the five-year total cost of EV ownership is less in India than for their fossil-fuel-powered cousins thanks to “battery capacity-based subsidies provided by the central and some state governments” and lower sales tax on EVs.

Competition is lowering prices, and if manufacturer announcements play out, domestic production capacity will increase by 70%. If India keeps on track with its goals, these small electrified vehicles will help it leave peak oil in the rearview mirror.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist specializing in business and investigative reporting, as well as long-form features.

The post India’s many e-bikes and tuk-tuks are putting peak oil in sight appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Degrowthers want an economy that benefits many more than the few and where lifestyles are less dependent on earning capacity. They want an economy where bellies feel full of cheap, local food, where bodies feel stronger from universal healthcare, and where the world feels easier to navigate because common infrastructure like public transit is more abundant and accessible. It’s a world with fewer stresses.

Omer Tayyab, an ecological economist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, describes it as a shift to “public luxury and private sufficiency.” 

Degrowth offers a solution to not just a major economic problem, but a social one. For Matt Orsagh, of the Arketa Institute for Post-Growth Finance, the community focus is the selling point, as well as “less time working, more time for care, more time for your family.” 

An influential degrowth movement could help stitch back together some of society’s frayed social threads, those we read about in surveys where respondents admit to identifying less with their communities than in decades past. Any fix to the climate and economic crises we’re navigating will require people to see beyond their individual needs. This is part of what makes degrowth unique: it offers a pathway to not only mitigate climate change, but to help save the community-driven part of our nature that makes us human.

What might we give up to achieve this lofty vision? For starters, industries with disproportionately high resource use might feel worth sacrificing, depending on your lifestyle. For instance, 92 million tons of fast fashion enter landfills annually, to say nothing of the electricity and oil used to produce synthetic textiles. Or how about the private jet industry? It caters to a small swath of the global population, yet in 2023 it caused about 4% of all civil aviation emissions. The cruise ship industry is another natural target, along with other sectors associated with decadence and excess, which benefit or enrich a small portion of the population. 

Degrowth is also a call to scale back the sustained, upward economic growth our culture expects, from individual corporations up through entire economies. In a podcast interview, Jason Hickel, author of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, put it this way: we tend to see efficiencies as opportunities to expand production, rather than to right-size our economy.

The shift that degrowthers propose is the antithesis of the self-focused consumer culture and workaholic grind in which most of us are steeped – and that we may not be able to physically sustain.

There are also natural limits that perpetual growth necessarily confronts. Marie-Josée Privyk, a consultant who advises companies on their ESG disclosures, uses the example of setting up new renewable-power generation. “There aren’t enough resources to generate the infrastructure required to displace all the fossil energy we are consuming,” she says. The pivot to electric cars offers an example. Yes, they produce dramatically lower emissions than their gas-powered counterparts. But according to the MIT Climate Portal, mining lithium (a non-renewable resource) for electric car batteries can unleash up to 16 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. A degrowth approach might seek to reduce the number of cars on the road and invest in mass transit. 

Instead of trying to innovate our way out of crisis, a less technical approach might be necessary: a sharp cultural shift away from the consumption that propels our economic lives onward and upward and our collective mood downward.

For most of human history, we didn’t pursue growth in the way we do today. Wealth was a measure of success, but GDP became a global economic tool only 80 years ago. The more the economy grows, the greater the number of jobs and wealth. This creates resources that broadly improve the lives of citizens.

How the abundance agenda could unshackle the green economy

Along the way, the GDP yardstick has morphed into a different beast. “Now it’s tied up in our culture. It’s tied up in our politics, it’s tied up in our business, it’s tied up in our [retirement savings plans],” Orsagh says.

Degrowth, meanwhile, has a shorter history, taking its modern roots from the “décroissance” movement of early-2000s France. The idea took hold so strongly that former French president Nicolas Sarkozy enlisted Nobel-Prize-winning economists to head a commission that explored possible alternatives to GDP as a progress indicator. Degrowthers have many to choose from, ranging from health metrics like life expectancy or alternative indicators like the Sustainable Development Index or the World Happiness Report.

While in recent years the European Parliament, the European Union’s legislative body, has hosted two degrowth conferences, the movement has less clout in North America. That’s partly because, in Tayyab’s view, institutions like labour unions, environmentalist organizations and socialist parties are stronger in Europe, making their voices more powerful on the subject, and, in turn, making degrowth more viable. One of the leading voices in degrowth, Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, says EU countries make more space in their economies for noncommercial activities, which is, he told Foreign Policy, “already half-degrowth.”

“[Degrowth] is well established in Europe and finds resonance with similar ideas from the Global South like Buen Vivir (Latin America), Swara (India) and Ubuntu (Africa),” Tayyab says.

Since governments operate at scale and can leverage state institutions to achieve degrowth targets, Tayyab says this power is necessary for degrowth: “The problem is that our governments during the neoliberal era have become followers of markets rather than shaping them for the people they putatively serve.”

Creative defiance

The business world would also have to start reshaping itself for a degrowth economy, and the jury is out on how this will take shape. Some firms may keep similar models – like public health or transit agencies – while others may have to explore new business lines or corporate structures as they negotiate the balance between their own scale and profit, and the health of people and planet.

Another obstacle might be the “D-word” itself, with its negative prefix and all the attached gloomy presumptions, like the fears of austerity or Luddism that boosters say are extreme reactions. Degrowth is less a regression than a reallocation of economic energies, they argue. “There’s still going to be things that grow, but let’s not grow the things that are destroying us or life-support systems,” says Christopher F. Jones, a historian of environment, economics and energy at Arizona State University.

But degrowthers exist on a wide spectrum, and they advocate for a lot of different things. Politicians and business owners may, because of competing interests, draw their limits to keep political donors happy or preserve profits, but everyday boosters frame degrowth in their own image too.

Some supporters apply degrowth ideals with relative conservatism. The economy they want to live in might end up more like a steady-state economy, which values improvement over expansion and focuses on optimizing resources. Others take a more radical approach, pontificating on burning the capitalist system down and starting over in a socialist (if not communist) utopia. This reset strategy must be dismissed as it offers no real plan for incremental improvements. Lives improve only if and when utopia is found. Environmental crises and lifestyle challenges would compound in the meantime.

For a movement selling itself to a skeptical public, having wildly different visions of degrowth exist in the same conversation is a marketing nightmare. Conversations about degrowth sometimes conflate it with “doughnut economics,” a regenerative economic model designed to account for environmental limits. Shaped like the pastry, the doughnut model has an inner ring of basic human needs but with the ecological ceiling as the outer ring, finding a balance in the space between for the well-being of people and planet. Degrowth boosters also increasingly use “postgrowth” and “degrowth” interchangeably, despite them previously being treated as more distinct concepts.

Orsagh, who writes a newsletter on degrowth but whose institute has “postgrowth” in the title, sees the former as a tool to get to the latter. “Degrowth isn’t a replacement for capitalism,” he says. “It’s what the path is to whatever comes next.”

North America represents a final frontier of sorts for degrowth. “In Canada, there doesn’t yet exist a strong enough political force that can articulate these demands,” Tayyab says.

Even so, in some niche areas, degrowth policies are taking hold in Canada and abroad – mostly related to reducing the time spent at work.

The right to disconnect, a policy that allows employees to ignore work-related emails and calls outside of their contracted hours, is one example of the trend. In Canada, it is already law in Ontario for firms with 25 or more employees. The federal government may soon enforce such a law for regulated industries, such as banking. At least a dozen nations have versions of similar regulations on the books.

Four-day workweeks and universal basic income, two other policies in this vein, are also increasingly becoming part of economic conversations, shifting away from traditional ideas of growth, productivity and work–life balance. Multiple countries, Canada included, explored basic income supports through a suite of emergency benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were successful in untangling the ability to live with dignity from labour value and lifting people from poverty. In Canada, the percentage of Canadians living in poverty dropped from 10.3% in 2019 to 6.4% in 2020. One analysis found the assistance sufficient to move a single person out of poverty even in pricey Toronto. Such pandemic relief also led to record low poverty in the United States in 2023. Both countries lost this momentum after the policies lapsed, with rates creeping up.

Jones, who recently authored The Invention of Infinite Growth, thinks promoting the idea of a well-being economy, instead of hammering against GDP, can help degrowth make inroads. “Not every culture has to define well-being the same way, but everyone could agree we want to pursue it,” he says.

It’s an idealistic future to hope for, but that isn’t a criticism. Degrowth may be at odds with today’s economy, but it’s not necessarily at odds with a world we’d enjoy living in or one where we make faster progress toward tackling the climate crisis. It may seem disconnected from reality, but that’s a failure of imagination, and imagination is precisely what we need to move forward – to look at what we have at our disposal and get creative, rather than push it any further beyond its limits.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist specializing in business and investigative reporting, as well as long-form features.

The post Why the degrowth movement thinks it can do abundance better appeared first on Corporate Knights.

If you haven’t heard about abundance yet, you probably will. The concept is having a moment and shaping policy discussions in North America and around the world. Titles like Klein and Thompson’s, Yoni Appelbaum’s Stuck and Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works all make versions of the same case. 

Abundance is starting to step off the bookstore shelf, igniting policy discussion forums at think tanks and universities. In September, more than 120 U.S. local politicians formed Abundance Elected to mould future local political leaders in the concept’s image.

Listen to any podcasts discussing abundance (themselves abundant) and critical realities are often glossed over. Innovations rarely take hold overnight, and some big swings will spectacularly fail. Abundance is often inscrutably clouded in start-up speak and the dynamic postures and sky’s-the-limit potential of aspiring Elon Musks pitching to venture capitalists. Financial speculators can take a punt on whatever risky start-up they want; it’s their dime. But for reimagining society, politicians and business leaders need to focus on concrete issues, not vibes. It is necessary to sell the sizzle and the lab-grown steak.

Abundance proponents suggest that a sizable amount of the scarcity we live with is born of assessments, bureaucratic processes and regulations. For example, the International Energy Agency estimates that around 1,650 gigawatts of clean energy capacity in advanced development stages is waiting to be connected to the grid. By reducing barriers, we can spur innovation, fight climate change, grow the economy and live our best lives. 

Though abundance is a more-is-more policy, the growth it inspires is not indiscriminate. “They want growth in very specific areas: growth in climate technology, growth in scientific discovery, growth in housing stock that allows people to live in cities,” says Christopher F. Jones, a historian of environment, economics and energy at Arizona State University. Though Jones disagrees with some of the key arguments the book makes, he says this focus makes abundance “different and more subtle” than simply chasing gross domestic product.

While talking heads sell abundance as new, in some respects it’s not radically different from the economic system we already have. Abundance is pro-business, friendly to entrepreneurs and new entrants, and it doesn’t sideline traditional metrics like GDP growth and job creation. It is a maximalist creed that caters to desires people have for the latest tech and enjoying lives of leisure, if we can step out of our own way.

In their telling, scientists, clean energy companies and real estate developers are sitting idle like cars at a red light, waiting for it to turn green so they can solve problems like illness, climate change and scarce housing. One example is the COVID-19 vaccine. Creating a working vaccine in short order required the U.S. government to launch Operation Warp Speed (OWS), reducing red tape for drug approval, investing in research, and collaborating with corporate America to get jabs in arms. Klein and Thompson point to the speed and effectiveness of OWS as an example of what abundance-style thinking leads to.

The crises spread plainly before us – climate and housing especially – add urgency to this narrative. “We either build faster or accept catastrophe,” they write. 

Fewer restrictions, more big swings

In Canada, we build slow. In a recent podcast appearance, Prime Minister Mark Carney advocated changing the federal government’s approach to green-lighting and regulation, shifting “from why to how” when it comes to major projects. For example, it’s not unheard of for projects facing federal environmental assessments such as interprovincial transmission lines, hydropower or railways to expect the process to take years. And a review from Blakes law firm says the climate of environmental regulations in Canada is growing stricter, rather than more relaxed. Meanwhile, Europe is dramatically simplifying its climate reporting standards for companies to boost competitiveness.

According to the abundance crowd, the reflex to keep tightening environmental rules has become an anachronism. As the toll of our activities on the planet shocked the public in the 1960s and 1970s and led them to demand change from those in power, the price for building green became building slowly. It served us then, but boosters of abundance suggest these regulations now prevent us from building and innovating enough, and the costs and time delays have become if not discouraging, prohibitive. With fewer restrictions and more big swings, the growth we realize, in theory, could go on forever.

Yet keeping lifestyles robust and expanding the economy – even with pure and green aims – is at odds with the more penitent, scaled-back approach that critics say the climate and ecological crises demand.

Consider the expected growth of AI use, powered by electricity-intensive data centres. The World Economic Forum estimates that globally such centres will use more power than Japan by 2030. An abundance argument doesn’t demand a societal pivot away from AI tech, or disincentivize the industry – it switches it to green energy, so we can have our cake and eat it too. At least to a certain point.

“When confronting the reality of infinite growth and resource consumption on a finite planet, they resort to hand-waving it away via techno-optimism: the belief that new technologies will overcome resource constraints,” says Matt Orsagh, co-founder of the Arketa Institute for Post-Growth Finance.

If abundance’s central problem is society not flexing its innovation muscles enough, there’s another critical dilemma alongside it. Have we pushed the limits of our ecosystem too far with pollutants and resource extraction, and if not, how much further can we morally and physically go?

Who benefits?

Abundance harkens to David Potter’s mid-20th-century “people of plenty” concept, which suggested that Americans defined themselves by the economic abundance that shaped their lives and coloured national character after the Second World War. It ushered in a new prosperity for many, in those less regulated days, even if key ingredients in examples of the time included exploitative practices (like extensive rail lines built using poorly paid immigrant labour) today’s society wouldn’t accept.

Abundance proponents suggest we can all benefit under a wide economic umbrella. But Jones says that Klein and Thompson focus too much on urban audiences in Abundance and that policies that concentrate too keenly on cities might leave behind low- and middle-income rural residents. Omer Tayyab, an ecological economist at the University of Barcelona’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, notes that the United States is already a wealthy country per capita yet chooses not to distribute the wealth. “Having a more deregulated system, even if it were to produce more, wouldn’t necessarily mean that the most vulnerable are uplifted,” he says.

Then there is the trust question. In an abundance society, political leaders will decide where to focus deregulation and growth opportunities. Business people will choose how to innovate in ways that make society more plentiful, which may not always bless their bottom lines. Yet we’re in an era unconducive to trusting these groups to reform in the best interests of the hoi polloi. Earlier this year, Angus Reid polled liberal and conservative Canadians to see what groups they trusted. Both overwhelmingly have a “great deal or fair amount of trust” in scientists. Political leaders, big businesses and large tech companies scored low.

Rebuilding public trust will be critical to chasing an abundance agenda in the United States. Recent polling suggests Democrats respond more favourably to populist rather than abundance-coded messages.

Mark Carney: Abundance bro?

Abundance policy offerings are scarce in Canada. Provincial governments in Alberta and Ontario have successfully won mandates with promises to trim red tape, but fixes have mostly been small, mundane bureaucratic processes rather than at-scale fixes to unlock abundance. Tariff threats, lagging productivity and failure to commercialize innovation make abundance a timely concern.

Canada’s 2025 election polls showed that Canadians were worried about the country’s relationship with the United States, housing affordability and cost of living. Abundance policies align with these concerns, but the connection has to be explicitly drawn by lawmakers. 

As a centrist liberal politician, Mark Carney aligns ideologically with the dominant view of abundance circulating in society. But suggestions from columnists and other wonks that he is an abundance politician conflates abundance with willingness to build. Case in point: Build Canada Homes. The new federal entity has a goal of increasing home construction in Canada, and Liberals have promoted it using abundance language. Carney recently announced initial funding of $13 billion and the construction of 4,000 new homes on six sites across the country.

But abundance is meant to unleash tools we have at the ready. The goals of Build Canada Homes, though promoted in abundance-speak, are heavily predicated on advanced prefab technology that isn’t at scale yet, plus Canada lacks the construction workforce to build this influx of homes.

Mike Moffatt, an economist with the Missing Middle Initiative, points to the Federal Housing Accelerator fund as another example of abundance-flavoured policymaking to address the housing crisis. The $4.4-billion purse is directed at helping municipalities increase housing stock faster, tying approval to outcomes like increasing density and growing supply faster than historical averages. What separates it from status quo thinking is not only the big vision, but a program designed to outpace current expectations for housing growth and the willingness to change regulatory habits to make it happen.

It’s too early to tell if the abundance movement will take itself, as one advocacy group puts it, “from op-eds to outcomes.” But interesting times call for solutions that meet the moment. Our culture of regulation has led to a point where many feel society is stagnant and regulations are preventing us from thriving. Abundance represents a clear break from this history. If making inroads on housing, climate change and more bountiful lives is really only a matter of turning red lights to green, perhaps it’s time to finally start making the switch.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist specializing in business and investigative reporting, as well as long-form features.

The post How the abundance agenda could unshackle the green economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But the Cambridge, Ontario, resident is “constantly evaluating” all her family’s consumer choices, she says. They watch how they shop and invest, but it wasn’t until last year, while attending an online class with financial consultant and podcaster Tim Nash, that Graham started thinking about the environmental and social impacts of the money in her chequing account. “I have been interested in sustainable investing for over 10 years but had never really thought about the money that wasn’t invested,” she says.

Since banks and credit unions lend about 20 times more funds than they hold in deposits, where we choose to bank has ripple effects, like any other consumer choice. While big banks lend to fossil fuel companies and other “sin” industries, money lent by credit unions stays in communities, supporting neighbours and local businesses.

Credit unions are also greener than big banks, with smaller footprints and outsized sustainability initiatives. “Credit unions can utilize their influence to facilitate a just [green energy] transition by supporting their members and local businesses in reducing their emissions,” writes Helen Tooze, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, in a 2023 report. Several credit unions already do this by offering lower-interest-rate loans for energy-efficient home renovations. Other Canadian credit unions, such as Vancity, Coast Capital and southwestern Ontario’s Libro Credit Union, have achieved B Corp certification – a designation that for-profit companies can attain if they meet high social and environmental standards, which no major Canadian consumer bank has attained.

The last time North American credit unions saw a major influx of new customers was on November 5, 2011, when about 40,000 people in the United States reportedly fled their banks to protest a monthly debit card fee at Bank of America. But no mass movement to credit unions exists today, with growth in Canada stagnating despite committing to positive environmental, social and governance practices. The big banks dominate about 90% of financial services in Canada.

It’s usually not that they’re eager to run to a credit union. It’s usually that they are eager to run away from their bank.

—Tim Nash, founder, Good Investing

For the past decade, observers and the industry itself have warned that the main body of credit union members is aging, and the next generation isn’t filling their place at the same rate. When younger people make the switch, it’s because big banks have financial links that don’t reflect their values, such as to fossil fuels, weapons manufacturing and the war in Gaza. “It’s usually not that they’re eager to run to a credit union,” Nash says. “It’s usually that they are eager to run away from their bank.”

A BDO Canada survey of 35 executives and other managers at Canadian credit unions reported expanding their member base as the second top challenge after “optimizing customer experience.”

Some industry publications suggest that the way to attract younger members is with flashy tech and modernization, but others say an analog, feelings-focused message could have a bigger effect. As a group of McKinsey financial services consultants put it in 2024, the trick might be highlighting the “credit unions’ history of commitment to social impact” and tying this to values consumers are trying to live by.

Making the connection

The first North American credit union opened in 1900 and was pioneered by Alphonse Desjardins, a Quebec journalist and stenographer. He wanted to offer working-class families affordable access to credit, combatting rapacious interest rates flogged by other lenders.

Today there are about 400 credit unions in Canada, ranging from large, full-service organizations with flashy marketing and dozens of branches to single outlets with a handful of employees. But in a noisy market full of traditional banks and emerging fintech companies like Wealthsimple, there’s more competition than ever.

“Credit unions do talk about their ESG bona fides,” says Chris Atchison of Shockwave Strategic Communications, a firm that frequently works on accounting and finance ad campaigns. “But they just don’t have the same marketing machines behind them that the big banks do.” The mission for shareholder-owned banks is to earn profit, he points out, so the marketing push is more aggressive than at credit unions, where cooperative-based sustainable growth is the priority. 

Read more from our collective economy series

Cooperative housing is making a comeback

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

The return of the collective economy

What Canada can learn from co-op power in the rural United States 

Another challenge is inertia. Most Canadians with traditional banks say they are satisfied with their banks, but Nilesh Kavia of Saskatoon-headquartered Affinity Credit Union says credit union members have higher satisfaction rates. A recent Canadian Credit Union Association survey found that 84% of credit union members rate their financial well-being as good or very good, compared to 78% of non-members. 

Kavia says that family is a key factor influencing the youth market: young people frequently stick with the bank their parents choose for them. And new immigrants, who tend to skew younger, have a “familiarity gap” with the concept of a credit union, he says.

Maria Phillips, marketing director at London, Ontario–headquartered Libro Credit Union, says the bank knows that younger generations want to see themselves reflected in the brands they trust. “That’s why we’ve shifted to featuring real Libro members in our marketing – showcasing the individuals and communities we serve,” she says. 

Success through social purpose

“Credit unions tend to attract an older crowd and – similar to churches – have struggled to redefine their value proposition to a younger generation as our membership ages,” says Sam Herscovitch of Coast Capital, a British Columbia credit union with 52 branches. Coast Capital launched a plan in 2020 to refresh the credit union, which included an additional focus on attracting new millennial and Gen Z members. To achieve this, the financial cooperative shifted to what it calls a “social purpose” business model, which focuses on helping members grow their incomes and financial opportunities. This includes financial education tailored to young clients and offering discounted or free services for students and members under 25. It also includes investing in community employment programs for female newcomers and young people with disabilities. Herscovitch says the efforts are paying off. “In 2024, 52% of new members were under the age of 35.”

For her part, Julie Graham closed her accounts at two other banks and opened a new one at a nearby regional credit union branch. She considers it low-hanging fruit compared to other consumer decisions she tried to align with her family’s values. “It seemed to be a very easy decision to make.” Next up? Setting up accounts for her husband and eventually her daughter, and enjoying the peace of mind that she’s putting her money where her values are.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist specializing in business and investigative reporting, as well as long-form features.

The post How credit unions are pushing a just energy transition appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Across the world, goals are being set to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigate global warming. Figuring out the best way to meet these targets involves a lot of trial and error, and no jurisdiction yet has developed a magic formula. In Canada, so far, addressing our own ambitious targets hasn’t come easily.

In 2015, the International Energy Agency was critical of Canada’s climate approaches, and a recent report offered a dire forecast. Meanwhile, a 2018 report from the independent Climate Action Tracker rates Canada’s progress as “highly insufficient.” “Canada must significantly enhance both its NDC [nationally determined contribution] and its proposed level of climate action to get onto an emissions pathway compatible with the Paris Agreement,” it reads in part.

With high-profile setbacks like repeals of the cap-and-trade system and electric vehicle (EV) incentives in Ontario, and the federal carbon pricing system facing opposition from some provinces, it’s time to mitigate the damage and make up for lost time.

A recipe for climate success may lie in just three sectors – electricity generation, residential and commercial buildings, and transportation. Collectively, these areas emit almost 50 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gases, according to the Government of Canada. In comparison, the country’s oil and gas industry makes up about 25 per cent.

By making a few smart but modest changes in these three sectors, applying best practices from other jurisdictions, Canada could eliminate up to 91 million tonnes of CO2e annually by 2025, roughly halfway to meeting the country’s 2030 climate goal pledged in the Paris Agreement.

Here’s a look at some best practices within these areas that could be blended into Canada’s action plan.

COAL PHASE-OUT BY 2025 AND RENEWABLES AUCTIONS

Capital Power chief executive Brian Vaasjo leads the only domestic company to win a contract in Alberta’s first round of renewables auctions. Based on varied incentives at the company’s power generators across Canada and the U.S., he knows the success of utilities sometimes comes at a cost.

“An outstanding jurisdiction for us might not necessarily be the best one for consumers,” says Vaasjo. But Alberta’s renewable energy plan is a good one for both parties, he says, because while the consumer takes on less risk than the renewable builder, both still benefit.

The widely-lauded first-round auction in December 2017 offered four contracts to increase the province’s renewable generation capacity, and it came in under budget. In 2016, a renewables procurement in Ontario came in at $85 per MWh but Alberta’s auction netted an average of $37 per MWh, competitive with what it costs to run an existing coal-fired plant and a fraction of what it costs to build a new fossil fuel powered plant. The auction was successful enough that new rounds quickly followed.

While 80.6 per cent of Canada’s electricity in 2016 was generated from non-emitting sources, the remaining one-fifth, sourced from coal, oil, diesel and natural gas, accounted for all emissions in this sector. Across Canada, coal power is expected to be non-existent by 2030 but it still has a significant presence in provinces like Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.

Moving the coal phaseout up to 2025 would open up a gap that renewables auctions could fill without hitting people’s pocketbooks too hard. Guaranteeing a certain revenue level through auctions, as Alberta is doing, allows developers to finance projects. At stake? Reducing emissions from electricity generation by up to 48 million tonnes of CO2e annually by 2025.

NET-ZERO BUILDING CODE AND PACE FINANCING

Graeme Huguet, owner of Vancouver-area My House Design Build, is used to building homes to greener standards. As Canada makes the pivot from passive buildings to net zero ones, his company has constructed at least 12 homes that are considered “net zero ready,” meaning the build is ultra-efficient with up to 80 per cent better energy efficiency than most standard homes.

By adding a renewable energy source like solar panels, the home could become Net Zero, with 100 per cent better efficiency than most standard homes – producing all the energy the home needs.

British Columbia’s Energy Step Code, an incremental plan to make buildings net-zero energy ready by 2032, and Vancouver’s building code, which features adaptability requirements and higher environmental standards, make Greater Vancouver one of the most exacting jurisdictions in the country for building and renovating homes.

According to Bob de Wit, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, at minimum it could result in spending an additional $5,000 to $7,500 per unit for early steps. But over time, applying the strictest standards could mean spending up to an additional $55,000 per unit. According to Natural Resources Canada, 25 per cent of floor space in 2030 will be built between now and then, meaning homebuilders are going to feel the pinch.

“They’re getting something for that value,” Huguet says, referring to energy efficiency savings or resale value, but “the more stipulations, steps and regulations, the more expensive the project becomes.”

That’s where so-called PACE financing has emerged as a solution. PACE financing is a financial instrument where a loan is made for green improvements and then paid back over a long-term period with a slight increase in property taxes. Building owners benefit because they can start realizing energy savings right away, with low interest rates paid back on the loan. Private lenders make a return as well.

It’s not yet universally adopted, but PACE programs in states like California and Connecticut have shown what a well-run system can accomplish.

“It leads to projects happening that would not in the past just because the financing terms are so attractive,” says Mackey Dykes, vice president of commercial and industrial programs at the Connecticut Green Bank. Dykes points out that since the launch of PACE financing in 2015, the bank has financed over 200 commercial building projects, which represents over $130 million in financing. The impact? About US$220 million in energy savings over the life of the projects, not to mention the associated greenhouse gas reductions. That’s in a state of just under 3.6 million people.

In California, a state similar in population to Canada, as of this summer, residential PACE projects alone were projected to reduce CO2e emissions by 4.7 million tonnes.

With PACE financing initiatives under consideration in Alberta, British Columbia and Halifax, Nova Scotia, these jurisdictions are positioned to benefit from a late-mover advantage, much as Connecticut did. The state now boasts one of America’s leading PACE programs.

“We were able to learn from the mistakes, what worked and didn’t work, from other jurisdictions and I think really for the first time to make all the pieces click,” says Dykes.

In Canada, greater efficiency in new and existing commercial and residential buildings could reduce building emissions by 18 million tonnes of CO2e by 2025.

ZERO-EMISSION VEHICLE MANDATES

Hugo Jeanson, co-owner of Bourgeois Chevrolet in Rawdon, Quebec, is one of the leading EV dealers in the province. While an $8,000 government rebate for electric vehicles helps convert customers to zero- and low-emission vehicles, it’s only part of the equation of why his customers make the switch, he says. Ultimately, the desire to save money on fuel and maintenance costs looms large. “They want to pay for the car and that’s it.”

Starting with the 2018 model year, Quebec implemented a cap-and-trade quota system where zero-emission vehicles must now make up a minimum 3.5 per cent of all vehicles a manufacturer sells in the province. China, where half the world’s EVs are sold, is launching a quota equivalent to 10 per cent of annual sales in January 2019.
 Daniel Sperling of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, says quotas are as important for the symbolic value as for the actual impact on both car companies and consumers.

He adds major car companies have made investments in developing EV technology. “It’s just really a question of how fast they roll them out and at what scale,” he says. Quotas “[tell] the auto industry ‘it’s time to start selling.’” General Motors is even taking a hands-on role, publicly supporting a national quota in the United States.

But value-added perks for EV drivers, small as they may seem, also play a large role in encouraging adoption. “In Quebec we have advantages like a few bridges that are free when you have a green plate,” says Jeanson. “You can go on a commuter lane even if you’re alone.”

Aggressive zero-emission vehicle quotas for passenger and freight vehicles in Canada could mean eliminating 25 million tonnes of CO2e from the atmosphere by 2025.

None of these measures exist in a vacuum. New transmission capacity will be required to integrate additional renewables onto the grid, for instance, and an entire army of contractors and developers will need to be trained in order to green Canada’s building sector. But these policies offer some of the best prospects for accelerating deployment of cost-effective technologies to make Canada a cleaner, more competitive economy while taking the country a long way toward the climate goals it committed to under the Paris Agreement.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist and editor of Great Canadian Longform.

The post A new recipe for climate success appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As the Alberta government took its first steps towards a planned 30 per cent reliance on renewable electricity by 2030, it scored an early victory: the province had received bids with the lowest energy prices in Canada. The average figure of $37 per megawatt-hour (MWh) came from four successful bids for 600 MW worth of new wind power projects. Even with an additional 200 MW over the initial 400 MW goal, the auction still came in under budget. This further burnished Alberta’s recent reputation as a climate leader in Canada under the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley.

“The one big thing that stands out is the price it came in at,” says Binnu Jeyakumar, program director of electricity at the Pembina Institute. Even though wind power has been dropping in price across the globe, Canada hadn’t yet reached any superlatives.

Mexico, on the other hand, received the lowest price for wind – $17 per MWh. In 2016, a large-scale renewables procurement in Ontario came in at $85 per MWh. Now Alberta was the undisputed domestic price leader in the electricity market.

“That caught everyone’s attention across the country of all political stripes and all provinces,” Jeyakumar says. Even the NDP’s opposition, the United Conservative Party, as well as the centrist Alberta Party have expressed some interest in renewable electricity as part of their party line.

Affordability and the potential for job creation in rural areas have endeared renewable electricity to conservative politicians in a new way. Jeyakumar points out that south of the border, the 10 congressional districts producing the most wind energy, for example, are represented by Republicans in Congress. “It shows that it’s a sound economic decision regardless of your political stripes.”

As Alberta looks to phase out coal-fired power plants, another goal to be achieved by 2030, affordability of alternatives is key. Without coal, most of the province’s 70 per cent of non-renewable electricity will be gas, making prices especially volatile to market changes.

“As coal is shut down, if you replace most of it permanently with gas that means that both your heating bill as well as your electricity bill, in provinces like Alberta, would be really tied to the price of gas,” says Jeyakumar. “Renewables can help hedge against that.” Natural gas-fired plants, while producing substantially lower carbon dioxide emissions than existing coal plants, also continue to be a source of greenhouse gases.

Jeyakumar calls the results of the procurement process the “new Alberta advantage,” in reference to the nickname given to the low taxes and high-quality services into which the province invested oil and gas royalties during the boom years. Alberta’s “new” advantage, however, has renewables at its core.

Implementing the renewables projects is expected to mean at least a $10.5 billion investment into Alberta’s economy by 2030 with at least 7,200 related jobs created. Jeyakumar envisions quality of life spinoffs too: jobs and tax revenues flowing into non-urban centres and infrastructure investments, such as high-speed internet, which is required to run a wind facility but doesn’t yet exist in many of Alberta’s rural corners.

Wind has a moment

Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, said his industry peers like to talk about how wind is the cheapest source of non-emitting power generation. But now he feels comfortable going further.

“I think the results in Alberta demonstrate that wind is actually the lowest cost source of generation, period,” he says.

The low prices are tied to the competitive market auction system in Alberta that was used to accept bids. It had never been used in Canada for large-scale renewables procurement before, though some markets like Mexico and portions of the U.S. are reliant on it.

In the first procurement round, bidders offered the lowest price they’d accept on a 20-year energy contract for their proposed projects. The lowest bids won. In practice, if their bid price falls lower than the market price of electricity during the contract, then the firm must pay the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) the difference. In the inverse situation, the AESO pays the firm the difference out of the province’s carbon levy. This allows the process to be heavily derisked for both parties.

Despite the procurement being platform neutral, there was little surprise that wind contracts would win the first round, especially given the global decline in wind energy prices. A November 2017 report from financial advisory firm Lazard states that the levelized cost of energy for wind has declined by almost 70 per cent since 2009.

To achieve the most out of the process, however, there will eventually have to be a greater focus on value than cost, which could include considerations for electricity storage, combined-cycle plants and ushering solar power generation into the mix.

Southern Alberta is the sunniest location in Canada and the provincial government has already taken a bet on solar energy. Last summer it launched a program that provides rebates for solar panels on homes and businesses. Experts like Jeremy Barretto, a lawyer in Osler’s environmental, regulatory and aboriginal law group, have argued that utility-scale solar in Alberta offers unique benefits – such as generating power closer to when and where people use it – that were not reflected in the first renewables procurements.

The value vs cost dilemma

Blake Shaffer, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Calgary, says the heavy focus on cost in the procurements presents a potential problem. As the province adjusts its energy infrastructure to complement the procured renewables, there needs to be diversity in where they’re located and what kind of energy they produce.

Shaffer points out that there’s a lot of potential for overtaking gas generators if renewables prices hold. He says that when we reach at least parity, or can go below it, we have the opportunity to switch over existing energy sources to help reach renewables targets and save money.

“(At current wind prices) it’s probably going to be worth something around offsetting the running cost of fuel of a marginal gas generator for at least 10 to 20 years, (if) that fuel cost is probably anywhere between $25 and $40.”

But this requires a system that can meet the demand. One way he sees this happening is by boosting interconnection with other provinces. “Alberta’s going to have raw energy in the form of intermittent wind whereas B.C. has an abundance of dispatchable hydro,” Shaffer says. It may also represent an efficient way to avoid a reliance on wind, he adds.

Part of hedging with a “value” portfolio instead of a “cost” portfolio is to avoid geographic concentration of power sources, especially wind. “You have more of a likelihood of it being worth less because it’s going to blow at the same time,” he says. “You’ve got to have diversity.”

Being required to connect to current power grid infrastructure, for instance, adds a layer of difficulty to diversifying. So far, the projects selected through the process are all in close proximity in southern Alberta: two in the Pincher Creek area and two further east near Medicine Hat.

Another way to ensure that the new sources of renewable electricity are meeting demand is through procurements that combine renewables plus storage. In jurisdictions like Ontario, variability from renewables has required peaker gas plants to sit on standby for the vast majority of the year. While prices for renewables plus storage are still higher than building new gas plants, costs have plummeted in recent years across the U.S.

“I can’t see a reason why we should ever build a gas peaker again in the U.S. after, say, 2025,” said Shayle Kann, a senior adviser to GTM Research and Wood Mackenzie, at an Energy Storage Summit last December.

Regulators recently suspended work on a gas peaker plant in Oxnard, California, after an analysis determined that alternatives would be cheaper. A request for Colorado-based proposals put out by utility Xcel Energy last year resulted in median bids for a wind project at $18.10 per MWh; the median for wind plus storage came in at $21, only three dollars higher.

For other provinces, the biggest takeaway from the auction was the value of having competitive bidding and basically removing all the commodity price risk from the developer. While in Alberta, the auction rewarded participants who had low costs, the elements rewarded differ across the country. In Ontario, for instance, there was consideration of community impact and Indigenous participation which resulted in different types of bids to meet these goals.

Jeyakumar insists that, by the fourth and fifth renewables procurements, there will need to be a framework in place to promote portfolio diversification. That day might arrive faster than we think.

In February, the Alberta government announced two new parallel rounds of procurement building upon the success of the first. The second round has a target of 300 MW and features an Indigenous equity requirement while the third round features a 400 MW target. Results from both rounds are expected this December.

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