Here’s a look at how protectionist measures are pushing countries into walled markets that limit the flow of low-cost clean technologies:

Since 2020, countries around the world have implemented nearly 200 trade policies targeting clean energy, compared to only 40 in the five years before.

Close to 40% of those trade measures were protectionist, and 70% targeted three technologies: solar power, batteries and electric vehicles.

China dominates all three of those sectors, and almost half of its vehicle exports are now electric.

The United States has imposed a 100% tariff on those EVs and raised its tariff on Chinese solar to 50%.

Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization says that non-tariff restrictions are on the rise and they can be up to 10 times more restrictive than tariffs.

All these barriers are changing the flow of green goods: 31% of China’s cleantech exports now go to emerging markets, up from 23% in 2022.

To circumvent trade restrictions and tap new markets, Chinese firms have pledged more than US$210 billion for overseas green manufacturing since 2022.

From the spring 2026 edition of the magazine

Sources: Net Zero Policy Lab, International Energy Association, OECD, WTO, BloombergNEF

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Suzlon Group is a renewable-energy provider headquartered in Pune, India, with wind projects in approximately 17 countries. In January, Suzlon announced that it had secured a 248.85-megawatt wind power order from the global steel giant ArcelorMittal Group. The deal is part of a larger US$900-million investment in clean energy across a series of projects across Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Together, they combine 250 megawatts of wind power, 736 megawatts of solar power, and 800 megawatt-hours of battery storage and are set to double ArcelorMittal’s renewable-energy capacity in India to two gigawatts by 2028. Collectively, they are expected to cut roughly 1.59 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Steel production makes up about 12% of India’s carbon dioxide emissions. For every tonne of steel made domestically, around 2.55 tonnes of carbon dioxide are released, roughly 38% higher than the global industry average of 1.85 tonnes. India’s steel industry is responsible for around 240 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, a figure expected to double by 2030.

Adding renewables makes a difference, but it doesn’t fundamentally alter the equation for the steel industry. Suzlon’s wind projects cut electricity-related emissions, also known as Scope 2, which come from the power that steel facilities buy from the grid. They don’t replace the actual blast furnaces that account for the bulk of steel’s direct, on-site emissions, or Scope 1. That gap sits at the heart of debates over what qualifies as “green steel.”

To cut emissions further, steelmakers can incorporate carbon capture technology and use low- or zero-carbon fuels alongside recycled steel, but ultimately, they need an alternative to blast furnaces. Electric arc furnaces powered by renewable energy provide an answer, but they rely on recycling scrap for a primary source of iron, and building them demands huge upfront investment, so they’ve been slow to scale. Today, a little over a quarter of global steel production comes from electric arc furnaces.

The lack of a shared definition of “green steel” allows companies to make environmental claims without substantial emission reductions. With no widely accepted framework, green steel is vulnerable to misleading marketing.

Governments are starting to write their own definitions into law. India was among the first, adopting an official definition in December 2024. The European Union is working on its own standards for low-emissions steel under upcoming green product rules. In the United States, federal programs now steer public purchasing toward low-carbon steel, and proposed legislation would support new steel plants aligned with the criteria set by ResponsibleSteel, an international sustainability standard for the industry.

According to Ysanne Choksey of Agora Energiewende, a German think tank, regulatory frameworks serve as critical benchmarks for assessing whether steel producers are genuinely meeting climate standards. What the industry needs are rules that direct investments into low-carbon technologies. Weak standards risk enabling greenwashing, allowing companies to label products as “green” without making the capital investments necessary to decarbonize their operations.

Akshaya Krishnan is a journalist in North York, Ontario.

With files by Alexandre Paquet.

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The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has quietly released an update to its rules that allows companies to set significantly less ambition near-term goals. The move will likely enable more companies to set SBTi-approved targets but also raises questions about the alignment between the organization and climate science.

Until this month, companies setting SBTi goals using the organization’s general-purpose rules were required to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions – those from direct operations and electricity purchases – by at least 4.2% annually between 2020 and 2030. For emissions elsewhere in the company’s value chain, known as Scope 3, a minimum 2.5% annual cut was required.

As 2030 nears, companies wanting to set their first SBTi targets were therefore being asked to commit to increasingly steep – and in some cases, unrealistic – near-term reductions. That burden was eased on April 14, when the SBTi released an appendix to its Corporate Net-Zero Standard that describes how companies can spread reductions between now and their net-zero target year, which is typically 2050.

The impact on companies that set new targets and use 2025 as a baseline will be dramatic. Under the old rules, a reduction of around 42% in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 was required. That has now fallen to 21% for some companies, according to sustainability consultants who have assessed the impact of the new rules. Required Scope 3 cuts went from more than 20% to around 15%.

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Achievable targets

“This reopens the conversation for organizations that may have had no way forward with SBTi under the previous standard,” says Erin Williamson at sustainability and energy consultancy Trio, which helps clients in pharmaceutical, automotive and other sectors set targets. She estimates that five to 10 companies she works with had recently walked away from the SBTi process because of the steep emissions cuts the old rules required.

Other consultants echo Williamson’s take on the move, but several also have concerns about how the change was announced. Companies with commitments that have not yet been validated by the SBTi were notified by email, but a broader announcement was not made until April 29. More importantly, the change was not signalled in advance, despite the fact that it cannot be applied retrospectively.

“I can imagine it’s going to be incredibly frustrating if you just submitted, especially if you really struggled to get buy-in for that target and it felt really ambitious,” says Claire Taylor, a senior associate at the U.K.-based Carbon Trust, which helps organizations transition to net-zero.

Alignment with the science

The move also raises questions about the SBTi’s alignment with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendations on limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C of warming, which require a 43% reduction in global emissions by 2030. The SBTi’s net-zero standard is designed to align Scope 1 and 2 targets with this science.

“Companies must set near-term science-based targets to roughly halve emission [sic] before 2030,” the SBTi states on its homepage for the net-zero standard. “This is the most effective, scientifically-sound way of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.”

An SBTi spokesperson told Trellis that the level of ambition enshrined in the net-zero standard is unchanged and that companies are still required to commit to reaching net-zero by 2050. Nonetheless, the update means SBTi-validated businesses can have greater emissions during the earlier stages of that journey. Those cumulative emissions will make the 1.5°C goal, which many already consider out of reach, even harder to hit.

“We are still talking about 1.5°C-aligned targets,” says Pierre-Victor Morales-Aubry, also at the Carbon Trust. The underlying assumption behind the naming, he adds, is that warming will be limited to 1.5°C if everyone sets and hits the target. “And that might no longer be true.”

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Affordable.

Onshore wind and utility‑scale solar photovoltaic installations are now substantially cheaper than new fossil fuel plants almost everywhere in the world. With voters broadly ranking economic concerns and energy costs above climate, cost is a key part of the new low-carbon lexicon.

Secure.

Renewables rely on international supply chains for set-up, but once installed they use freely available local resources like sunlight, wind and ground-source heat, which makes them less vulnerable to the sorts of market volatility that afflict fossil fuels.

Resilient.

A grid that is dependent on a mix of renewable sources, rather than exclusively on fossil fuels, can better withstand shocks. That’s why Ukraine, for example, has pivoted to wind and solar rather than large power plants to avoid major outages from Russian attacks.

Advanced.

Rather than positioning renewables as climate-positive, the sector is increasingly describing its products as modern, high-tech and cutting edge. Worldwide, renewables have received twice as much investment as other power sources, which increases competition and strengthens.

Efficient.

Combustion technologies also lose most of their fuel energy as heat, converting only about 35% to 60% into electricity. By contrast, electric motors commonly achieve 80% to 95% efficiency.

Illustrations by Drew Shannon

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The deal’s effectiveness in putting a lid on methane pollution will depend on details that are still under development. But experts say Ottawa already traded away the equivalent of 53 million tonnes of carbon reductions last November, when it first signalled that it would allow Alberta to postpone methane controls from 2030 to 2035.

Methane carries about 84 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over the crucial 20-year period when humanity will be scrambling to get climate change under control. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies methane reductions as one of the cheapest paths to the quickest, deepest greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030.

The agreement in principle, released Wednesday, cements a five-year postponement in Ottawa’s 2030 methane target that first appeared in the November 2025 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. If the two governments can agree on an “outcome-based equivalency agreement” under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, Canada will stand down its own methane regulations in deference to Alberta’s.

The two governments have also agreed to identify an independent third party “to conduct methane modelling, analysis of emissions reductions, and to assess methane reduction results.” That provision is being hailed as an important step, a week after analysis by the Calgary-based Pembina Institute concluded that Alberta’s methane emissions are up to 90% higher than the province’s official estimate, which relies on self-reporting by industry.

The agreement is to take effect on January 1, 2027, following a 60-day consultation on the draft plan.

The methane equivalency agreement was one of several commitments in the Canada–Alberta MOU that were meant to be finalized by April 1. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith now says that other elements of the deal, including a proposed new oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast, will be delayed beyond next week’s deadline.

Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) president Rick Smith declared the agreement in principle a “positive step forward.” He called the provision for an independent third party “an important approach to reinforce policy ambition and integrity, and help ensure the regulations cover the true extent of methane pollution levels from Alberta’s oil and gas sector.”

But he cautioned that “the final details of the equivalency agreement, and follow-through on the commitment to independent and transparent verification of outcomes, will be critical to determine the agreement’s success.”

CCI senior research associate Alison Bailie says she has confidence in the agreement’s focus on “looking at the Alberta numbers, not just accepting them,” adding that methane measurement technologies have improved in recent years – with some of the gains achieved by Emissions Reduction Alberta with funding from the province’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) system. “That’s where I see the hope and the benefits of doing this properly,” she tells The Energy Mix. “It helps Alberta’s own companies,” creating a business case for methane controls in Canada and enabling them to position themselves for methane-abatement projects overseas.

Bailie adds that Canada has “tended to see greater emission reductions” when federal and provincial governments actually work together. “That can work really well,” she says. “We’d like to see more.”

Aly Hyder Ali, senior program manager of oil and gas at Environmental Defence Canada, calls the five-year delay an “unnecessary concession” that represents a “bad deal for everyone outside the oil patch.” Citing Pembina Institute modelling, he says the carve-out would pour 1.9 million extra tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 53 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period – or far more over a 20-year span.

Amanda Bryant, manager of Pembina’s oil and gas program, agreed in a release that independent, third-party verification is a “vitally important and positive step,” allowing Alberta to “report its methane progress more credibly.” She said the agreement “signals an end to the roadblock that had been preventing progress on this crucial element of climate and energy policy,” enabling industry to “invest and hire with confidence to advance the next stage of methane mitigation work.”

But so far there’s no clarity on whether the “independent party” responsible for monitoring Alberta’s methane controls will rely on theoretical modelling or actual measurement of releases from oil and gas infrastructure, or on whose data the monitor will rely. Real measurement “will be vital, both for an effective response to climate change and to ensure ongoing access to major international natural gas markets that are demanding provably low-emissions-intensity fossil fuel imports, such as the European Union, South Korea, and Japan,” Bryant said.

Last week, a Pembina technical analysis flagged data and regulatory gaps in Alberta’s current approach to methane controls, resulting in actual emissions that have been up to 90% higher than official government figures.

“Alberta should not be afraid to modernize its measurement data and methods, including vehicle-based systems, aircraft and satellites to effectively reduce its methane emissions,” Bryant said at the time.

But Premier Smith may have a different take on what to expect from the independent third party. During an unrelated media conference Wednesday, she said the goal is to arrive at “a common set of facts” after “some other reports that have been put out there kind of put us at odds,” iPolitics reports.

The agreement in principle states that “should third party analysis determine that emissions are higher than expected, Alberta commits to take the necessary corrective actions.”

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon. This article first appeared on The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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Currently, much of the nation is rightly animated by the urgent need to diversify trade away from the United States. Our once-stable ally has quickly imposed an erratic barrage of self-owning tariffs and threatened our national sovereignty.

In practical terms, that means Canadian businesses will need to be competitive in markets that are rapidly moving toward clean energy. Think of the European Union and the United Kingdom: both jurisdictions continue to see rising adoption of renewables and electric vehicles. And both are set to impose carbon tariffs on imports that don’t already price carbon to specified levels. In China, another critical market, roughly half of all new car sales are already electric – and rising fast. Renewable installations are off the charts. And the country is expanding coverage of its massive national carbon market.

In fact, the transition to clean energy is happening at a blistering pace in many countries beyond these select few. To paraphrase economist Nicholas Stern, investment in climate action is the economic growth story of this century. The cost of solar power and batteries has fallen off a cliff in the last decade, down 80%. Offshore and onshore wind costs are down by 73% and 57%, respectively. Lithium-ion battery costs have fallen 90% since 2010.

Whatever the strategy includes, the focus on strong climate policy as an enabler of our nation’s economic success is the right one.

– Rick Smith, president, Canadian Climate Institute

These rock-bottom prices have powered a technological revolution that is quickly remaking global energy markets. Renewables generated more electricity than coal for the first time ever in the first half of this year. The amount of installed renewable power is expected to more than double in five short years, according to the latest from the International Energy Agency. Globally, more than one in four vehicles are set to be electric this year.

Though Trump gets most of the news headlines, there remains significant decarbonization progress within the United States. California, for instance, through a combination of policy and targeted investment, has increased its utility battery storage by 3,000% since 2020, with much more on the horizon.

Building Canada’s low-carbon economy

All of these data points reinforce the point that decarbonization is fast becoming the key driver of economic progress globally. That has important implications for Canada and the forthcoming climate competitiveness strategy. Strong climate policy that drives investment into low-carbon technologies that cut emissions will be crucial for the economic health of the country.

So, what should that strategy look like? There are a number of policies the federal government can implement right away to catalyze low-carbon growth.

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At the top of the list should be strengthening industrial carbon pricing across the country. Doing so will increase certainty for businesses and attract investment. It has the potential to break down interprovincial trade barriers and support export diversification.

Building bigger, cleaner, smarter electricity grids is another no-brainer that should also be on the list. And the same goes for cutting more methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and the creation of a sustainable investment taxonomy.

Plus, there are important policies the government should stand its ground on. The most obvious is the federal electric vehicle mandate.

Whatever the strategy includes, the focus on strong climate policy as an enabler of our nation’s economic success is the right one. A lot of the necessary pieces are already in play: now they need to be connected and strengthened.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

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A new report from the NewClimate Institute, a European think tank, finds that 35 of the world’s biggest businesses are leaning on short-term tree-planting and other forms of “nondurable” carbon removal in order to say they’ve neutralized some of their climate pollution. The handful of companies investing in more reliable carbon removal are mostly not doing so in conjunction with deep decarbonization, or the elimination of carbon emissions altogether.

There is a “dangerous mismatch between corporate climate claims and the reality of what is needed to reach global net-zero,” the organization said in a press release. Reaching net-zero by the middle of the century – a scenario where all unavoidable human-caused climate pollution is cancelled out via carbon removal – is considered necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, refers to efforts to capture carbon dioxide after it’s been emitted into the atmosphere and store it in rocks, land, ocean reservoirs or human-made products. The most reliable types of carbon removal, which the NewClimate Institute calls “durable CDR,” involve injecting carbon into geological formations or turning it into rocks, where it will stay put for at least 1,000 years – about the same amount of time that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels will remain in the atmosphere.

Currently, these durable techniques don’t work at scale: they account for just 0.1% of global carbon removal each year. The rest is based on methods like planting trees, restoring wetlands and burying carbon in the soil, which are much cheaper but can keep carbon out of the atmosphere for only decades or a few centuries at most.

Government investment and regulations are needed to scale up durable CDR – experts consider the next decade to be “crucial” for developing the technology – but the private sector can help, too, by funding durable CDR projects and research. In industries like construction, for which total decarbonization is not yet possible, companies will likely need to use durable CDR to offset residual emissions as part of a credible climate strategy.

The NewClimate Institute authors looked at 35 of the world’s largest companies across seven sectors: agrifood, aviation, automobiles, fashion, fossil fuels, tech and utilities. Tech companies showed the most investment in durable CDR – Microsoft alone is responsible for 70% of all durable CDR ever contracted – but the report criticizes the sector for planning to claim “potentially significant amounts” of both durable and nondurable CDR toward net-zero targets. Tech companies can fully decarbonize without offsets, so their emissions targets should not depend on carbon removal.

Aviation was the other sector showing the greatest support for durable CDR, but only one airline – Japan’s All Nippon Airways – had a “reasonable” plan to use the technology to neutralize residual emissions by 2050. Three airlines lacked concrete plans.

Of the 15 companies across the agrifood, automobiles and fashion sectors, only H&M and Stellantis are investing in durable CDR. Two of the five utilities in the report, Eon and Ørsted, are supporting durable CDR projects, but it’s unclear whether Eon intends to use removals to count toward its net-zero goal, and the NewClimate Institute says some of Ørsted’s removals are being double-counted in the emissions-reduction targets of both Denmark and Microsoft. The five fossil fuel companies analyzed – Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sinopec and TotalEnergies – are focusing mostly on carbon capture and storage, which intercepts carbon dioxide at the point of emission, before it escapes into the atmosphere, and does not reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

Silke Mooldijk, an expert with the NewClimate Institute and the lead author of the new report,  says she wasn’t surprised to find limited support for durable CDR, except from some tech companies. What did surprise her was that companies investing in durable CDR projects did not publicly report any information on these projects’ environmental and social risks. Some CDR methods, for example, may jeopardize biodiversity, while others require large amounts of renewable energy that would have to be diverted from other uses. “Not a single company in our report disclosed details on potential risks of projects they support and how they mitigate those,” Mooldijk tells Grist.

Grist reached out to all 35 companies included in the report. Adidas, Amazon, Enel, Google, H&M, Inditex, Microsoft and TotalEnergies responded by describing their net-zero commitments. Adidas and Enel, which are not currently investing in durable CDR, said they would use “high-quality” carbon removals to offset their residual climate pollution after taking actions to decarbonize; Inditex said it is “exploring” durable CDR to offset residual emissions, and its use of the technology “will be determined by the evolution of reference scientific frameworks.”

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and H&M are currently investing in durable CDR. A spokesperson for H&M described the fast-fashion company’s purchase of 10,000 metric tons of durable CDR from the Swiss company Climeworks, one of the largest purchases to date, and said H&M plans to use them to neutralize residual emissions. The tech companies affirmed their commitment to reduce emissions first and then use carbon removal to offset residual emissions, though none of them addressed NewClimate Institute’s concerns that they would use large amounts of durable and nondurable CDR to claim progress toward net-zero.

A statement provided to Grist from TotalEnergies did not address CDR. It instead described the company’s support for carbon capture and storage and “nature-based solutions.” The latter refers to short-lived offsets, such as tree-planting, that the NewClimate Institute does not believe are appropriate for offsetting fossil fuel emissions.

Apple, Duke Energy and Shein declined to comment after seeing the report. The remaining 24 companies did not respond to inquiries from Grist.

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan and the dean of its School for Environment and Sustainability, says the NewClimate Institute report is timely. “Right now the whole idea of CDR . . . is kind of a Wild West scene, with lots of actors promising to do things that may or may not be possible,” he says. He adds that companies appear to be using CDR as an alternative to mitigating their climate pollution. “The priority has to be on reducing emissions, not on durable CDR at this point,” he tells Grist.

In the near term, durable CDR is doing virtually nothing to offset emissions. As of 2023, only 0.0023 gigatons of carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere each year using these methods. That’s about 15,000 times less than the annual amount of climate pollution from fossil fuels and cement manufacturing.

According to the NewClimate Institute, voluntary initiatives are no substitute for government-mandated emission-reduction targets and investments in durable CDR. To the extent that these initiatives exist, however, the organization says they should provide a clearer definition of what constitutes “durable” carbon removal; determine companies’ responsibility for scaling up durable CDR based on their ongoing and historical emissions, or – perhaps more realistically – on their ability to pay; and require companies to set separate targets for emission reductions and support for durable CDR. The last recommendation is intended to reinforce a climate action hierarchy that puts mitigation before offsetting. Companies should not “hide inaction on decarbonization behind investments in removals,” as the report puts it.

Mooldijk says voluntary initiatives can incentivize investments in durable CDR by recognizing “climate contributions.” These might manifest as simple statements about companies’ monetary contributions to durable CDR, instead of claims about the amount of carbon dioxide that they have theoretically neutralized.

Some of these recommendations were submitted earlier this year to the Science Based Targets initiative, the world’s most respected verifier of private-sector climate targets. The organization is getting ready to update its corporate net-zero standard with new guidance on the use of CDR. Another standard-setter, the International Organization for Standardization, is similarly preparing to release new standards on net-zero, which could curtail some of the most questionable corporate climate claims while also drumming up support for durable CDR.

John Reilly, a senior lecturer emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says that ultimately, proper regulation of corporate climate commitments – including of durable CDR – will fall on governments. Companies “are happy to throw a little money into these things,” he says, “but I don’t think voluntary guidelines are ever going to get you there.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

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Billions of taxpayer dollars once intended to help fight climate change by subsidizing capture and storage of carbon dioxide may instead go to fossil fuel companies to help boost production of oil – one of the main drivers of climate change.

In a February 19 call with investors, Vicki Hollub, chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum, said she’s had several conversations with President Donald Trump, arguing the “business case” for federal support for carbon capture. “We believe the next round of technology that’s going to add significant barrels . . . will be production that comes from the use of CO2 in enhanced oil recovery,” Hollub said. “And that 50 billion to 70 billion barrels would extend our energy independence by more than 10 years. It’s critically important.”

The United States produced about five billion barrels of oil in 2023. Hollub calls carbon capture a way to keep the oil industry alive amid the international calls to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

What is enhanced oil recovery?

In enhanced oil recovery, pressurized carbon dioxide is used to force oil out of aging wells. The process is used to produce about 2% of the nation’s oil. Hollub said the industry is turning to carbon captured from industrial sources as the supply of naturally occurring carbon dioxide has dwindled.

Depending on conditions, producing oil using captured carbon can offset the climate impacts of a barrel of oil, making it less carbon intensive. But because new oil supplies lower the market price of oil, it could increase demand for oil, raising overall carbon emissions, according to one analysis by the Clean Air Task Force, which supports carbon capture.

Charles Harvey, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Floodlight that the net climate impact of using captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery “gets super complicated.”

The pivot from carbon capture as a climate solution to a boost for oil comes as the Trump administration seeks to cut or kill climate-related spending, including billions set aside for carbon capture and sequestration, while also ordering the federal government to pave the way for more fossil fuel production.

A ‘perverse incentive’ for oil companies

Support of carbon capture, though, might alienate a key Trump ally.

The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 – which is serving as a blueprint for Trump’s second term – argue that federal incentives for carbon capture should be scrapped. “Most carbon capture technology remains economically unviable, although private-sector innovations are on the horizon,” according to Project 2025. “[Carbon capture utilization and sequestration] programs should be left to the private sector to develop.”

Critics also question the safety of the technology, noting that leaks from pipelines have sent dozens of people to the hospital and forced evacuation orders.

During the Biden administration, Congress allocated about US$8.2 billion to carbon capture projects and increased a tax credit for carbon capture that the U.S. Treasury has estimated will cost $30 billion through 2032.

If Trump allows the carbon capture incentives to stay in place, oil companies could increase production at a time when the international consensus is that no new oil should be produced if the world is to keep climate change in check.

The subsidies “create a perverse incentive, because for companies to qualify for the subsidies, carbon dioxide must be produced, then captured and buried,” Harvey and Kurt House wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times. The two co-founded the first privately funded carbon capture company in the early 2000s. They left the company when it began selling carbon for enhanced oil recovery.

Occidental has invested heavily in carbon capture, including buying a carbon technology firm for US$1 billion in 2023. The multinational oil company, which bills itself as an industry leader in seeking low-carbon solutions, also is developing a federally supported facility in Texas that would capture carbon directly from the atmosphere, a process called direct air capture.

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While most carbon capture projects are designed to take carbon from a facility’s emissions – such as from a power or chemical plant – direct air capture filters and captures 0.4% of carbon dioxide directly from the ambient air. If Trump allows federal support for the project to continue, Occidental subsidiary 1PointFive stands to receive at least $500 million from the Department of Energy.

‘The last best hope of the fossil fuel industry’

Compared with other funding approved under the Inflation Reduction Act targeted by Trump, such as for solar energy and offshore wind, carbon capture “is in a good place relative to some of the other clean energy tax credits,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition. “And I would say we’re cautiously optimistic as far as our positioning,” she said. “But, you know, it’s just kind of a moving target at this point.”

Before the incentives, companies had no way to make money from capturing carbon other than to sell it to oil companies for enhanced oil recovery. But since carbon capture incentives were boosted under Biden, more than 270 carbon capture and storage projects have been announced.

Some projects are in limbo as they await direction from the federal government, Stolark said. “There’s more uncertainties, certainly for folks who have federal grants awarded or under contract, given the federal funding freeze, and the different memos and directives that have come out.” 

Stolark’s group and more than 160 other companies and organizations signed a letter to congressional leadership after Trump’s inauguration, urging the lawmakers to maintain support for carbon capture.

One bill introduced this year in Congress would give companies that use captured carbon to recover oil the same amount of tax credit as they receive to permanently store it underground – eliminating the incentive to do so.

Carbon capture incentives are “another subsidy for oil,” said Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the non-profit Science and Environmental Health Network, which produced a report last year on the “false promises” of using captured carbon dioxide to produce oil.

The report concludes that using carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery is “the last best hope for the fossil fuel industry to keep pumping oil out of the ground. It must end.”

This article was originally published by Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Pam Radtke is an environment, energy and climate reporter. A long-time New Orleans resident, Radtke was part of the Times-Picayune team that published after Hurricane Katrina.

The post The oil industry is selling carbon capture as a way to boost production appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Drawing on longstanding pro-CO2 rhetoric in climate denialism, Policy Resolution #12 asks the government to scrap its decarbonization goals, remove the designation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and recognize the greenhouse gas as a “foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”

“I think it has a very good chance of passing,” says Debra Davidson, a researcher in climate change impacts at the University of Alberta. “It’s not at all out of step with the position of Alberta’s United Conservative Party with respect to climate change mitigation and the energy industry for quite some time now.”

If it passes, the effect of the policy would be mainly symbolic, Davidson says, not only because it would be non-binding, but also because the Alberta government has already signalled that it has little intention of achieving its net-zero targets. Last year, for example, the province imposed a moratorium on large wind and solar projects, which led to 53 projects being cancelled and the estimated loss of $91 million in tax revenues. In the past five years, the UCP has also repealed the former NDP government’s carbon levy, opened the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to coal mines, and withdrawn funding for a public transit project in Calgary.

As Stephen Legault, senior manager of Alberta energy transition at Environmental Defence, has said, the resolution is “already de facto policy.”

On the other hand, Alberta did release its Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan (ERED) in April 2023,  aiming for a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.  However, despite these commitments, “There is no evidence that Alberta has taken any action to regulate oil sands emissions as noted in the ERED plan,” says Simon Dyer, deputy executive director at the Pembina Institute. This summer, the Alberta Energy Regulator projected a 17% increase in oil sands production by 2033.

Instead, the provincial government “has focused on criticizing the federal plan to reduce oil and gas emissions,” Dyer says. Premier Danielle Smith is an outspoken opponent of Ottawa’s planned emissions cap and has launched a national “scrap the cap” ad campaign.

Even if the policy proposal mainly serves to underscore existing inaction on emissions, what’s truly notable, Davidson says, is “the degree to which it indicates a full-scale legitimation of disinformation.”

An energy policy based on fiction

The rationale for the proposal is largely erroneous. It takes a few grains of truth – that the carbon cycle is necessary and that carbon dioxide benefits plants – and couches them in the mistaken ideas that current CO2 levels are near their lowest in more than 1,000 years and that “the earth needs more CO2 to support life.”

But the carbon in our atmosphere isn’t even close to being at its lowest levels, says James Miller, a researcher on global climate change at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

“Except for the recent period of increase, CO2 levels have been below 300 ppm for thousands of years,” he writes in an email to Corporate Knights. The atmospheric reading of CO2 reached 420 parts per million last year, according to the World Meteorological Association, which notes in a press release that “the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3–5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2–3°C warmer and sea level was 10–20 meters higher than now.”

And while increased carbon dioxide can be helpful for plants when everything else is equal, Miller explains, “everything else is not equal, and adding more CO2 leads to increasing temperatures, which can lead to less plant productivity.”

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Davidson calls the argument that more CO2 will be good for plants “absolutely preposterous,” not only because global warming leads to more droughts, but also because crops are temperature-dependent. Above certain thresholds, plant productivity declines precipitously, she says. NASA has predicted that factors including temperature stress from climate change could lead to a 24% decline in global maize crops as soon as 2030, which the study’s author says “could have severe implications worldwide.”

The type of CO2 boosterism expressed in the UCP policy proposal isn’t novel. Climate-denying think tanks like Alberta’s Friends of Science Society have been promoting it for many years. But the inclusion in a formal policy document represents a new development.

Climate denialism has grown significantly more entrenched in Alberta’s UCP party, political commentator David Climenhaga writes in an email to Corporate Knights. “Since Smith became premier, to a significant degree the UCP has become more like a comment thread on social media and less like a conventional political party,” he says.

Climenhaga thinks that the odds the resolution will be adopted are “extremely high, like 100%.” If so, it will create a problem for Smith, who is “heavily invested in carbon capture, both as a subsidy to the fossil fuel extraction industry and as a way to win social licence for more extraction.”

“Carbon capture is a real solution – one of the best we know of,” Smith said in November, adding that “Alberta fully intends to lead the world in this critical field.” Last year, she launched an incentive program to cover some of the capital costs associated with new carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) infrastructure in the province.

But according to Climenhaga, the people behind the policy proposal are “increasingly suspicious of carbon capture, not because they think it’s a boondoggle necessarily, but because they believe, as per the resolution, that CO2 is good.”

Alberta’s self-inflicted economic wounds

Abandoning its net-zero targets would set Alberta on a lonely path, marking it as an outlier in the global economy. “A commitment to net-zero is table stakes, in terms of the bare minimum,” Dyer says.

The policy proposal may be mainly symbolic, but “it’s a symbolism that is damaging to the investment climate in Alberta,” Dyer argues. Calgary and Edmonton are home to many entrepreneurs in the decarbonization space, he says, and policies that discourage investment would be economically harmful.

Even Texas, Alberta’s oil-loving American counterpart, has embraced the renewables boom and rapidly ramped up its solar and wind capacity. Three-tenths of its net electricity in 2023 was generated from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The proposed measure to abandon its net-zero targets would also put Alberta out of step with its own energy sector. Most oil and gas companies see a need for energy diversification and have made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “The industry has been very good cutting back the use of diesel and methane emissions, carbon capture – they’re very active on that side,” says Josef Schachter, president of Schachter Energy Research, in an interview with the CBC.

It was economic factors and not climate change that drove the shift toward renewables in Texas, and the same could theoretically be true in Alberta. Even if the province doubles down on science denial, that doesn’t mean it has to deny cheap renewable power.

Mark Mann is an associate editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Alberta’s conservative party invites climate disinformation into policy debate appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The company, which supplies sheet metal to the auto industry, says the move will cut carbon emissions from production by approximately 70%, a reduction equivalent to removing more than 900,000 cars from the road each year. This is good news for the climate and for the auto sector. As the second-largest consumer of steel after buildings and infrastructure, the auto industry needs low-carbon steel products if it’s going to meet its own emissions targets.

Virtually every vehicle on wheels is made primarily of steel. That’s a problem since the steel industry is one of the highest emitting sectors of the economy, responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to its reliance on coal. Currently, tailpipe emissions are responsible for the bulk of the pollutants from road transportation. But that’s changing as uptake of electric vehicles continues apace. EVs don’t produce exhaust and, in many places, the grid is increasingly generating power from renewable or other green power sources.

Increasingly, attention is turning to the carbon footprint of an automaker’s supply chain and all the materials that go into building a vehicle. Of those materials, steel makes up the largest proportion at 60%. Indeed, the embedded, or production, emissions of an electric car will likely account for around 60% of total life-cycle emissions by 2030, with steel making up anywhere from 16% to 27% of that, according to the EU-based advocacy group Transport and Energy.

Auto sector takes small steps toward green steel

To date, only a handful of automakers have pledged to increase their use of either fossil-free steel or steel with reduced carbon intensity by 2030. BMW announced its procurement of “carbon-reduced” steel supplied by H2 Green Steel, based in Sweden, and has partnered with Salzgitter AG to receive “low-carbon steel” in 2026.

Volkswagen has signed a memorandum of understanding with Salzgitter AG to procure carbon-reduced steel starting at the end of 2025; Volvo has pledged that 50% of its steel purchases in 2030 will be lower in emissions intensity compared to current levels. And General Motors announced a supply agreement with U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal for reduced carbon steel. (Algoma will in all likelihood also supply the automotive industry with green steel given that approximately 30% of its products go to the auto sector.)

The climate impact of shifting to low-carbon steel is profound. If, as recommended by groups such as Transport and Energy, European automakers replace 40% of the steel used in their manufacturing process by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from the production of cars plummets by 6.9 megatonnes, equivalent to the annual GHGs emitted from 3.5 million fossil fuel cars. Switching to 100% green steel in new cars by 2040 will reduce emissions equivalent to taking 8.1 million gas-powered cars off the road.

In a recent report, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) acknowledges the importance of the public announcements made by some of the biggest players in the auto industry while also pointing out that “among major automakers selling vehicles in Europe and North America, only four have pledged to procure any fossil-free steel by 2030.” The report authors note that those commitments apply to a mere 2% of the global steel used by all these major automakers. Adding in “commitments to procure steel with reduced GHG emissions,” they write, “increases the share of cleaner steel to 4% of all automotive steel.”

The authors further argue that the auto sector is in a unique position to push the steel industry to decarbonize. “Automakers have significant purchasing power,” says Marta Negri, an associate researcher at ICCT and lead author of Which Automakers Are Shifting to Green Steel? “They can influence demand for green steel.”

Steel’s great big carbon footprint

Around 75% of steel worldwide is manufactured using coal-fired blast furnaces. According to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emissions scenario, the steel industry must reduce its carbon output by 25% by 2030 to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 – and the sector is nowhere close to being on track.

On the bright side, the carbon intensity of steel production can drop considerably through deployment of low-carbon technologies and resource efficiency. For starters, the coal-blast furnaces can be replaced with electric ones, like Algoma’s, reducing emissions by as much as 95%. Scrap steel can be incorporated at much higher volumes than is done currently, and green hydrogen power is being actively explored for its potential as a cost-effective energy source.

Transportation, in turn, leaves a massive carbon footprint. Road transport in Canada is the second-largest source of carbon pollution after oil and gas, responsible for 22% of the country’s overall emissions. Electrifying road mobility is essential to meeting Canada’s international obligation under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 1.5°C. Steel’s importance in the auto sector is becoming increasingly visible in part because more of it is needed in electric vehicles – due to their large battery units – than in combustion vehicles.

To see a significant dent in steel-related emissions, carmakers will need to employ a combination of strategies. “Green steel can be a competitive advantage for an automaker,” Negri notes. “Some companies are exploring this and being very vocal about their green steel use.”

Still, the road to industrial decarbonization is long. “We’d like to see more ambition,” Negri adds. “Two-thirds of the automakers we analyzed haven’t made any commitments to purchase low-carbon or fossil-free steel. And we need to see that the commitments made are carried through.”

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

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