As an industrial powerhouse, it has more recently turned into an example of Chinese green transformation, boasting the world’s first smart and zero-carbon port that is 100% electricity driven and green-energy backed. Onsite industrial-scale wind turbines and solar panels ensure renewable-energy self-sufficiency in the 10th-busiest port in the world, handling more than 20 million shipping containers annually.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that China chose to host last year’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, on the banks of the Bohai Sea, in yet one more show of growing influence from Beijing. With twice the number of world leaders in attendance since the summit launch in 2001, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Indian head of state Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping called for an end to the “Cold War mentality” that was triggering “turbulence and transformation” and called for “equal and orderly multipolarization” of the world that could pave the way to a “more just and equitable global governance system.”

The group pledged increased cooperation in energy, infrastructure, green industry, AI and innovation. These are the economic pillars of the present and the future that is being built. And they are the architecture for a new kind of cold war, one over our ecological future, propelled by a growing geopolitical rivalry between the giants of the 21st century.

Great power rivalry

In an article last year in Foreign Policy magazine, the influential historian and futurist Nils Gilman argued that the advent of the “ecological cold war” is upon us, driven by a struggle “over the metabolic basis of modern industrial society.”

“Call it a Green Entente vs an Axis of Petrostates,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

In the wider transition to a low-carbon economy, China needs no introduction. Its influence in the green transition – through supply chain routes and cheap hardware – is plain to see. It has installed more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, the United Nations has said. Its capacity to drive down the cost of clean technologies has been a boon for reining in the growth of carbon emissions, giving vast swaths of the planet the tools to shift to renewables.

It has also played at least some role in the U.S. decision to retreat from climate policies, with a Trump administration that has made a U-turn to a fossil fuel agenda and adopted protectionist measures in an “America first” attempt to decouple from Chinese economic might. At the same time, the United States has signalled a sharp interest in ridding itself of dependency on China for critical minerals, which are not just key to green tech but intrinsic to military hardware. This year, Trump launched “Project Vault,” which includes loans for domestic mining and a bid to stockpile reserves.

Europe has responded to growing national backlash to climate policies by cooling them down and doubling down on its own protectionist measures. In the midst of all this, emerging economies that could help accelerate the energy transition are running up against roadblocks.

A piece of the green pie

While some observers take issue with Cold War framing, others are mapping out the ripple effects of these geopolitical tensions when it comes to the race to slow down planetary warming. “We are in the midst of a green cold war,” agrees economist Jorge Arbache, a professor at the University of Brasília. “The implications are that China, which is already leading, will probably lead even more because China will keep investing in green production.”

For Arbache, the heart of the struggle has to do with the amount of money that is at stake. Suffice to say, it’s a lot. One 2025 estimate from the Boston Consulting Group pegs the opportunities embedded in four key sectors – critical minerals, green tech manufacturing, green industrial material and green services – as US$11 trillion by 2040. “We are talking about an extremely big business agenda, and of course there is a competition in terms of who will eat what size of the cake,” Arbache says.

Although many developed countries are well positioned to participate in that agenda, it is also true that they do not necessarily have the key elements, such as critical minerals, available clean energy, carbon markets, abundant water and biodiversity. “Geography is back,” Arbache says. That means that developing economies that do have those assets could find themselves better positioned than before. “It gives those economies a bargaining power that they did not have very recently,” he says.

Chaos vs. foresight

But the name of the game, lately at least, has been chaos, driven by its number-one agent, U.S. President Donald Trump. “If I could sum it up, it’s better to govern chaos, because order is too costly,” observes Sabino Vaca Narvaja, a political scientist and former Argentine ambassador to China. “A fragmented society is easier to manipulate.”

China, of course, is steeped in contradiction, pouring money into coal projects, and facing accusations of human rights violations. It also has a different logic to its movements, Vaca Narvaja notes, one that bets on the long term. And so far, it has paid off.

The Chinese incursion into the green market was not about business at the outset, Arbache notes; it was about domestic security. Beijing registered, decades ago, the vulnerability it could face when it came to power supply. A desire to become energy self-sufficient shifted it into green-tech development, which has positioned it as a leader in renewables development. It now has a stranglehold on a huge chunk of the critical-minerals market, controlling 50% of global production and 87% of processing and refining.

China’s formula also relies on the rest of the world, Vaca Narvaja notes. It needs the world to buy its products. And it is. “China’s cleantech products are going basically everywhere in the world,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, in a conversation held last year on China’s climate path amid trade tensions.

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For all major cleantech products except batteries, “the Global South, broadly understood, has overtaken the old developed world as the larger destination,” Myllyvirta said. There are countries with impressive uptake in solar, such as Pakistan, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, but it’s the broad-based nature of the boom that’s sending the biggest signal. “From one side, there is the cost competitiveness of Chinese supply, and from the other side, there is a massive diversity of drivers,” he said.

Electrification is everywhere. Cities are turning to electric buses. Drivers are turning to electric vehicles. Governments and individuals alike are turning to solar power in the Middle East and Africa. Clean-energy sectors continued to drive growth in China in 2025, doubling in value from 2022 to US$2.1 trillion – which is equal to the economies of Brazil or Canada, according to an analysis from the think tank Carbon Brief.

At the same time, a glut in solar panel production is leading to uncertainty. Beijing set its 2026 growth target between 4.5% and 5%, the lowest level in 35 years, noting a “grave and complex” landscape.

“I don’t think we will be talking about renewable energy the way we are if it wasn’t for what China has been able to accomplish in the last decade,” says Jai Asundi, executive director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, in Bangalore, India. “Taking a technology that has been developed somewhere else, and driving the price down. A classic capitalistic efficiency market. That is, if you are more efficient in the way you use a resource, then the capital flows to you.”

Emerging economies demand protagonism

The flip side of that efficient flow of capital, of course, is that it can make it difficult for other economies to compete. Take a place like India, where attempts to jump-start domestic green-energy device production have stalled. “Energy prices are very high in India. So to produce something is already very costly. And some of these technologies are very energy intensive,” Asundi says.

India, which represents 17% of the world’s population, is a prescient case study for wide swaths of the world that are trying to shrink a yawning inequality gap by raising gross domestic product, without contributing to global warming. The developed world built its industrialized wealth at the expense of the environment. That is no longer an option.

“What we are struggling with is this notion of how we work as an ecosystem,” Asundi says. “How do we work as a global society as opposed to a country-driven society? Because after all, climate change is not a country phenomenon; it is a global phenomenon.”

Chen Yu, senior policy officer at the non-profit Global Witness, agrees. “U.S.–China competition may continue, and the global energy landscape seems to be becoming more regionalized and multipolar, but this does not necessarily mean inevitable confrontation,” she says. “The key question is whether competition preserves space for cooperation and allows for fairer rules and resource distribution, rather than creating exclusive blocs.”

Whatever the mix, what matters, she stresses, is that the process of reducing emissions is not delayed.

The rise of ‘powershoring’

Unfortunately, the current moves and countermoves of nations trying to bolster national economies, and respond to electorate demands, is proving detrimental. Arbache says there are alliances available now using today’s technology that could speed up decarbonization, but they are being squandered. The Brazilian economist, who is also the former vice president of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, coined the term “powershoring” to describe the strategic relocation of energy-intensive industries to countries that have clean, abundant and secure energy. To produce one tonne of aluminum using coal-fired electricity results in 20 to 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide, Arbache says. But if you produce that same aluminum in Iceland, which runs on nearly 100% renewable power, the carbon output drops to 2 to 3.5 tonnes.

Countries like Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay also offer abundant green grids for manufacturing. But they are not attracting as many powershoring projects as anticipated from places like Europe, Arbache says. “Although they need new allies and friends to solve their problems, they are still very skeptical because of this very notion of protectionism,” he says. “In the end, they are harming their own economies and they are also harming our economies.”

Canada’s balancing act

Canada, with three-quarters of its exports going to the United States, is also navigating tricky terrain. The shifting sands of Trump tariffs has led the government to overhaul how it approaches trade and put it in hot pursuit of new partners – or increasing the strength of existing ones.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said as much in his headline-grabbing speech at Davos this year, where he warned middle powers that if “we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The phrase carried added weight because it came on the heels of an announcement to expand trade with China, and, crucially, allow at first up to 24,500 Chinese EVs annually into the Canadian market. Carney has since signed agreements with India to export uranium for its fleet of nuclear reactors, critical minerals, and oil and gas. The government also announced a split from the United States over auto policy, revitalizing incentives for EV production and purchase, and the intention of customizing new tailpipe emissions rules, rather than defaulting to the U.S. ones.

The divergence from U.S. policy is significant, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute. “All we get from the Trump administration is this drumbeat that fossil fuels are the future. It’s very easy to let that overwhelm us as Canadians – to assume that that’s correct, and it’s not,” he says. “The actual economic opportunity is in decarbonization.”

While there are inherent challenges to decarbonization for an oil- and gas-producing country that other nations do not have, Smith says Canada is in a privileged position to move in on the booming battery market. “We’ve got all the elements of a very significant battery supply chain in Canada. And very few countries can say that,” he says. “In a grand contest between China and the United States, should we just be happy that China’s winning on the decarbonization front? No. We should also be getting our elbows up and trying to compete.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior of Corporate Knights.

The post On the shores of a green cold war  appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Husk’s expansion is an example of the solar boom taking off across Africa. The continent holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources; while it accounts for just 1% of global installed solar photovoltaic capacity, the tides are gradually turning.

Africa added 54% more solar capacity in 2025 than the previous year, according to the latest Africa Market Outlook for Solar PV released by the Global Solar Council. This is the highest annual deployment Africa has ever recorded, led by South Africa, which added 1.6 gigawatts of new solar capacity. Nigeria followed with 803 megawatts, and Egypt with 500 megawatts.

The immense potential that solar holds has “hit everybody” on the continent, says professor Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, executive director of Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, an advocacy organization that works on the energy problem in Nigeria.

Ndukwe-Okafor contends that African countries are looking for ways to increase the productivity of their economies and recognize affordable energy as essential to that goal. “To have a productive society, there [must] be an enabling environment,” she explains. “And an enabling environment means you have to have constant and affordable power.”

The Global Solar Council report found that solar installations on the continent are being driven by both large utility-scale projects, which feed electricity directly into national grids, and distributed solar systems, which include rooftop installations and mini-grids to meet the energy demands of households and businesses.

Distributed systems are rapidly increasing even in off-grid African communities. Last year, for example, Ghana and Switzerland jointly launched a $200-million National Clean Energy Programme to develop 137 megawatts of rooftop solar photovoltaic capacity across approximately 4,000 installations.

Solar power “reduces the cost [of energy] to the community while improving their ability to become more productive,” Ndukwe-Okafor says.

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Meanwhile, investments in solar power are increasing on the continent. Between 2020 and 2025, Africa invested US$34 billion in clean power technologies, out of which 52% was allocated to solar energy, according to the State of African Energy 2026 Outlook Report. These investments were also possible because of policy reforms and the support of governments, including in Nigeria, where its Nigeria Electrification Programme initiative deploys mini-grids, rooftop solar and other solar solutions to people without access to electricity. Since 2018, the private-sector-driven program has helped at least 5.9 million Nigerians access electricity services, in part through the commissioning of 180 mini-grids.

Despite the boom, Africa still lacks adequate financing and investment, which could limit the continent’s potential to generate at least 300 gigawatts by 2030, a goal set by the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. Besides, the capital costs for solar projects in Africa are three to seven times higher than in developed countries.

This financing gap widened after U.S. President Donald Trump ended Power Africa in February 2025. The Power Africa program was launched during the Obama-led administration in 2013 and aimed at providing electricity to millions of households in Africa. Before it ended, the program “contributed to 14,300 megawatts of capacity reaching financial close”  and “facilitated over 41 million new or improved connections for homes and businesses.”

Nevertheless, Ndukwe-Okafor believes that “Africa is a huge [solar] market” with existing policies that can attract the right investment to the solar sector.

Saint Ekpali is a Nigeria-based journalist who covers the environment, health and energy in Africa.

The post Solar energy is taking off across Africa appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

It’s typically depicted as green. It’s loved by some and feared by others. It had a heyday in the 1960s before drawing a political backlash that led to statewide prohibitions. Now, as it grows more popular with Americans than any time in recent memory, state after state is changing the law to once again legalize it.

The United States is racing to restore the might of its once-great nuclear sector and build new reactors to meet surging electricity demand and compete with China and Russia. It’s been a rapid change: a decade ago, at least 16 states restricted construction of new nuclear power plants, a legacy of the lasting reputational damage from Three Mile Island, the United States’ only major civilian nuclear accident.

Five states – Wisconsin, Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia and, most recently, Illinois – have fully lifted their moratoria since 2016. Others are loosening the reins, with Connecticut easing restrictions on small modular reactors and Rhode Island allowing utilities to buy electricity from neighbouring states’ nuclear plants.

Five more – California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and Vermont – are now weighing legislation to overturn their bans. Oregon, meanwhile, is considering a bill that would require a feasibility study to look into nuclear power. (In Hawaii, the results of such a study concluded in December that the state should maintain its moratorium on atomic energy.)

California lawmakers introduced a bill last month to repeal the state’s 50-year ban on new nuclear power. Legislators in New Jersey, where the recently elected Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill campaigned on building a new reactor, advanced a bill earlier this month that would de facto overturn the state’s moratorium. Last week, a bipartisan band of lawmakers in Minnesota’s statehouse vowed to legalize reactor construction again in the state ​“because we have to.”

The legislative push offers the most significant evidence so far that blue states that once served as bastions of anti-nuclearism are embracing atomic energy. The shift comes amid a deregulatory campaign by the Trump administration that’s meant to clear bottlenecks in the nuclear supply chain and spur a new wave of reactor projects, both big and small. Nuclear power started attracting attention again in recent years as the trade-offs of relying on wind and solar alone grew clearer and demand for electricity soared in the near term from data centres and in the long term from forecasts on electrification of vehicles, heating and industry.

A global race is now underway that the United States and its allies are largely losing. On both sides of the Atlantic, the nuclear industry mostly stalled over the past few decades as flat electricity demand and cheap natural gas from the United States and Russia made atomic power plants seem like a 20th-century relic. But the geopolitical risk of relying on a fossil fuel that requires constant replenishing became undeniable as Russia started throttling shipments of gas to Ukraine’s allies after the war kicked off in 2022.

Now U.S., European and Japanese companies are scrambling to secure funding and offtake agreements for reactor designs that, in many cases, haven’t yet been built. Soaring oil and gas prices, which the International Energy Agency warned this week will take a long time to stabilize even after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran ends, are expected to only further drive demand for nuclear power. France’s historic buildout of nuclear reactors, after all, started in response to the 1970s oil embargo.

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Meanwhile, Russia’s state-owned Rosatom dominates the nuclear export industry, actively building the first atomic power plants in newcomer countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Bangladesh. On Monday, the Kremlin announced its latest deal to build Vietnam’s debut nuclear plant. And China is building nearly as many reactors at home as the rest of the world combined, at a relatively rapid clip.

States started banning new nuclear power plants even before the partial meltdown in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in eastern Pennsylvania. The Atomic Energy Commission, the federal regulator in charge of both overseeing commercial reactors and promoting the industry, was increasingly seen as too cozy with the companies under its authority. An anti-war movement with limited options to slow the military’s atomic weapons race instead trained its attention on the civilian power industry, and environmentalists took issue with the relatively small but extremely long-lived volumes of radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce.

California enacted one of the nation’s first major statewide bans on building new nuclear plants in 1976, three years before Three Mile Island. Until then, states and municipalities had only minimal restrictions on nuclear power plants, which fell primarily under federal jurisdiction. But a 1974 law in California reorganized the Golden State’s bureaucracy, centralizing energy regulation for the first time in Sacramento and granting the newly established California Energy Commission powers to restrict permits for atomic energy facilities until a plan to permanently deal with nuclear waste came to fruition. Through its top cultural export, the state broadcast its skepticism of atomic energy: released just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident, a Hollywood thriller starring Jane Fonda, ​The China Syndrome, depicts a dangerous cover-up of a problem at a nuclear power plant.

In the years that followed, more states, including Maine and Oregon, adopted California-inspired moratoria predicated on a permanent solution for nuclear waste coming into commercial use, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Others – including Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont – effectively banned nuclear construction by making any new reactors subject to politically unattainable approval by the state legislature. A handful of states also rewrote rules to require a statewide referendum on building a new nuclear plant.

Some states enacted only partial bans. New York, for example, just barred construction of nuclear reactors on Long Island, where protesters blocked the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant from coming online and financially crippled the region’s utility, forcing a state takeover.

Attitudes toward nuclear power have since evolved. Despite a drop in support following the meltdown at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan in 2011, a majority of Americans in both political parties have come to favour an expansion of nuclear energy. Polls from the Pew Research Center and Gallup show the highest support in years.

In 2016, Wisconsin became the first state to reverse course. Lawmakers in the factory-dense state pitched legislation to repeal the ban as a way to shore up the supply of reliable, clean power for manufacturers whose shareholders increasingly demanded a lower carbon footprint.

Seeking an alternative to fossil fuels that could make use of existing transmission lines and boilers at coal-fired plants, Kentucky followed suit a year later. Montana came next, in 2021, then West Virginia in 2022.

Illinois, by far the largest user of atomic energy of any state, only partially lifted its ban at the end of 2023, legalizing construction of as-yet-unbuilt small modular reactors with an output of 300 megawatts or less. While more than a dozen developers are racing to commercialize various kinds of so-called SMR designs, the promise of cheaply mass-producing identical reactors remains mostly theoretical. The only modern nuclear reactor design in operation in the United States, the 1,100-megawatt Westinghouse AP1000, remained effectively banned in Illinois until January, when Democrat Governor JB Pritzker fully repealed the moratorium and called for new plants.

The changing sentiment is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for more nuclear plants to start construction in the United States. Big questions remain about how to finance projects, train workers and establish supply chains for novel kinds of reactors.

Alexander C. Kaufman is a contributing reporter at Canary Media and an award-winning writer who has covered energy and climate change for more than a decade. 

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The post States are overturning nuclear power bans amid energy crunch appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We already know the headline facts. The wars in Ukraine and Iran are producing emissions on the order of a mid-sized industrial economy. The scramble for energy and resources helped set the stage, and the destruction of pipelines, depots and power stations has become a recurring spectacle. Analysts have tallied the greenhouse gases, the poisoned soils, the bombed substations and the forests turned to smoke. Less discussed is what this means for the energy transition itself: every tank, missile and drone is built from metals and fuels we also need for wind turbines, batteries and resilient grids.

Every tonne of copper that ends up in shrapnel rather than in wires, every kilogram of lithium that ends up in loitering munitions rather than stationary storage, slows the transition and deepens climate risk for everyone, including the supposed winners. When we choose war, we are not just adding to the climate problem; we are cannibalizing the solution.

Here we face a fork in the road. One path is to treat transition minerals as the new oil: strategic assets to be hoarded, weaponized and fought over. That path is already visible in export controls, trade extortion and a growing list of violent incidents and community protests around mines in the GlobalSouth. The other path is to treat them as a global lifeline for common security, with shared stockpiles, transparent reporting, producer countries as real partners and apolitical norm that the first call on these minerals is decarbonization, not escalation.

Modern warfare also confirms, in the harshest possible way, the old principle that shows up in all the great religious traditions: what you do unto others, you do unto yourself. In a tightly coupled Earth system, the effects of our actions propagate through food webs, supply chains and the atmosphere. When a refinery or gas pipeline explodes, the carbon doesn’t check passports on the way up. When artillery fires shell after shell into fields, the contaminants do not ask permission before entering rivers and crops. Thermobaric weapons suck oxygen from the air and generate firestorms; forests and towns burn, releasing greenhouse gases and black carbon that darken ice and accelerate melting thousands of kilometres away. High-precision missiles and drones can target power plants and transmission lines with uncanny accuracy; the replacement steel and concrete, when they eventually arrive, carry their own enormous carbon price tag. In Ukraine, war-related emissions are now estimated to exceed the emissions from all of the country’s civilian sectors.

And yet, from a certain narrow corner, war looks like a success story. Defence budgets climb; order books for missiles, shells and air defence systems fill; share prices rise. Headlines announce record revenues for the world’s largest arms makers. If your horizon is the next quarter and your constituency is shareholders, war is indeed “good for business.”

Should governments that proudly report power-sector decarbonization be allowed to keep military emissions off the books?

But that business model is parasitic on the larger economy and on the biosphere. War destroys infrastructure, scares off investment, shreds trade links and forces governments to divert money from health, education and decarbonization into replenishing stockpiles and repairing damage. It also burns through critical minerals that the low-carbon economy will need for generations.

Militarization is itself a threat to our security and that leads to some uncomfortable but necessary questions for business and finance. Should climate-aligned investors treat defence exposure as compatible with net-zero strategies, given what we now know about war’s emissions and mineral demands? Should governments that proudly report power-sector decarbonization be allowed to keep military emissions off the books? Should critical-mineral off take agreements be judged only on price and supply security, or also on whether they prioritize uses that reduce net global risk?

My father’s line about there being no winners in war was, in its way, a statement of planetary accounting. In the 21st century, with the atmosphere full and the mineral supply tight, any war anywhere threatens states and markets everywhere, and the thin atmospheric envelope that makes any kind of economy possible at all.

 Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights.

The post When we choose war, we cannibalize the solution appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Every shock to global oil markets reverberates here through higher costs, capital outflows and a stark reminder that much of the province’s economy still depends on energy Quebecers do not control.

Yet despite being a major exporter of clean electricity, Quebec still runs an international energy trade deficit of roughly $14 billion each year, which ties consumers and businesses directly to volatile and geopolitically unstable markets.

The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically.

– Catherine McKenna and Marine Thomas

This is precisely the vulnerability the clean-energy transition is beginning to resolve. Investment in clean energy reached US$2.3 trillion globally in 2025.

In this context, Quebec stands out. More than 90% of its electricity is renewable: primarily hydroelectric, with growing wind capacity. Forty-two percent of total energy consumption comes from local renewable sources. Few jurisdictions can match this combination of low-carbon, reliable, domestically controlled power.

But advantage is not the same as leadership. Despite its strengths, Quebec is falling behind in the new electric revolution. The share of electricity in its energy mix has been stagnant for 35 years. Oil still accounts for roughly 35% of energy use, with natural gas adding another 17%.

And even with broad consensus across opposition parties, experts, industry and environmental groups, the Quebec government has delayed its emissions-reduction target by five years, pushing it to 2035. Even more concerning, after committing in 2022 to end fossil fuel exploration and production, some politicians are reopening the door to natural gas fracking. This would increase emissions, harm the environment and human health, further expose Quebec to volatile energy prices, and run counter to the economic opportunity of the clean-energy transition.

Quebec should instead invest to fully electrify its economy and lock in its clean-power advantage to deliver real energy autonomy. With clean, affordable electricity that belongs to Quebecers, the province can cut reliance on imported fossil fuels, decarbonize key sectors, grow batteries and green aluminum, and export clean power while generating revenue at home.

At the same time, expanding clean power is not straightforward. Building new hydro and wind capacity will require sustained partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities – not just consultation, but shared ownership and benefits. It will require major investment, faster permitting, new transmission infrastructure and potentially deeper interprovincial collaboration, including offshore wind development in Atlantic Canada linked to Quebec’s grid. These are complex challenges, but they are now the central constraints on growth.

Montreal already offers a glimpse of what a more strategic approach could look like. It is emerging as a hub for climate, technology and finance, with strengths in low-emission aluminum, batteries and electrification, but these pieces are not yet fully aligned.

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The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically. Quebec has everything needed to become a global clean-energy superpower.

Recent events in the Middle East are a reminder of the costs of the old system. These include geopolitical shocks, volatile prices and external dependence. The new system offers something different: affordability, stability, sovereignty and enduring economic advantage. But it is also competitive. Jurisdictions that move decisively will capture investment, talent and supply chains. Those that hesitate will import the industries others build.

Quebec is unusually well positioned for this shift. It has abundant renewable electricity, critical minerals and industrial capacity and a strong research ecosystem. What it lacks is not public support or natural advantage, but ambition, strategic clarity and speed.

The window is open. But not for long.

Catherine McKenna is the CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, the founder of Women Leading on Climate, and a former federal minister of environment and climate change and minister of infrastructure.

Marine Thomas is directrice générale at Partenariat Climate Montréal. 

The post Quebec must move fast to retain its clean-power advantage appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But in the small Bavarian town of Geretsried, near Munich, a new geothermal plant is quietly signalling a paradigm shift for the industry, as recent technological advances have opened up new territories, enabling the production of clean, baseload power.

Calgary-based Eavor Technologies, a pioneer in what’s being called “next-generation” or “advanced” geothermal, is part of a small pool of start-ups that is borrowing technical expertise gleaned from the oil and gas industry to drill for heat far below the earth’s surface and send it back up as a source of low-carbon energy.

“It has one of the smallest footprints for power generation of any technology,” says Steve Grasby, president of Geothermal Canada, a non-profit that supports research and development of geothermal projects. “It’s also highly reliable; the power is always there. And it’s easy to ramp up and down as needed, unlike nuclear, which needs to run all the time.”

Eavor’s latest milestone was achieved on December 4, 2025, when it became the first geothermal company to deliver electricity to a commercial power grid at its Geretsried facility, demonstrating that its “closed loop” system is capable of supplying emission-free power at scale. For this project representing the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and development, Eavor bored sealed pipes nearly 4.5 kilometres into the earth, connecting more than 300 kilometres of boreholes underground. Now completed, the eight-megawatt electric and 64-megawatt thermal project produces enough electricity for 8,000 homes and enough heat for 120,000 homes. Another Eavor project is in the works in the Netherlands.

If geothermal is ever going to scale, it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.

– John Redfern, CEO, Eavor Technologies

The U.S. Air Force has also shown interest in advanced geothermal energy supply. In 2023, the Air Force began planning for two prototype-level geothermal projects at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, awarding the Texas base project to Eavor.

Eavor believes its technology has the potential to generate power almost anywhere, and the firm has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital with the promise of truly ubiquitous, dispatchable renewable energy. The venture capital arms of BP and Chevron have invested some US$40 million in Eavor, and, through the Canada Growth Fund, the federal government has funnelled $90 million to the company. Eavor has used investors’ capital on research and development to continue to scale up the number and size of its projects and trim costs.

Eavor is not the only player in the hydrothermal sector that is exploring new ways to dig for heat. Texas is a hub of innovation in next-generation geothermal power. Prominent start-ups, such as Sage and Fervo Energy, are based in Houston, which shouldn’t be surprising given that energy demand is surging in Texas, where Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft are building huge data centres.

In general, geothermal is becoming a growth sector as new drilling capabilities and other advances now enable projects to be developed across a much wider range of geologic settings than ever before.

What is geothermal energy and how does it work?

For more than a century, people have been using steam generated by deep underground water reservoirs that are heated by the earth’s mantle to power generators. Iceland and New Zealand get about 20% of their electricity from geothermal thanks to their volcanic landscapes, which host shallow, highly permeable underground heat reservoirs. Only a few sites on the planet, however, contain the geological conditions to support a geothermal system at scale, and geothermal contributes only a very small share of the world’s overall supply – approximately 16 gigawatts, representing less than 1% of total capacity installed worldwide. (The only commercial geothermal power plant in Canada is in Alberta, the Swan Hills Geothermal Power Project.) By comparison, wind and solar together supplied 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of 2025, pushing the total share of low-carbon energy sources to 43%.

With the rise of next-generation technologies, geothermal could significantly raise its contribution to the world’s supply of renewable power. Key to both “enhanced” geothermal and “advanced” geothermal systems is that neither requires natural underground reservoirs. All that is required is the heat of the earth, which is available nearly everywhere.

Enhanced geothermal uses the fracking techniques of the oil and gas sector to drill into hot rock and create permeability.

Eavor’s advanced geothermal system forgoes fracking in favour of a closed-loop system. Started by veterans of the oil sector, Eavor has designed a kind of underground radiator where fluid is circulated through a closed loop of vertical pipes that connect a network of horizontal pipes deep within the earth. Absorbing heat from the rock, the temperature of the working fluid rises and is then pumped up to ground level to generate heat and power.

“If geothermal is ever going to scale,” Eavor’s chief executive, John Redfern, told The New York Times in 2023, “it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.”

Low risk, high rewards

Besides the scarcity of suitable locations, geothermal has long been hampered by its high capital costs, the bulk of which are spent on drilling, which can eat as much as half the cost of a project.

Still, as greater efficiencies are realized, costs are coming down – by an impressive 22% from 2021 to 2022 alone. Some systems are even cost-competitive with gas plants and cheaper than coal. Moreover, once built, geothermal is much cheaper to operate than other dispatchable sources like coal, gas and nuclear.

While some experts believe it possible to create geothermal energy almost anywhere, Grasby does offer a caveat. “You can’t really do this just anywhere. In some places, you may have to drill much deeper to get to the heat you need. Rocks vary in thermal connectivity; some rocks have high connectivity and others are low in connectivity. You need a certain temperature to make the system work.”

In Canada, as well, permitting and regulatory regimes have yet to catch up to the latest developments in the geothermal world. According to Grasby, only three provinces currently regulate geothermal energy production: Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.

Updates to regulatory frameworks may yet emerge should the momentum behind geothermal continue, especially given that hydrothermal offers round-the-clock, on-demand power, unlike wind and solar.

New analysis from the International Energy Agency forecasts next-generation geothermal as representing up to 800 gigawatts of clean electricity capacity by 2050 – roughly 50 times the world’s current geothermal capacity of around 16 gigawatts.

Analysts at Ember, a U.K.-based energy think tank, anticipate that geothermal will quickly accelerate, reporting that by 2030, nearly 1.5 gigawatts of new capacity is expected to come online each year globally, three times the level added in 2024. By 2050, geothermal could meet up to 15% of the growth in the world’s demand for clean power.

As a net-zero economy looks increasingly precarious, the latest geothermal breakthroughs offer a solution to the supply of firm, low-emission energy thanks in large part to the tools and expertise that originated in the oil field.

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

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Green hydrogen skeptics correctly observe that the sector has shifted, but they misread what that shift represents. Green hydrogen is moving from early-stage hype to disciplined execution, as capital markets and policymakers concentrate on projects with bankable fundamentals and credible buyers. That winnowing process is not evidence of collapse; it is how clean-energy sectors mature.

Pointing to the cancellation or redesign of a single wind-to-hydrogen project as proof the sector was a fad misses how large infrastructure markets evolve. Projects routinely shift as financing conditions, regulation and demand signals mature, while other proponents continue advancing through permitting, engineering and offtake negotiations. It also overlooks the policy architecture Canada and its trading partners have built to integrate renewable hydrogen into industrial decarbonization, heavy transport and export value chains.

As the sector moves from headlines to creditworthy grid-integrated projects, simplistic narratives risk misleading communities and investors.

Momentum across Canada

Across Atlantic Canada, green hydrogen projects are progressing in a more measured, credible way than early hype suggested. These initiatives are grounded in strong wind resources, proximity to export markets, and provincial strategies that explicitly tie hydrogen to industrial decarbonization and rural economic development.​

Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change has already approved two large‑scale green hydrogen and ammonia projects along the Strait of Canso, designed to use onshore wind power for exports to Europe.​ EverWind and Membertou are also advancing Nova Scotia’s largest wind buildout (more than 650 megawatts) and a multibillion‑dollar export complex, supported by Germany’s interest in Atlantic Canadian green ammonia. These developments signal that serious international buyers still see this region as strategically important.​

Newfoundland and Labrador has selected multiple proponents – including EverWind, Abraxas Power, Toqlukuti’k Wind and Hydrogen, and North Atlantic Refining Limited (NARL) – for multi‑phase green hydrogen and ammonia export projects, underpinned by a dedicated Hydrogen Development Action Plan that positions the province as a “clean energy centre of excellence.”​

Most recently, EverWind secured a major strategic investment of $240 million to advance its Nova Scotia wind portfolio and green fuels platform, reinforcing that capital is still flowing to credible Atlantic Canadian projects.

Quebec alone has mobilized nearly $10 billion in public and private investment over the coming decade, with major projects including TES Canada’s multibillion-dollar green hydrogen facility, Air Liquide’s 20-megawatt PEM (proton exchange membrane) electrolyzer in Bécancour, StormFisher’s Varennes e-methanol plant, and Enbridge’s 20-megawatt Gatineau project injecting hydrogen into the gas grid. The province’s hydrogen road map and “Vallée de la transition énergétique” are anchoring multiple industrial deployments in existing clean-power assets.

Elsewhere, Ontario’s Niagara Hydrogen Centre (Atura Power) will link a 20-megawatt electrolyzer to the Sir Adam Beck hydro station, while federally supported projects – such as Air Products’ net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Edmonton and AVL Fuel Cell Canada’s research and development facility in Burnaby – underscore that hydrogen development is advancing across multiple provinces under coordinated strategies.

International market signals

Globally, the sector’s trajectory is clear: low-carbon hydrogen production is up roughly 60% since 2021, installed electrolyzer capacity has grown ninefold, and investment in electrolyzers and carbon capture has expanded from about $500 million in 2021 to nearly $8 billion in 2025.

At the same time, the European Hydrogen Bank is translating policy into real demand: its first auction awarded roughly €720 million in production-linked support to projects in Spain, Portugal, Finland and Norway, while its second round was four times oversubscribed – 61 bids seeking €4.8 billion against a €1.2 billion budget – supporting plans for 6.3 gigawatts of electrolyzers and 7.3 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen over 10 years.

Moreover, in January 2026, the European Commission approved €200 million in German state aid for Canadian-produced renewable hydrogen exports to the EU: a clear demand signal for Canadian green hydrogen.

Together, these successes make clear that global hydrogen markets are not retreating; they are institutionalizing long-term demand through scaled capital deployment and binding policy frameworks, creating tangible export opportunities for credible Canadian projects.

What serious hydrogen development looks like

Yes, interest in green hydrogen has cooled since the early-2020s hype, and some capital has pulled back. But policy frameworks, climate mandates and declining technology costs continue to underpin long-term demand growth toward 2030 and beyond. To be clear: Canada’s approach is built on that multi-decade horizon – not a short boom cycle.

Green hydrogen will not succeed everywhere, nor should it. Project cancellations are a sign of market discipline, not collapse. What’s actually happening in the green hydrogen sector is a shift from hype-driven, “anywhere, at any cost” projects toward fewer, better-sited hubs that align cheap renewables, strong grids and real customers. Countries that move early in this more disciplined phase will shape future clean-energy trade. Canada has the assets to compete – if it stays the course.

David Billedeau is president and CEO of the Canadian Hydrogen Association. Derek Estabrook is executive director of the Atlantic Hydrogen Alliance. Michèle Landry is directrice générale of Hydrogène Québec.

The post Market discipline, not market failure, is shaping Canada’s green hydrogen sector appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

In its efforts to block U.S. offshore wind development, the Trump administration has halted project construction, rolled back tax credits and spread misinformation. Now, in the latest manoeuvre, the administration is paying a global energy giant nearly US$1 billion to walk away from its plans to install turbines off the east coast.

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Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

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One place to watch is Nova Scotia, which has big plans to kick-start its offshore wind industry in order to meet electricity demand at home and beyond. Initially, the province is aiming for some 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity.

“There is a lot of interest among developers,” says Elisa Obermann, executive director of Marine Renewables Canada, in an interview. “They’re looking for a country that has a stable regulatory environment and very predictable processes for their auctions and procurement.”

In January, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulator concluded a pre-qualification process for companies interested in participating in an upcoming call for bids. So far, Q Energy France, a division of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, has confirmed its interest and has publicly committed to investing in the province’s offshore workforce.

While total energy-transition investment rose in the U.S. last year, changes in U.S. climate policy are contributing to market uncertainty, and market uncertainty makes it difficult for companies and investors to plan ahead. The result is energy-transition investors start to consider putting their money elsewhere, outside of the U.S.

– Joanna Klimczak, Northern Light Capital Partners

But the federal and provincial governments will need to coordinate their efforts to ensure that heightened interest translates into tangible investment. Nova Scotia has a small domestic power market and is looking for federal support to build transmission to other provinces – and, possibly, the United States – in order to persuade offshore wind developers there will be a market for their power.

A nation-scale opportunity

On February 26, Canada’s energy minister, Timothy Hodgson, travelled to Nova Scotia to announce a $5-million federal support for a feasibility study into a proposed transmission project dubbed Wind West, which would deliver offshore wind power to markets beyond the province.

Nova Scotia “has an exceptional wind resource,” Hodgson told reporters. “The main constraint on [Wind West] is not the wind; the wind is there and it blows a lot,” he said. “The constraint would be where is the power going to go and how are we going to move it, so that’s what this is about today.”

The Nova Scotia effort is just one example of Canada’s surging interest in the energy transition. Across the country, federal, provincial and territorial governments are promoting investment in the sector to support the electrification of the economy and construction of new data centres. That includes renewable power, battery and long-duration storage, energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure. Ontario is also pursuing nuclear, including the country’s first small modular reactor.

“There is no shortage of attractive opportunities for Canada to seize the moment,” says Joanna Klimczak, Montreal-based chief executive at Northern Light Capital Partners. “While total energy-transition investment rose in the U.S. last year, changes in U.S. climate policy are contributing to market uncertainty, and market uncertainty makes it difficult for companies and investors to plan ahead,” she says. “The result is energy-transition investors start to consider putting their money elsewhere, outside of the U.S.”

A front door for investment

Klimczak is a finance veteran who works with global asset owners on strategies to capitalize the energy transition. She recently co-convened a meeting between Energy Minister Hodgson and industry CEOs and executives. To secure foreign investment in clean-energy projects, Canada should have a “central front door” where global asset managers can go to track and access the investment opportunities across the country, she says. “Governments at all levels should consider to work together to centralize an entry point and market it highly, because the more investment capital Canada has to choose from and work with, the stronger our economy will be for all Canadians.”

In the United States, the Trump administration has rejected the scientific evidence of a mounting climate crisis and doubled down on fossil energy production while attacking the renewable sector. After record instalments in the third quarter of last year, the U.S. industry is anticipating a slowdown in the United States in 2026, the American Clean Power Association said in an end-of-year report: “Projects are facing heightened regulatory burdens and policy uncertainty, putting the future trajectory of clean power project deployments at risk.”

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All told, cancellations of clean-energy projects in the U.S. – including renewable power, storage and electric vehicle manufacturing – far outpaced new investment announcements in the U.S., according to the business coalition Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), in a report released February 13. E2 recorded US$35 billion worth of investments abandoned last year, compared to US$12 billion of new investments that were announced. In 2024, the United States saw US$16 billion in clean-energy investments announced and only US$2.5 billion abandoned.

Canada’s renewable sector has seen setbacks, too, but the outlook remains bullish. The country’s wind, solar and electricity storage capacity grew by 56% over the past five years to 25 gigawatts, according to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA). That’s equivalent to the capacity of 25 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors.

Virtually every province or territory has some renewable-energy procurement underway. Over the next decade, CanREA forecasts that investment in new wind, solar and storage will be some $200 billion. CanRea doesn’t include nuclear or large-scale hydro in its forecast, but there, too, provinces are investing in new non-GHG-emitting power projects.

The missing piece: private suppliers

The growth rates would be even greater if provincial governments would unleash private-sector suppliers to meet surging demand without having to sell through government-controlled utilities. Alberta is the sole province with a market in which electricity producers can sell directly to industrial customers through power-purchase agreements. However, Premier Danielle Smith slammed the door on that option when her government ordered a moratorium on new renewable power projects.

Canada can quickly unlock much more corporate investment in renewables

In 2024, companies signed deals for more than 1,000 megawatts of renewable power, virtually all in Alberta, according to figures from the Business Renewables Centre (BRC) Canada, which advises companies on renewable power procurement. That market has since dried up except for some small activity through a Nova Scotia program.

BRC Canada director Jorden Dye says Canada could attract far more investment from multinational corporations that remain committed to meeting climate targets if provinces would relax their exclusive grip on power markets. The centre’s advisory council includes some of the world’s largest companies, including Amazon, Starbucks and Marriott International. “When you start seeing policy churn and policy uncertainty, companies start looking at whether there are opportunities to decarbonize other aspects of the business in other jurisdictions,” Dye says. “And Canada has definitely come up as a factor for that.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed to make Canada a clean-energy superpower, and both he and Energy Minister Hodgson have pointed to the need for electrification to make that happen. Trump’s war on renewables could prove a boon to Canadian clean-energy ambitions, but only if governments can create the necessary conditions to drive investment.

Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer.

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