But a year into this government’s mandate, and approaching five years since the onset of the cost-of-living crisis, the details don’t live up to the packaging.

The section starts off strong, announcing the government’s intention to launch a “Whole-of-Government Competition Plan.” In theory, this is an excellent idea, championed by the former Biden administration down south and by competition experts Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn at home. Across the federal government, there are powerful levers to promote competition. Have them work together in concert and the multiplier effect would be substantial. But announcing your intention to launch something is different from launching something. For now, all we know is that the minister of finance and national revenue will be giving more detail “in the coming months.”

Saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things.

– Keldon Bester, executive director, Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project

More worrying than the delay is the core of this intended-to-be-launched plan, which appears to be nothing more than a bland commitment to reduce red tape and get the government out of the way. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, possibly under Paul Martin, Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau.

No weird trick

The problem is that many of the monopolies that haunt our lives are crafted not in red tape, but in kilometres of cables, football fields of warehouses and hangars full of airplanes. There is no one weird trick to fix the Canadian economy, and the frictionless callout against red tape (which is bad) in favour of competition (which is good) isn’t it.

If the federal government wants to shake up competition, especially in the markets over which it has the most direct pull, it needs to go to the heart of how control is exercised in those markets.

Step one is to beef up the Competition Bureau and appoint a new commissioner of competition with clear marching orders to put a halt to harmful takeovers and move quickly on the oligopolized markets that are often invisible to everyday consumers. The government needs to direct our telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to double down instead of backing away from the regulations that allow independent competitors to build businesses on the infrastructure of incumbents.

Groceries are a clear test case

Riding on growing energy for public grocery stores, the federal government needs to invest in structural alternatives that put food on Canadian tables, including the unsexy but important food-processing and -distribution sectors.

Ottawa also needs to take public steps to restore consumer confidence that they’re getting a fair deal with existing competitors. Twice now, investigations by CBC’s Marketplace have found grocers systematically overcharging shoppers for meat products, even after commitments from the companies to rectify the behaviour. This is an egregious breach of consumer trust, yet the current maximum fine of $15,000 for an offending company is meaningless. Public denouncement, stricter penalties and stepped-up enforcement from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are other concrete ways the government can make clear that markets need to be working for Canadians.

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The federal government should also be partnering with the provinces — which have a clearer line of sight toward changing business practices — and leading a unified push against harmful practices like the property controls that allow grocers to dictate where their competitors set up shop. Manitoba is leading the way here, and its experience will certainly provide lessons for other provinces looking to deliver more choice for their citizens.

Still at the starting line

All together, these suggestions still represent only the first step toward a deep commitment to improving competition and making markets work for Canadians. Heck, even cut some red tape while you’re at it. But a generic enthusiasm for competition is no substitute for the real political fights that need to happen to make Canadians’ lives more affordable.

Of course, there’s a less pessimistic read of the announcement, which is that the government has the right prescription and is setting up for a bold push to deliver more competition for Canadians.

But saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things. So far, it’s not clear that this government is prepared to do the latter.

Keldon Bester is the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The post Cutting red tape won’t defeat Canada’s monopolies. Here’s what will. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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,” said Erin Williamson at sustainability and energy consultancy Trio, which helps clients in pharmaceutical, automotive and other sectors set targets. She estimated 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 echoed Williamson’s take on the move, but several also had 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 signaled 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,” said 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,” states the SBTi’s 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,” said Pierre-Victor Morales-Aubry, also at the Carbon Trust. The underlying assumption behind the naming, he added, 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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A windfall tax, also known as an excess profits tax, is applied when a certain industry gains higher-than-average profits from a crisis, to such an extent that those extra earnings appear “unreasonable or unfair or immoral,” says Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Prior to the outbreak of the war, Canada’s oil and gas industry was expected to make $30 billion this year in profit, according to Mertins-Kirkwood. Now profits are expected to go as high as $100 billion, resulting in about $70 billion in excess earnings. “Their profits tripled basically overnight through no act of their own,” he says.

As Canada grapples with an ongoing affordability crisis, as many struggle to afford housing, groceries and now gas, Mertins-Kirkwood and left-leaning organizations and politicians like the Alberta Federation of Labour and NDP Leader Avi Lewis argue that excess profits in the oil and gas sector could benefit more Canadians if redirected toward public priorities.

Who gains?

“These companies are making money off of an illegal war against Ukraine and now the Iran war,” Catherine McKenna, former Canadian minister of environment and climate change, told Corporate Knights at the Montreal Climate Summit on April 16. “I feel if you’re going to make those profits, they can be reinvested in a way that supports Canadians, not given back to your largely U.S.-based shareholders.”

Mertins-Kirkwood projects that Canadians as a whole are spending an additional billion dollars each month because of higher oil prices. However, Canadians themselves aren’t padding the oil industry’s pockets on a one-to-one basis, he says. Most of the oil that the Canadian oil industry produces is sold to international markets, such as refineries in the United States.

Canada wouldn’t be the first to establish a windfall tax. The United Kingdom currently has one in place, and ministers in Germany, Italy and Spain have recently called on the European Commission to implement one because of rising gas prices. That approach is not widespread, however, Mertins-Kirkwood says, because in many countries the oil industry is state-owned, so a large share of the windfall would already go to the government.

Not likely

While the Alberta Federation of Labour has urged the Alberta government to implement a windfall tax, most arguments push for the tax to be imposed at the federal level.

However, natural resources fall primarily under provincial jurisdiction, which complicates any federal attempt to impose a windfall tax, says Kent Fellows, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. Further, Alberta, the largest oil-producing province in Canada, already takes royalties from the oil and gas sector, he says. “When prices increase and these firms are more profitable, the public purse gets a larger chunk of their revenues.”

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According to the Business Council of Alberta, resource royalties in recent years have generated an estimated $20 billion annually, or approximately one-quarter of total provincial government revenues in a roughly $75-billion budget. “The idea of a windfall profit tax doesn’t really make a lot of sense here because really they’d just be stealing from themselves,” Fellows says.

Mertins-Kirkwood, however, argues that a windfall tax would be applied after royalties have already been taken, so it would have no bearing on how much provinces already collect.

Another major pushback against the initiative is the idea that a windfall tax could stifle investment in the oil and gas sector. Investors take on the risk that in a low-price environment they might lose money, Fellows says. But if prices go up, they also expect to benefit. “They’re making calculated bets on that capital investment, and right now those bets are paying out.”

Leah Golob is a freelance business journalist based in Toronto.

The post As war sends oil profits surging, calls grow louder for a windfall tax appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Local Power program is “a significant opportunity for the U.K.’s community energy and crowdfunding sectors,” says Lisa Ashford, co-CEO of Ethex, an ethical crowdfunding platform, in an email statement. The policy framework and government support “should help to unlock a larger pipeline of investable local power projects, creating more opportunities for communities to directly invest in renewable energy in their own areas.”

Ethex has pledged to work with Great British Energy (the agency responsible for implementing the Local Power Plan) to bring local communities, individual investors and institutional capital together ​​to help leverage ​the billion-pound grant and loan program ​promised by the government.

“However, we want to emphasize that public funding should complement retail investment, not replace it,” Ashford says, adding that public funding can act as “catalytic capital to get more projects off the ground, reduce risk and co-exist with community and retail finance.”

What is investment crowdfunding?

The purpose of the Local Power Plan is to build community energy projects financed with public funding and crowdfunding, a strategy that proponents see as a way to democratize the capital markets. Distinguished from reward- or donation-based crowdfunding, investment-type crowdfunding is offered with the expectation of financial returns through interest, dividends or rising share values.

In some cases, investment crowdfunding is done through community bonds or innovative investment savings accounts as a way for local people to finance a non-profit or civic project. In others, it can enable investors to buy an equity share in a private company, usually as a start-up but sometimes in a more advanced growth stage.

In either case, the investment is typically locked up for a considerable period – usually five years or more – to prevent participating investors from exiting before the project or company matures to a stage in which investors can get their money out.

​​Capital crowd-surge – and slump​​​

Historically, private investments have been restricted to wealthy sophisticated investors or institutions like pensions and venture capital. Starting in 2014, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority began to amend the rules, reducing restrictions and setting specific conditions for crowdfunding purchases. Since then, the domestic market has grown considerably​​. In​​​ ​2024 (the most recent figures), the value of the total U.K. crowdfunding market was US$1.06 billion, including loans and bonds, equity and even donation-type offerings.

​​While loans and bonds are gaining ground, m​​​​​arket growth has tapered off in recent years in the equity segment of investment crowdfunding, which involves buying shares in private firms. In the United Kingdom in 2021, there were 569 equity crowdfunding offers that together raised a total of £773 million. By 2024, this had fallen to 297 deals worth £324 million (about US$414 million in 2024 dollars).

​​​Investment markets of all kinds bubbled in 2021 as hundreds of thousands of individual investors – bored and at home during COVID lockdowns – experimented with new ways to make (and lose) money. Along with meme stocks and crypto ownership, equity crowdfunding soared in 2021 and 2022, buoyed by low interest rates, rising global investment markets and established crowdfunding platforms like Crowdcube and Seedrs (later taken over by U.S.-based Republic).

Since then, rising interest rates, growing international conflicts and the chaos of the Trump administration have made investors more cautious. Inevitable losses from fledgling start-ups and long capital lockup periods also dampened some investor enthusiasm for equity crowdfunding.

​​The ‘hybrid model’ for green growth​ ​​

In contrast, investment-type crowdfunding in environmental, socially responsible and ethical offerings has grown steadily, although incrementally. Social enterprise bonds and share offerings have carried less risk than equity shares in start-up and growth companies. It’s customary for renewable-energy projects, for example, to come with reliable income streams or civic infrastructure projects to be backed by municipal borrowing guarantees. Ethex, Abundance and Triodos UK ethical crowdfunding are among the online platforms specializing in this market and are poised to benefit from the £1 billion Local Power strategy.

As well, crowdfunding platforms focusing on the energy transition are expected to benefit from ​an expected annual growth rate of U.K. climate tech of 21% between now and 2030, although this growth won’t happen directly from the Local Power program.​​​​​​ ​ ​Globally, a​ 2024 report by RMI (formerly Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute) states that US$2 trillion will be needed globally to finance the industrial, transportation and infrastructural changes needed to shift the global energy system from fossil fuels to electricity.

The RMI report says this opens new opportunities for crowdfunding, which are already appearing in the United Kingdom, where climate tech is attracting attention from individuals as well as venture and private equity investors. British climate-tech transportation company Sunswap raised £17.3 million in 2024 (US$21.8 million in 2024 dollars), partly from crowdfund investors and partly from venture capitalists. The company has developed a ​​​​groundbreaking ​refrigeration unit for trucks powered by a separate battery and solar ​unit to reduce ​fuel costs and ​carbon dioxide emissions from transport trucks. The Republic crowdfund platform hosted the offer along with support from institutional investors such as Shell Ventures, an arm of the Shell oil and gas giant.

Antoine Beine, co-founder of the France-based climate tech crowdfunding network Keenest, says this so-called hybrid model (including both crowdfund and institutional investors) is becoming the norm in the United Kingdom and Europe. “This is where a democratic dimension of investment may emerge within the private sector, not simply for capital access, but in embedding transparency and public scrutiny around issues such as sovereignty, climate transition, privacy, and ethical practices,” he says in an email.

Ethex’s Ashford says that one of the exciting opportunities offered by the Local Power Plan is the prospect to pool government funding with crowdfunding capital. “If implemented effectively, the Local Power Plan could mark a step change in community power investment by combining public support with people-powered finance to accelerate a more democratic energy transition.”

The government’s aim in the Local Power Plan is to build 1,000 community energy projects. In the process, it could also help to deliver a jolt of popular democracy into the United Kingdom’s capital markets.

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

The post The U.K. has a plan to crowdfund clean energy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Bile duct cancer⁠ is rare, with only about 600 cases diagnosed in Canada each year. But in this town, located downstream from the Alberta oil sands, O’Connor was seeing rates that were far higher than expected. The mostly Indigenous population relies heavily on hunting, trapping and fishing for food, and they’d told O’Connor about changes they’d seen – a rainbow colour appearing on the surface of Lake Athabasca, a dwindling fish population and ducks that appeared unwell, he recalls. “It dawned on me: this is a community that’s suffering as a result of what’s happening upstream.”

O’Connor publicly called for investigations. In response, three physicians with Health Canada filed complaints against him with the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, saying O’Connor was causing “undue alarm.” He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.

The provincial health authority and other groups carried out small studies over the next eight years, but the results were not definitive. Research on how environmental factors affect health can be difficult to do and requires substantial time and detailed, accurate data. That’s been an ongoing challenge in Alberta. And so the question remains: what exactly are the health risks for a community that sits close to major oil and gas infrastructure?

Twenty years after O’Connor first raised concerns, physicians, environmental advocates and community members in Alberta are still calling for more definitive monitoring and investigations into the health and environmental effects of Alberta’s oil and gas industry, not just in Fort Chipewyan but across the province. They say that this kind of research is long overdue and should be initiated now, as Danielle Smith’s government weighs its next steps with what to do with Alberta’s aging oil and gas infrastructure – the old wells, pipes and other dated infrastructure, often referred to as mature assets. Many of these lie in rural regions far from the oil sands and Fort Chipewyan, but also where there is less close monitoring.

The Alberta government published a report last year with recommendations about what to do with the province’s mature assets. The Smith government is expected to take more formal action based on the report later this year. But the report doesn’t call for closer monitoring of non-producing wells – a gap that has industry watchers and community advocates worried.

Amanda Bryant, a climate policy expert and manager of the Pembina Institute’s oil and gas program, says that vital information is being missed. She says the province should be collecting in-depth health and environmental data from all areas with non-producing wells. She wants that information to be collected and made available for analysis. The Alberta Energy Regulator and provincial health authorities do collect data, but not enough, she says. “I would be skeptical that we currently have enough data to be making the judgment that these wells are not posing a health risk. The research that there is shows that there is cause for concern, that there are potential health impacts.”

Better health research is “part of protecting the public, the public interest and the public good,” she adds.

Leaking legacies

Alberta is home to 275,000 marginal, inactive or decommissioned but unreclaimed well bores or surface locations, according to the government’s mature-asset strategy report. Many remain in a state of ambiguity: they no longer produce oil or gas – or else produce so little that they’ve outlived their economic value – but have not been declared inactive, because there’s no economic incentive to do so. Other wells have been decommissioned but have not undergone the required cleanup and restoration to meet the province’s standard.

For years, Alberta has followed the “polluter pays” principle: the party that causes environmental damage is responsible for bearing the costs of cleanup, remediation and compensation. But many companies responsible for abandoned wells have gone out of business. For those wells, the responsibility falls to the Orphan Well Association, a non-profit organization funded by industry levies. Every year, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) prescribes the amount for the levy, using a formula to calculate how much each company is required to contribute.

For the 2025/2026 fiscal year, the AER set a levy of $144.45 million. This falls far short of what’s needed for cleanup in Alberta. The Orphan Well Association estimates that the total cost to clean up the sites it manages is $1.12 billion.

In the meantime, wells that are no longer producing but not yet cleaned up remain as they were, and not being as closely monitored as environmental groups would like. The AER maintains public records on location and regulatory status of wells but does not regularly monitor their condition over time. In comparison, active wells undergo regular evaluations for methane leaks and other pollutants, which have been linked to asthma, cancer and cardiovascular issues. Non-producing wells are not without risk. A recent study from researchers at McGill University, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology⁠, looked at non-producing wells across Canada and found that methane emissions appear to be seven times higher than government estimates.

This doesn’t surprise Paul Belanger, an environmental engineer who worked in the oil and gas industry in Alberta for more than a decade. He is now the science adviser to Keepers of the Water, an Indigenous-led collective formed in 2006 to protect the Arctic Ocean Drainage Basin, the massive land areas whose waterways drain toward the Arctic Ocean. Belanger is concerned by the number of non-producing wells and small pipes throughout Alberta that are not being monitored. “What we’ve got now is abandoned wells in remote areas that look, to me, like they’re going to be ignored forever,” he says. “There’ll never be the money. We don’t have enough whistleblowers or sentinels out there to report every site.”

Belanger believes that saltwater spills at old well sites is an under-recognized threat in Alberta. As wells age, they produce significantly more water than oil, which leads to corrosion and contaminants leaching into the surrounding soil and groundwater. “As we’re sitting here, 30,000 wells are corroding. Rust never sleeps,” Belanger says. “I think that risk is just growing every month.”

The cost of uncertainty

Non-producing wells and the associated health and environmental risks have not been well studied in Canada. There’s fairly limited research into the health effects of oil and gas infrastructure overall. These studies are expensive and time-consuming, require meticulously kept datasets, and are beset with the challenge of distinguishing correlation from cause. On top of that, this is a politically and economically sensitive subject, particularly in Alberta, whose economy depends heavily on the oil and gas industry.

The lack of a strong evidence base is no reason to assume that things are not harmful, says Stephen Wilton, associate professor and cardiologist at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, where he is also co-director for planetary health. “In my mind, there’s enough evidence that we should be concerned,” he says. “One of the principles of public health is this ‘precautionary principle’: if you think there’s enough evidence of some harm and it’s plausible, then you should be taking precautions to avoid it.”

There is some evidence of harm. In one of the most significant studies to date in Canada, a 2021 report published in the journal Frontiers in Oncology showed a significant correlation between living in an area of dense oil and gas infrastructure in Alberta and the incidence of solid tumour cancers. The study is believed to be the first in Canada to look at cancer risk related to both active and inactive wells. The analysis showed that living close to one to three orphan sites was associated with an increased risk of solid tumours. The study showed correlation, not causation – that’s a huge limitation. Even so, the results raise the question of why. The authors concluded that it could be due to a lack of appropriate remediation or not being actively maintained by any proprietor, which could lead to increased environmental contamination.

What we’ve got now is abandoned wells in remote areas that look, to me, like they’re going to be ignored forever. There’ll never be the money. We don’t have enough whistleblowers or sentinels out there to report every site.

— Paul Belanger, environmental engineer

Other studies have shown that Alberta residents who live near oil and gas operations other than non-producing wells experience adverse health outcomes. In one report, published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2020, Calgary researchers found that people who lived within 10 kilometres of at least one fracking site were more likely to have children born small for their gestational age and have major congenital anomalies. In another study published last year, investigators found that 13% of Albertans live within 1.5 kilometres of an active well and 3% within 1.3 kilometres of a flare – and they have a 9% to 21% higher risk of experiencing cardiovascular or respiratory issues than people in the rest of the province. The closer a person lived to an oil or gas well, the greater their risk of these conditions, investigators found.

The study’s lead author is Martin Lavoie, a research scientist and data analyst at FluxLab, a leading methane measurement and technology development group at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. Lavoie says that he was surprised by the challenge of getting reliable data on the location of oil and gas wells. “Sometimes the oil and gas industry doesn’t know exactly where is the well,” he says. “So imagine when you try to make the connection between [someone’s health] and a gas well, but you don’t know where is the gas well? Maybe it’s here. Maybe it’s 100 metres further south or west.”

Lavoie says that more accurate data would help researchers make better evaluations of things like methane emissions and health risks. “One of the recommendations to the regulator is just keep better track of what’s going on,” he says. “It’s one thing having the data, which we appreciate very much. But if the data is not accurate or could be more accurate, that’s a different issue.”

So far, most of the research looking at the health and environmental effects of non-producing wells has been done in the United States. In one study published in the journal ACS Omega, researchers reported harmful volatile organic compounds, including the carcinogen benzene, leaking from 48 abandoned wells in Pennsylvania. “In Canada, really surprisingly, we don’t have many studies on health related to the oil and gas industry,” Lavoie says.

Canadian researchers and community advocates want that to change.

In Fort Chipewyan, it is finally starting to change, but only after yet another crisis. In 2022 and 2023, Imperial Oil and the Alberta Energy Regulator failed to let communities know that wastewater containing arsenic, hydrocarbons and other pollutants was seeping into the watershed from Kearl Lake project outside of Fort McMurray.

The following year, the federal government announced nearly $12 million in funding over 10 years for a Fort Chipewyan Health Study. The community-led study, with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation, will examine the impacts of the oil sands on community members’ health. It’s the first large-scale study of this kind in Canada.

Christina Frangou is a long-time health journalist based in Calgary, Alberta.

The post Canada’s oil patch has a data problem and it’s putting public health at risk appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As CEO of the Climate Solutions Prize, I meet founders, researchers and entrepreneurs from across Canada who are forging technologies that are not only cleaner, but better: superior products, superior economics and superior ways of solving entrenched problems.

They are not waiting for permission. They are already building the solutions the world demands. The next era of climate action will not be led by slogans. It will be led by builders.

Canada needs more of them. But we also have more of them than most people realize, and too often we fail to help them get from breakthrough to scale.

Opalia in Montreal has developed a way to produce real milk from mammary cells, without the cow and without the methane. In Kingston, Ontario, RXN Hub is building Canada’s connective infrastructure for green chemistry commercialization, providing the modular lab space, piloting bays and technical validation that climate ventures need. Dispersa, based in Toronto, has created biodegradable chemicals derived from wood waste that replace petrochemicals in cleaning and industrial products, cutting both toxicity and carbon footprint.

These are not concepts in search of a market. They are proven technologies, validated by independent experts, tackling urgent challenges across food systems, oceans and the built environment.

The bottleneck lies in moving solutions from validation to deployment, at pace. The issue is not talent; it is risk aversion. Too many promising technologies stall between proof of concept and market because our funding ecosystem remains too rigid and too slow at the critical stages. We need agile mechanisms to de-risk innovation in the eyes of investors, customers and strategic partners.

De-risking the path from validation to scale

What does connective infrastructure look like in practice? It starts with rigorous, independent validation: technical due diligence, third-party testing and feasibility assessment that de-risks breakthrough innovation for investors, customers and strategic partners.

This requires structured pathways where capital, innovation and government converge, not once a year, but as a permanent operating rhythm within Canada’s climate ecosystem. Initiatives like the Climate Solutions Prize are bridging that gap across seven innovation tracks, from energy to water to agriculture to the built environment.

The countries that lead the next economy will be the ones that not only invent breakthrough technologies but also create the fastest path from invention to adoption.

– Galith Levy, CEO, Climate Solutions Prize

The evidence suggests that the model works. When catalytic capital meets validated innovation at the right inflection point, investment follows. More than $12 million in prize funding has helped unlock more than $111 million in subsequent capital. That ratio reveals something critical: for many climate ventures, the barrier is not the calibre of the technology. It is the confidence gap, the hesitation – among investors, customers and partners – to be first to deploy a validated technology at commercial scale. That is where most climate ventures lose momentum.

A pragmatic path forward

I often hear climate innovation framed as a trade-off: growth versus responsibility, economy versus environment. I see it differently. The most compelling solutions I encounter are not the ones that ask the market to make a sacrifice. They are the ones that win because they are simply better: cheaper, faster, cleaner, more resilient or more profitable.

The countries that lead the next economy will be the ones that not only invent breakthrough technologies but also create the fastest path from invention to adoption. Canada has more invention than we often recognize. Our weakness is what comes next. Too many promising technologies stall between proof and scale because they cannot secure a demonstration project or attract the catalytic capital needed to move from a promising idea to a real industry. The countries that win will be the ones that solve that challenge fastest and figure out what risks are worth taking. That is the real race now.

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What Canada lacks is not science, entrepreneurs or capital. It lacks a system built for speed.

The point is not innovation for its own sake. It is innovation that succeeds on its own economic merit and delivers measurable impact. What we need now is the willingness to move faster, take smarter risks and build the connective infrastructure that gets the right capital to the right technologies at the right moment.

This is not a uniquely Canadian challenge. But Canada has an opportunity few countries do: world-class research, extraordinary founders, and growing pools of capital looking for credible, high-impact opportunities.

The innovators are already here. The question is whether Canada will move fast enough to let them win.

Galith Levy is the CEO and co-founder of the Climate Solutions Prize. The 2026 Climate Solutions Prize Festival takes place June 8 and 9 in Montreal. For more information: climatesolutionsprize.com/2026festival.

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Throughout it all, speculation abounds that an EV tipping point approaches.

New battery-electric vehicle (BEV) registrations in Europe took off in the first quarter of 2026, rising by nearly 30% from a year ago, as the U.S.-Israel war in Iran spiked gas pump prices to levels not seen in years, Reuters reports. BEV registrations (a proxy for sales) jumped more than 50% in March alone.

Pedal to the metal on EV sales

Estimates are that more than 21% of all new cars registered in March in the European Union and EFTA (the European Free Trade Association, whose member countries are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) were ⁠electric.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s BEV market grew 12.8% in the first three months of 2026, with BEVs accounting for 22.5% of new car sales.

While high gas prices have been a major driver of BEV sales, new  and pre-existing – policy supports also played a role. “Generous government incentives” spurred the 50% year-on-year uptake of EVs in France, The Guardian reports.

That Nordic countries continue to outstrip their southern neighbours in BEV uptake – 98% of all new cars sold in Norway in March were BEVs, “followed by Denmark at 76% and Finland at almost 50%” – owes in part to “higher wages, generous subsidies, and extensive [public] charging infrastructure.”

Gas pump prices appear to be behind Italy’s full-throttle acceleration into the EV market, with that country experiencing a 65% year-on-year increase in EV sales in March.

Gas price concerns are also fuelling EV demand across Asia, with Japan – or rather, Toyota – offering a case in point. Toyota sold almost 3,500 EVs in March, “an increase of 4,117%” over the same month last year, Electrek writes.

EV tipping point ahead

“Rapid innovation, decline in cost and a rise in popularity” are all driving EV sales toward a tipping point “where uptake becomes self-propelling” and EVs “irreversibly replace internal combustion engine vehicles,” write the authors of a study published in early December in Nature Communications.

A combined effort by researchers from the University of Exeter, the University of Macao and the World Bank, the study found that even as the sale of gas-fuelled vehicles began to decline in 2019 (the study period ran 2016 to 2023), EV plus hybrid sales increased exponentially, with the global fleet doubling every 1.5 years. Sales in the European Union doubled every 1.3 years, while China saw EV plus hybrid sales double every year. “Our data and analysis provide evidence that several European markets and China have begun tipping towards EV dominance, although this is not convincingly the case for the U.S.,” the research team writes.

But a degree of uncertainty about the timing of the shift remains, even for strong EV markets. “Once investment is sunk into converting production lines, a return to [internal combustion vehicles] becomes comparatively expensive, irrespective of the oil price,” they write. The “imposition of new tariffs” remains the wildcard, they warn.

All eyes on China

Your average EV battery contains four basic components: the cathode (some combination of metals, often including lithium), the anode (typically graphite), the separator that keeps cathode and anode from touching explosively, and an electrolyte solution. As Bloomberg explains, China corners the market on all four.

It is also leading the charge on battery innovation. China’s latest iteration of its lithium ion phosphate battery now rivals its far more expensive kin, the nickel manganese cobalt battery, in energy density. According to its makers, the lithium ion phosphate battery can recharge “in about the same amount of time as it takes to refuel a gas car.”

China’s battery innovations extend far beyond improving the lithium ion phosphate one, however. Chinese battery-manufacturing giant CATL has just made public “six stunning new battery technology innovations, including an electric vehicle battery with driving range of up to 1,500 kilometres and the third generation of its Shenxing Superfast Charging Battery that it says can charge from 10% to 90% in six minutes and 27 seconds,” Zecar reports.

And China’s pre-eminence doesn’t end with batteries: Momenta (autonomous driving), Huawei (super-rapid-charging EV systems, among other things) and Alibaba (“intelligent cockpits”) are all headquartered there.

Meet the 2026/2027 BMW iX3

Western automakers have lost huge amounts of ground in China as new domestic highfliers like BYD seize market share. Western brands like BMW and Volkswagen held just 32% of the market this year, down from 64% in 2020, the Financial Times reports.

BMW is among those seeking to regain traction in the huge Chinese market, and it is doing so through direct collaboration with its hosts. Enter its BMW iX3, an electric sport-utility vehicle equipped with a CATL battery and the latest technology from Momenta, Huawei and Alibaba.

While Germany’s second-largest auto manufacturer intends to sell the iX3 abroad, it is also laser-focused on the domestic Chinese market. “Developed ‘in China, for China, and with China,’” the iX3 “has been deeply localized for China,” BMW states in a January release.

“Tailored to local traffic conditions and usage scenarios, the system is designed to deliver highly capable driver-assistance functions optimized for complex urban environments, highways, and long-distance travel in China, further enhancing safety, comfort, and driving confidence,” the car manufacturer adds.

Volkswagen – Germany’s largest car manufacturer – is also looking to collaborate with China. VW “plans to launch 50 plug-in hybrid and EV models in China by the end of the decade to rejig its petrol-heavy lineup with vehicles designed and engineered locally as part of its ‘in China for China’ strategy,” the Financial Times reports.

This story was originally published by The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original story here. 

Gaye Taylor is a staff writer for The Energy Mix. She is passionate about showcasing what individuals and communities are doing to advance climate solutions, in Canada and around the world. 

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“For the first time in our history, every Canadian will hold a direct stake in what’s built,” he said April 27 in launching the fund, which will be known as the Canada Strong Fund. “We will make it easy for individual Canadians to invest in the fund and therefore own a small piece of nation-building projects and share in their returns.”

The idea of a sovereign wealth fund to invest public funds for the public interest is not new, even in Canada. The Heritage Savings Trust Fund operates on this basis in Alberta. The Caisse de dépôt – a public pension fund manager – operates with an economic development mandate in Quebec. Around the world, many governments have established national wealth funds, sometimes investing enormous surplus revenues from their oil and gas assets.

The distinguishing feature of the new Canadian fund is its individual investment mandate. The government is promising to create a retail product to support the fund, which it says will be widely available to average investors.

Green investors beware

On paper, the product sounds like it could be a hit, harkening back to the Canada Savings Bonds that were enormously popular with individual Canadians in the 1960s and 1970s as a way of earning decent returns while supporting the national interest.

The government said projects will be selected from the government’s Major Projects Office and other national-interest projects. The list will likely include port expansions, electric grid improvements, clean-energy facilities and public transit projects, which will have broad support. But the list could also include a whole host of controversial fossil fuel ventures, including liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines and carbon capture projects, limiting the fund’s appeal.

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Tim Nash, president of Good Investing, a consulting firm that works with individual investors to create sustainable investment plans, says there won’t be much demand for the fund from green investors, who will be put off by its fossil fuel investments. But it could be very popular among investors who are concerned about Canada’s independence and want to support the country’s long-term development and economic security.

“The exciting thing for me is that Mark Carney talked explicitly about a retail offering, which to me is phenomenal,” Nash says. “I think this is targeted at a wider swath of Canadians who are really interested in Canadian sovereignty.”

A door to more?

According to the government’s spring economic statement released yesterday, the product will be easy to purchase, hold and transact, and will provide investors with protection for their initial capital. The fund will be an independent Crown corporation, professionally managed and operating on an arm’s-length basis from the federal government, investing in national projects on a fully commercial basis.

This is good politics, this is good economics. Across the board, we need a retail offering. I think there’s going to be a lot of energy around this.

– Tim Nash, president, Good Investing

Initial seed capital for the fund will come from a three-year, $25-billion commitment from the federal government. Carney said he expects the fund to grow over time as investments are sold and capital is reinvested.

Nash says he hopes the fund will inspire other retail investment products with government support. An investment product based on the Canada Growth Fund – similar to the Canada Strong Fund but with a clearer cleantech focus – would be very attractive to green and conventional investors, he says. Similarly, he says a Canada green bond widely available to individual investors would have strong demand.

Many questions remain

The background materials provided by the government are light on details, and a consultation is now proposed to iron out the many remaining questions. It’s not clear how the investment product will be structured, or whether it will be available through bank branches, financial advisers or directly from the government. It’s also not known how the principal investment guarantee will work or how much access investors will have to their funds given the long-term nature of the underlying investments.

Nash also says a top question is whether the fund will be eligible for tax-advantaged accounts, such as registered retirement savings plans. He calls this an absolute necessity to avoid the modest returns from the fund being depleted by income taxes.

If the government can get the basics right, however, Nash says, it could be very popular and replicated across other government programs to help bolster private investment. He says investment offerings in public programs could help to create popular support for them by giving people a direct stake in their success.

“This is good politics, this is good economics,” he says. “Across the board, we need a retail offering. I think there’s going to be a lot of energy around this.”

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

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In early 2025, European lawmakers drastically minimized the scope and scale of corporate sustainability disclosure requirements – cutting by up to 90% the share of companies that are required to report. Then, in December, European Parliament members delayed a law that would help reduce deforestation and forest degradation around the world. That same month, another law that was set to ban production of new combustion-engine cars in Europe by 2035 was watered down. In every case, global competitiveness was among the main reasons cited for the scale-back. 

But oscillating between climate leadership and regulatory retreat could also mean that Europe loses its place as a climate pioneer and an industrial power. “If Europe continues with this deregulation drive,” says Andreas Rasche, a professor at Copenhagen Business School, “the climate rules for European businesses will be written elsewhere in the world.” 

Simplification vs. deregulation 

Opponents of the European Union’s ambitious policies say they have overly complicated reporting structures and impose too much bureaucratic red tape. 

Rasche says that, in theory, regulatory simplification is a good idea, but “the problem comes in where simplification itself is politicized and is turned into an unjustified deregulation.” 

Fewer reporting requirements tend to mean lower costs, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into competitiveness. “The logic is that you increase competitiveness [by] reducing costs with compliance,” explains Hanna Ahlström, senior adviser and sustainability business developer at Æra, a consultancy firm in Oslo. But even if costs are cut and a company’s profitability increases, it doesn’t necessarily make a company more competitive, Ahlström says. For that to be the case, “the money [saved] needs to be reinvested in ways that makes the company competitive, and not all firms will do this.” 

While investing in new technologies is something that can help make a business more competitive long-term, the EU’s policy inconsistencies have also made businesses more hesitant to act. 

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For instance, Yara International, a fertilizer company, said in January that if the EU suspends its carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which came into effect on January 1, they will have to rethink a major low-carbon ammonia project in the United States. CBAM, which has so far avoided suspension, taxes EU companies importing steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizers, hydrogen and electricity based on the origin of the import. Yara CEO Svein Tore Holsether told Reuters that CBAM helped improve the business case for low-carbon ammonia products, but that regulatory uncertainty makes it difficult to bank on more expensive low-carbon investments.   

Businesses that make the first moves tend to also reap economic benefits as trailblazers, says Marcin Menkes, an associate professor at the Warsaw School of Economics and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. But when geopolitical turbulence is met with inconsistent behaviour on the part of the EU, it stifles not only innovation but also competitiveness, he argues. In order to make investments, companies bet on new rules and regulations being implemented. Uncertainty might incentivize businesses to be cautious instead. 

Even if a new approach, product or technology has an environmental benefit, if the rules change the business will incur the costs of being a first mover. “We must protect those businesses that boldly try to experiment, to deploy new environmental technology, technology solutions, without surprising them with different . . . regulatory approaches,” Menkes says. 

Regulation can mean opportunity, too 

When EU regulations stay in place, like CBAM has so far, there are business opportunities for companies willing to invest in compliance to gain access to the EU’s single market of approximately 450 million people. 

Canada, which ranks fourth in aluminum and 16th in steel production, could seize the opportunity to become a bigger player in the European market. Canadian aluminum and steel are largely produced by hydroelectricity, giving Canada one of the lowest carbon footprints among the world’s major producers. “Given the dependency on U.S. markets and the tariffs in place,” says Michael Lenaghan, associate director at Anthesis, a U.K.-based consultancy firm, “CBAM couldn’t have come at a better time for Canada and for steel and aluminum.” 

With the Canadian government looking to diversify trade, there is now an opportunity to become a major player under the CBAM regime, Lenaghan says. Currently, the EU imports most of its steel and aluminum from China, India and Turkey, he says. When comparing the emissions values to Canadian production, it’s significant: Canadian emissions are “between 50% and 70% lower across these materials, and that translates into a significant cost savings for EU importers when they’re looking at where to buy.”  

Lenaghan says that he doesn’t think that Canadian producers are fully tuned into CBAM yet. But it’s not every day that your competitiveness over other exporters is altered so drastically. “That’s what CBAM is doing,” Lenaghan says. 

It’s also an illustration that ambitious EU climate policies can co-exist with profits and competitiveness in a global market. “For me,” Copenhagen Business School’s Rasche says, “ambitious climate policy and competitiveness is not a contradiction.” It depends on the time frame. If competitiveness is looked at in the short term, there will be cost savings. Rasche, however, believes that competitiveness should be seen as a long-term horizon: “For that, you need an ambitious climate policy, and you need to decarbonize.”  

Ashley Perl is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Stockholm.  

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Coste’s organization forms part of a complaint filed before the Competition Bureau of Canada challenging the integrity of SFI, a system created by the pulp and paper industry in 1994 that is meant to reassure environmentally conscious consumers. The standard applies to everything from furniture to cardboard boxes and toilet paper.  

The Competition Bureau enforces the Competition Act, which prohibits false and misleading statements about products or services companies offer. 

“People desperately want to believe that logging can be done well, and that we can meet our needs for timber and fibre without having a devastating impact,” Coste says in an interview. “The story that can’t be manipulated is the one told out on the land. You get out into some of these areas, into some of these clear-cuts in forests that are SFI-certified, and there’s absolutely nothing sustainable about it.” 

The complaint, led by Ecojustice on behalf of the Wilderness Committee, Greenpeace Canada and several other environmental groups, was filed three years ago. The complainants say they want SFI to stop calling their certification “sustainable,” to issue public correction of their claims and to pay a $10-million fine. 

SFI, a non-profit organization, has now certified more than 150 million hectares of forest in North America, of which 76% are in Canada. Products that bear its seal are understood to be sourced from forests that are responsibly managed.  

But, critics argue, forestry companies certified by SFI can continue to clear-cut forests, spray glyphosate to suppress natural regrowth, and replace them with lucrative softwood plantations. Coste calls it “greenwashing.” “Some of the biggest clear-cuts in the rarest old-growth forests are in SFI-certified forest operations,” Coste says. “It undercuts the credibility of all third-party certifications.” 

In an emailed statement, SFI tells Corporate Knights that “this complaint has no merit and attempts to create confusion in the marketplace,” adding that “complaints like this are used to mislead brands, governments, and the public into the real value and impact of the SFI Standard.” 

Another signatory to the complaint, Peter Wood, is a professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia. Wood has been studying forestry certification since 1999, first for the province’s Ministry of Forests and later for non-government organizations.

“Forest certification initially held a great deal of promise, as a way to bypass government inaction in addressing unsustainable rates of logging and ease pressure on the world’s few remaining primary forests,” he says. “This is not the way that it has played out.” 

In a 39-page complaint submitted to the Competition Bureau, the environmental groups argue that the SFI standard does not require specific environmental outcomes. While the framework outlines steps that could contribute to sustainable forestry, it does not mandate them.

Wood says many of the requirements are “vague and discretionary, largely aspirational.” Companies seeking certification hire the auditors who assess them, he adds, and the standards focus on whether companies have programs in place rather than whether those programs produce measurable results. As a result, Wood argues, industry-led certification systems have allowed large volumes of wood products to enter the market with sustainability labels, without significant changes to forestry practices. 

SFI submitted a six-page response to the Competition Bureau, arguing that the organization is governed by an 18-member board divided equally among industry (including representatives from Canadian forest-product giants Canfor and Irving), conservation, and Indigenous and social sectors. The organization says it undertakes a standards-revision process every five to seven years, which includes review from technical experts; Indigenous groups; industry; private forest landowners and public forest managers; Canadian government agencies, including the Ministry of Natural Resources; environmental non-profits; labour unions; and others. The public is also given an opportunity to comment on the revisions. 

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SFI also says that their “standards are internationally recognized methodologies” and stated that disagreement among experts does not mean that a methodology is false or misleading. 

“SFI has a very slick website and associated promotional materials, and they make big claims around the label’s ability to provide assurance of sustainable forest management,” Wood says. “But if you take a close look at the forest management standards, upon which all of their claims essentially rest, there’s nothing in there that is capable of assuring a given level of performance.” To illustrate the point, Wood points to SFI’s “performance measures” that require certified organizations to protect endangered species. The problem? They require only that companies to have a program in place that “addresses” this issue, with no reflection on whether a program is effective or what impact logging has had on the species.   

SFI tells Corporate Knights that “while SFI sets the standard, independent, third party-accredited certification bodies certify organizations to the SFI Standards” and that a certificate is issued only after the independent certification body determines that an operation conforms to SFI’s requirements. They also say that annual surveillance audits by certification bodies are “mandatory on all certified operations to maintain certification. So, if an organization doesn’t meet the standard, they do not receive a certificate.” Meanwhile, the complainants argue that they have not seen an SFI certification be refused or removed for not meeting the requirements of the process.  

In response, an SFI spokesperson says that they are aware of 19 certificates that were relinquished between January 2022 and June 2024 by companies that could not meet new requirements. 

“[The] government has a strong role to play in protecting Canadian consumers from bogus claims made in the marketplace, including the sustainability of the products they buy,” Wood says. “But this requires pressure from consumers and voters.”

Wood and the claimant ​​​​environmental groups consider the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), founded in 1993, to be a stronger option. Though smaller by comparison to SFI, certifying just 50 million hectares, Ecojustice’s submission to the Competition Bureau notes that FSC’s structure and governance were designed to give equal voting power to business, environmental and social interests, including Indigenous Peoples. But, Wood says, in the 1990s, the forestry industry put significant effort into creating other options. “It appeared that these were deliberately trying to detract from the efforts of the Forest Stewardship Council, supported by Indigenous organizations and environmental groups,” Wood says. “I hope the Competition Bureau upholds a high bar in this case and prevents corporations from greenwashing . . . It should not be left up to individual consumers to go around verifying the myriad claims that are made in the marketplace every day, or read the hundreds of pages of standards that support these claims.”

Kegan Pepper-Smith, a managing lawyer on the case at Ecojustice, notes the slow pace of resolution. In the three years since the organization brought the complaint, they have not heard anything apart from one meeting soon after the Competition Bureau’s investigation was launched. “The logging practices under the SFI standard continue, and there’s been no redress for our clients or for the consumers,” Pepper-Smith says in a phone interview. 

The Competition Bureau tells Corporate Knights that the agency is legally obligated to conduct its work confidentially and cannot provide details related to the case or its status. Likewise, SFI says that no enforcement action has been taken by the Competition Bureau as of writing.  

“That’s really impactful for folks who want to speak with their money and make choices about what products they buy, and are being misled to think that they’re purchasing products that are sustainably sourced,” Pepper-Smith says. “It’s not only about the impact in the forest; it’s also about the impact on the consumers and their ability to . . . [use] their money to support sustainable practices.” 

Leah Borts-Kuperman is an award-winning journalist based in North Bay, Ontario. Her reporting has been published by Canada’s National Observer, The Narwhal, The Logic and The Walrus, among others. 

Response from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), sent on April 27, 2026:

“Contrary to the article’s claims, SFI’s Standard requires prompt reforestation using ecologically appropriate native species and prohibits the conversion of native forests to plantations. It also includes multiple safeguards to ensure that regenerated forests do not develop plantation characteristics, but instead resemble native or semi-natural forests at maturity.

The article’s assertion that SFI’s requirements lack measurable impact or performance is simply incorrect. Every Objective, Performance Measure, and Indicator in the Standard must be met and independently verified by a third-party auditor before an organization can achieve certification. These requirements are outcome-based, ensuring that meaningful and measurable results are delivered.

One example is SFI’s robust, performance-based requirements for the protection and conservation of old-growth forests. The Standard also mandates integrated pest management practices that minimize chemical use and prioritize the least-toxic, narrow-spectrum pesticides.”

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