Despite the White House’s efforts to prop up the coal industry, the U.S. was on track to shut down more coal plants in 2018 than in any other year. “The thing that has changed fundamentally the whole picture is that renewables have gotten so cheap,” says Jim Barry, global head of BlackRock’s infrastructure investment group. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with US$6.29 trillion in assets under management.

The Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) aimed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric generating units – partly by replacing coal production with cleaner plants powered by solar, wind or natural gas. Two months after Donald Trump took office, the administration of the President of the U.S. (POTUS) announced plans to repeal the CPP as part of its campaign to reduce industry regulations. Activists tried to block the Trump administration’s efforts, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in October against any further court challenges to repealing the CPP.

According to the Washington Post, over the next decade the revised regulations would allow GHG emissions 12 times greater than those permitted under the CPP – a major setback to human health and U.S. efforts to reduce climate change. But industry reports say things may not get that bad – because the coal industry’s slide into oblivion is continuing despite the Republicans’ best efforts.

A research report published in October by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) calculated that 2018 would see a record decline in U.S. coal-plant capacity – with the shutdown of 44 units at 22 plants, amounting to a capacity decrease of 15.4 gigawatts. IEEFA analysts predicted that scheduled shutdowns over the next six years would reduce U.S. coal-fired capacity by 15 per cent – not including future closures that haven’t yet been announced.

The report said older coal-fired plants just can’t compete, “as renewables and gas-fired generation are proving cheaper and more flexible.“ The report’s author, data analyst Seth Feaster, told Green Tech Media the IEEFA knows of several more coal plants now under review. “We are also aware of some other plants and units that are now running at low capacity factors, and are likely to get closed in the next few years.”

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MacLaren’s cloud-based digital asset management company, MediaValet, had grown and spread around the world. With customers in Europe, he knew he had to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) – the new global gold standard when it comes to privacy – or face the prospect of hefty fines.

It was a challenging process that took six months. But MacLaren says being among the first North American companies to become GDPR compliant has made a big difference. “It has attracted new customers, increased customer retention and overall grown our business. It has increased market share because it helped us win deals from other existing digital asset management providers.”

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and with the GDPR’s entry into force in May, privacy issues and ethical questions about what companies do with the data they collect have been in the spotlight.

In October, Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a call to action. He warned that privacy was a human right and the collection of huge amounts of personal information on individuals was hurting society.
“Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” Cook told an international gathering of privacy commissioners.

Cook praised the GDPR and called on the United States to follow Europe’s lead.
While California has adopted a consumer privacy act that is scheduled to go into effect in 2020, privacy laws in the U.S. are often weak or nonexistent.

Canada has the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which governs private businesses, and the Privacy Act, which spells out the rules for federal government departments, but neither has kept pace with changes in technology. With the GDPR now in effect, some experts are concerned Canada’s privacy laws will soon no longer be considered equivalent to those in the EU, which could complicate life for Canadian companies doing business with European companies or customers.

Described as the world’s strongest data protection rules, the GDPR sets out how the private information of European residents must be handled. It backs up those rules with the threat of stiff fines – up to €20 million or four per cent of a company’s worldwide annual revenue for the previous year, whichever is higher.

Fines can be imposed on any company around the world that breaks those rules – even if it has no offices in Europe.

European officials told Reuters in October that there has been a 53 per cent increase over the past year in privacy complaints under the GDPR in France and Italy alone. They expect data protection authorities to soon begin levying fines.

European data protection authorities can also use order-making powers to enforce the new privacy rules.

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“Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency.”

-Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

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For example, the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner, Canadian Elizabeth Denham, has issued an order directing a British Columbian company involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal to destroy all the personal information it collected on British citizens once B.C.’s information commissioner’s office finishes its investigation into the scandal.

The GDPR’s new rules are wide ranging.
One of its key provisions – privacy by design – actually originated in Canada, the brainchild of former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian. With privacy by design, privacy considerations are baked into systems from the start, not added as an afterthought.

Companies that have a data breach must notify affected customers within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach. Businesses must ask people, using clear language, for consent to use their information. Individuals can withdraw that consent, and request access to information a company has regarding them. They can take their data with them if they switch to another company.

Among the other provisions is the right to be forgotten, which allows an individual to ask for information about them to be erased.

Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien says the GDPR is inspiring privacy policy in other countries.

“Should we apply the GDPR exactly in Canada? Not necessarily. I don’t think so. We have a Canadian context. But there are many, many positive things in the GDPR.”

Scott Smith, senior director of intellectual property and innovation policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, says many large Canadian companies that operate internationally have already moved to comply with the GDPR.

However, he said many smaller companies don’t yet realize that they may need to comply as well.
“You run an Airbnb. You have a European traveller who happens to be here. You keep their name, their address, their e-mail address and phone number – that’s all personal information of an EU citizen. Theoretically, you need to be GDPR compliant.”

The GDPR comes at a time when data and personal information have never been more valuable.

“I’d say it is paramount,” says Smith. “Data is the way we are going to create new products, solve problems. Having timely, accurate and extensive data allows companies to understand their market, understand their customers, understand what their customers want and deliver it in ways that are more efficient and effective and convenient and lowers prices.”

Elisa Henry, a partner with Borden, Ladner, Gervais, says that for many companies, data has become their main asset.

“If you don’t properly take care of your data and you don’t handle it properly, then you’re putting your main assets at risk.”

Being GDPR compliant is rapidly becoming an asset when it comes to sales and business deals, Henry adds.

“If you cannot say that these days and your business is relying heavily on processing personal information, then you’re out of the game very quickly.”

Chantal Bernier, who leads the privacy and cybersecurity practice at the law firm Dentons, says companies could also have difficulties exchanging data with European businesses if they aren’t GDPR compliant.

“In the GDPR there is a mandatory requirement for any organization to only transfer data or to only hire a vendor that is GDPR compliant. So in addition to the competitive advantage with branding, there is a legal requirement that is a huge differentiator when you can put forward right away that you are GDPR compliant.”

The cost of complying can vary widely, says Bernier. A small website selling products to Europe might be able to comply with the law for $50,000. A larger company that uses artificial intelligence, algorithms, a large amount of personal information, has European employees and sells services to Europe could end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do everything necessary.

Cavoukian, who now leads the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University, says a lot of businesses have been coming to her for privacy by design certification that they can then tout to their customers.

Many of the provisions of the GDPR highlight ethical questions for businesses – even those who don’t do business in Europe.

Among them, says Henry, is the use of artificial intelligence and entirely automated decision-making or profiling that affects individuals – something restricted under the GDPR.

“There are a lot of questions that as citizens we should be asking and ethics has to be embedded in privacy. They go hand in hand. And the GDPR suddenly played a big role in raising awareness about that.”

In Europe, the new, tougher rules are being well received, she added. “People are more and more conscious and worried about surveillance, about monitoring of their behaviour, about automated decision-making.”

Another ethical issue for business is the temptation, once you have a database chock full of personal information, to use it in a variety of ways.

Cavoukian says it is important to make privacy the default setting and not to use information you gather for any purpose other than the purpose for which it was collected.

“The beauty of doing that is that it builds trusted business relationships, which are lacking. There’s a huge trust deficit,” she says.

“So, I actually believe it gives businesses a competitive advantage and allows them to retain the customers they have, gain their loyalty and it attracts new opportunity.”
MacLaren agrees.

He says the most challenging part of becoming GDPR compliant was reviewing all of the company’s licensing agreements with their lawyer. That review and making sure all aspects of MediaValet’s operations complied with the GDPR cost “north of six figures.”

But MacLaren is glad he did it.

“In the end, if it’s good for our customers and their users, it’s good for us and our businesses.”

Elizabeth Thompson is an award-winning journalist who has covered Canada’s Parliament since 2001.

The post Privacy profits appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That world is within our grasp thanks to advances in technology, abundant clean power and natural resources, and the can-do mentality of Canadians. But it is not just going to fall into our laps.

Currently, we are one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita in the world and the federal government’s latest projections show that the country will be spewing 722 million tonnes (MT) of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, a far cry from the 517 MT goal pledged in the Paris Agreement. A more hopeful projection that includes additional policies and measures currently under development would squeeze emissions down to 583 MT by 2030.

Canada needs a basket of common-sense policies (flex-regs) that present default choices that make life a little bit more affordable and comfortable for everyone. While a carbon tax can be helpful – to the extent it doesn’t politically derail the whole effort – it is not really where the action is, especially now that “renewables have gotten so cheap [in relation to fossil fuels],” in the words of Jim Barry, global head of BlackRock’s infrastructure investment group. To wit: The Clean BC climate change plan, which sets the new standard for climate policy in Canada, includes a rising price on carbon, but projects that it will account for less than 10 per cent of the province’s overall greenhouse reductions by 2030.

Here are four changes that could help move the clean-economy dial forward:

• Institute zero-emission vehicle mandates that require manufacturers to sell a minimum and rising mix of non-emitting passenger and freight vehicles, similar to what’s being done in Quebec, British Columbia, California and China. This overcomes dealer inertia and helps put Canada in the driver’s seat for a world where electric vehicles will be cheaper than gas guzzlers in the next few years, according to Bloomberg.

• Implement net-zero ready building codes for new buildings along the lines of the BC Energy Step Code and couple them with fuel-switching incentives and turnkey financing targeted at contractors to help decarbonize and climate-proof the existing building stock.

• Move the coal phase-out up to 2025 from 2030, and hold auctions for renewable energy along the cost-effective lines already in place in Alberta.

• Consider a public-private partnership styled after the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority to transform Canada’s abundant natural resources, including bitumen, into the world’s biggest storefront for clean commodities – a global market growing to $1.5 trillion annually by 2030.

Corporate Knights research has crunched the numbers to implement these suggestions and has determined that in an ambitious scenario, these policies could catalyze an additional $36 billion of investment per year from 2019 to 2025. They would also present significant opportunities for Canada’s financial sector to develop world-class expertise in green real estate and infrastructure financing as well as sustainable wealth management, the fastest growing asset class at scale in the world. This approach has the potential to generate billions of dollars in returns for Canadian pensioners and shareholders.
In return, Canada’s emissions would plunge to 571 MT by the end of 2025, and living standards, our GDP and jobs would rise.

Toby Heaps is CEO and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights, which acts as secretariat to the Council for Clean Capitalism.

The post Imagine a cleaner Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Charles Robertson is the London-based global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, an investment bank specializing in emerging markets. As the lead author of The Fastest Billion: The Story Behind Africa’s Economic Revolution (2012), Robertson has a genuine interest in helping developing countries succeed – and thinks they deserve a break from well-meaning financial engineering.

A recent column in The Economist explores Robertson’s contention that ethical investing’s emphasis on global environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures could hurt emerging economies and encourage investors to put all of their money in advanced (and usually slower-growth) economies such as Sweden.

Standards, after all, tend to be developed by advanced societies that have already been through the messy business of creating an industrial economy and building social cohesion. By contrast, The Economist says, “The emerging economies that interest Mr. Robertson do badly [on ESG measures]. They are often dirty and corrupt – at least compared with Sweden. Their most liquid companies tend to be national champions or sprawling conglomerates that neglect minority shareholders and jump into bed with the government.”

Robertson says blind adherence to ESG criteria could skew capital flows towards the most privileged parts of the world, ironically making it harder for poorer economies to make progress on genuine issues of climate, governance and social justice.

To fix the problem, he suggests ethical investors re-evaluate countries’ moral fitness relative to their per-capita GDP (gross domestic product). Looked at in context, Robertson says emerging economies such as Chile, Indonesia and Poland look unexpectedly virtuous.

He also recommends investors examine change over time, and reward “most improved” nations rather than the best. “That,” opined The Economist, “would favour emerging markets with room to improve over countries nearer moral perfection.”

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has also spoken out on this topic of fixing financial plumbing so that more rich world capital can flow to where it is needed most in emerging markets for green infrastructure. Not unimportantly, he points out these investments offer superior yields for investors to reap, which would be helpful for shoring up pension fund shortfalls and growing liabilities faced by insurance companies due to more frequent floods, forest fires and hurricanes.

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We were more than pleased with the reception of our report, which spurred an international movement of academics, civil society, and governments to construct and employ metrics that reflected a broader conception of wellbeing. The OECD has constructed a Better Life Index, containing a range of metrics that better reflect what constitutes and leads to wellbeing. It also supported a successor to the Commission, the High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. At the OECD’s sixth World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge, and Policy in Incheon, South Korea this past November, the Group issued its report, Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance.

The new report highlights several topics, like trust and insecurity, which had been only briefly addressed by Mismeasuring Our Lives, and explores several others, like inequality and sustainability, more deeply. And it explains how inadequate metrics have led to deficient policies in many areas. Better indicators would have revealed the highly negative and possibly long-lasting effects of the deep post-2008 downturn on productivity and wellbeing, in which case policymakers might not have been so enamored of austerity, which lowered fiscal deficits, but reduced national wealth, properly measured, even more.

Political outcomes in the United States and many other countries in recent years have reflected the state of insecurity in which many ordinary citizens live, and to which GDP pays scant attention. A range of policies focused narrowly on GDP and fiscal prudence has fueled this insecurity. Consider the effects of pension “reforms” that force individuals to bear more risk, or of labor-market “reforms” that, in the name of boosting “flexibility,” weaken workers’ bargaining position by giving employers more freedom to fire them, leading in turn to lower wages and more insecurity. Better metrics would, at the minimum, weigh these costs against the benefits, possibly compelling policymakers to accompany such changes with others that enhance security and equality.

“If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their wellbeing, and how we can supply more of whatever that is. The Beyond GDP measurement agenda will continue to play a critical role
in helping us achieve these crucial goals.”
— Joseph Stiglitz

Spurred on by Scotland, a small group of countries has now formed the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. The hope is that governments putting wellbeing at the center of their agenda will redirect their budgets accordingly. For example, a New Zealand government focused on wellbeing would direct more of its attention and resources to childhood poverty.

Better metrics would also become an important diagnostic tool, helping countries both identify problems before matters spiral out of control and select the right tools to address them. Had the US, for example, focused more on health, rather than just on GDP, the decline in life expectancy among those without a college education, and especially among those in America’s deindustrialized regions, would have been apparent years ago.

Likewise, metrics of equality of opportunity have only recently exposed the hypocrisy of America’s claim to be a land of opportunity: Yes, anyone can get ahead, so long as they are born of rich, white parents. The data reveal that the US is riddled with so-called inequality traps: Those born at the bottom are likely to remain there. If we are to eliminate these inequality traps, we first have to know that they exist, and then ascertain what creates and sustains them.

A little more than a quarter-century ago, US President Bill Clinton ran on a platform of “putting people first.” It is remarkable how difficult it is to do that, even in a democracy. Corporate and other special interests always seek to ensure that their interests come first. The massive US tax cut enacted by the Trump administration in December 2017 is an example, par excellence. Ordinary people – the dwindling but still vast middle class – must bear a tax increase, and millions will lose health insurance, in order to finance a tax cut for billionaires and corporations.

If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their wellbeing, and how we can supply more of whatever that is. The Beyond GDP measurement agenda will continue to play a critical role in helping us achieve these crucial goals.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is the winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His most recent book is Globalization and its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump. Ten years ago, he was one of the authors of the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress report Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up

The post Beyond GDP appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Goldman’s answer is yes. It sets out a path through which Big Oil can become Big Energy by the year 2030 by embracing greener energy sources and higher-value petroleum products. These initiatives can help the oil industry reduce its carbon-emission intensity by 23 per cent, a target that matches sustainable development goals while still providing universal access to energy, according to the International Energy Agency.

Simply put, “Re-Imagining Big Oils: How Energy Companies can successfully adapt to climate change” envisions a future where oil provides just 26 per cent of industry revenues (down from a current 48 per cent). Filling the gap are natural gas (forecast to account for 19 per cent of industry revenues by 2030, up from 11 per cent), liquefied natural gas, or LNG (rising to 20 per cent from 14 per cent) and petrochemicals (increasing to 10 per cent, up from five per cent today).

At the same time, Goldman says that renewable energy sources, supplemented by carbon capture and storage (CCS) and reforestation, can account for 15 per cent of Big Energy’s revenues by 2030, up from just two per cent today. And whereas Big Oil’s renewable green energy projects currently generate no profits, the report predicts tomorrow’s oil companies will enjoy a five per cent return from green energy sources in 2030.

Big Oil could grow its renewables business more than sevenfold over the coming years, Goldman Sachs projects. Getting there will require renewables capital expenditure of US$9b per annum, or nine per cent of 2019 capital expenditure (source: Company data, Goldman Sachs).

Other Goldman predictions: more oil companies will become gas and power utilities, generating 10 per cent of industry revenues by 2030; the costs of solar power and energy will drop 50 per cent over the next decade; and biofuel use will rise, driven by new fuels developed from algae and vegetable oil.

The report says many investors expect Big Oil’s low-carbon transition will produce lower profits. Goldman thinks differently: “We believe that this conclusion ignores some key dynamics of the low-carbon transition (tighter financing for hydrocarbon projects, a more concentrated group of developers for megaprojects, financially stranded assets), and we come to the opposite conclusions: Big Oils will see improving returns in their path to become Big Energy.”

While not mentioned in the report, the two most prominent examples of big energy going green (Neste and Ørsted, formerly known as the Danish Oil and Gas Company) now generate the majority of their profits from biofuels and renewable power respectively, while handily outperforming their fossil fuel peers on margins and total shareholdeer returns over the past five years.

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Compiled by Sarah Landstreet and Maggie Arai of Georgette Packaging

 Illustration by Kyle Metcalf

The post Breaking down our plastic habit, by the numbers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Hero:  Seychelles’ blue bonds

First, in 2007, came the “green bond,” the debt instrument that has raised hundreds of billions of dollars for projects to combat or adapt to climate change. Now, a decade later, the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles has made a splash with the world’s first “blue bond,” aimed at easing environmental pressures on our oceans and marine life.

The proceeds of the 10-year, US$15-million issue will go towards overhauling the Seychelles’ fishing industry, the biggest contributor to the economy after tourism. Eligible projects include the development of aquaculture, training programs, new equipment and promotion of environmentally friendly fishing practices.

Arunma Oteh, World Bank vice-president and treasurer, described blue bonds as “yet another example of the powerful role of capital markets in connecting investors to projects that support better stewardship of the planet.” The World Bank helped pioneer green bonds in 2007, and has played a key role in the Seychelles’ issue by rounding up investors and advising the government on how best to spend the funds.

If green bonds are any guide, there will be no shortage of appetite for blue bonds among both issuers and investors. The Climate Bonds Initiative, a U.K.-based non-profit, estimates that governments, international organizations and businesses around the world were on track to raise US$210 billion from green bonds in 2018, up from US$162 billion in 2017.

EY, a global consultancy, says the main challenge for green bond issuers has been to absorb the extra costs compared to a normal bond without having to offer higher interest rates to investors.

According to a recent EY report, “These costs may include additional expenditure for defining the green criteria, monitoring and maintaining the proceeds as green, and transparently communicating performance to investors over the lifetime of the bonds.” Another challenge is to nail down the definition of a “green” project so that it meets investors’ needs and can withstand scrutiny from environmental activists.

The “blue” market will face similar hurdles. The three U.S. institutions that subscribed to the Seychelles bond – Calvert Impact Capital, Nuveen and Prudential Financial – will earn a handsome interest rate of 6.5 per cent a year. By contrast, Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island, paid interest of just 3.65 per cent for a much longer 25-year bond issued in 2017.
Good news for the Seychelles is that it will end up paying just 2.8 per cent for its funds, thanks to a World Bank guarantee and support from the Global Environment Facility, a partnership of governments, non-profits and private businesses. Alas, not all future blue bond borrowers can bank on such a sweet deal.

Zero: Facebook

Amanda Vermeulen Bowey, a freelance writer living in Sydney, Australia, told her Facebook friends in mid-November that “after thinking about it for some time, I’ve decided to close my Facebook account.”

The final straw, Bowey said, was a blockbuster New York Times story, published a few days earlier, which exposed how the social media giant’s top executives chased growth even at the expense of undermining democratic processes around the world. The story revealed how

Facebook bankrolled a smear campaign against competitors and critics, planting fake stories on right-wing blogs and suggesting that George Soros, the liberal philanthropist, had funded anti-Facebook protestors.

The NYT scoop was the latest in a series of revelations which suggest that the company that once took pride in its ability to “move fast and break things” has ended up moving far too fast and breaking too many things. Regulators, politicians and users like Bowey are increasingly questioning Facebook’s corporate governance, from its privacy policies to its tardiness in responding to malevolent users such as Russian “troll farms” and U.S. white supremacists.

At the heart of Facebook’s problems is its evolution from a distribution platform to a publisher. From its origins as a fun way for users to share stories and pictures with far-flung family and friends, Facebook has played an increasingly active role in deciding who sees what, and when.

Attracting advertising dollars has become a top priority. Yet, as the recent revelations show, Facebook’s top executives have shied away from the transparency and accountability that typically come with such market power.

These missteps are starting to take a toll on the company’s business. Facebook reported 2.27 billion active users in the third quarter of 2018, 10 per cent more than a year earlier but down from the 16 per cent growth rate in the previous 12 months. Its shares lost more than a third of their value between August and December 2018, costing investors close to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media columnist, wrote in November that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 34-year-old founder and chairman, “should declare mission accomplished — and find something else to do for the next few decades. Because he’s shown that he’s incapable of leading the broken behemoth that is Facebook.”

Meanwhile, Bowey in Sydney has expressed mixed feelings about her decision. “Giving up Facebook is going to be like giving up chocolate, coffee, wine and cigarettes all on the same day – tough,” she said in a private message. “But it also means I’ll spend more time reading and maybe painting, instead of hours hooked to scrolling through my social media feeds.”

The post Heroes & Zeros: Seychelles vs. Facebook appeared first on Corporate Knights.

If they blow a hole in the backbone
The one that runs cross the muscles of the land
We might get a load of stone for the road
But I don’t know how much longer we can stand…

Harmer grew up near Mount Nemo in north Burlington – a dramatic craggy outcropping on the Niagara Escarpment, which is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. The damage being inflicted on the area’s delicate flora and fauna fired not just her indignation, but also her creative imagination.

For Harmer, opposition to this onslaught of industrial activity became a cause célèbre as she used her guitar, her song-writing skills and her fan base to help marshal supporters and donors to a high-profile 2009 campaign to protect the species and natural heritage threatened by these operations.

Almost a decade later, she’s fighting again, this time an encroachment by developers building on a designated “Area of Natural and Scientific Interest” (ANSI) north of Kingston. The so-called Johnston’s Point recreational properties project, on Loughborough Lake, threatens six endangered species, including the Blanding’s turtle. The developer’s pitch is to create a “benefit” for endangered species elsewhere in the province, a loophole introduced in 2013. “Any attack on our living systems is problematic,” Harmer observes, noting that she’s once again playing numerous benefit concerts to help raise funds and awareness to fight the project. “Everyone has a role. But music takes it up to a different place.”

Harmer, of course, belongs to a long tradition in Canada’s far-flung arts community – creators working in a range of media to draw attention to both the risks facing the environment and the beauty of Canada’s natural heritage. Their ranks include the late novelist Farley Mowat, guitar virtuoso Bruce Cockburn and photographer Edward Burtynsky (“Anthropocene”), as well as Indigenous artists such as Kenojuak Ashevak, the ground-breaking Inuit painter renowned for her iconic depictions of mythic Arctic creatures and landscapes.

With sustained political attacks on policies like carbon taxes and green energy, as well as a general loosening of environmental protections, artists like Harmer have a lot on their plates, both politically and artistically. “Right now,” she says, “it’s an onslaught.”

Herewith, four other creators who are focusing attention on these issues.

The Story-Teller:

Margaret Atwood

The period when Margaret Atwood, arguably Canada’s most popular novelist, emerged as an outspoken environmental activist occurred in the mid-to late 1980s, a time when logging companies were pressing to clear cut one of Ontario’s last remaining old growth forests, north of Lake Temagami.

Atwood, Mowat, former politician Bob Rae and other prominent figures joined forces with local environmental and Indigenous organizations to pressure the Ontario government to intervene, at times blockading a key logging road.

Yet to anyone familiar with Atwood’s writing, Canada’s wild spaces have served as an evocative and occasionally nightmarish backdrop to her fiction for years. The list of references is lengthy, and includes the disturbing short stories in Wilderness Trips, the jungle-like ravines in Cat’s Eye and the ravaged dystopia of The Year of the Flood.

The daughter of an entomologist, Atwood grew up in Canada’s back country; in the way that German fairy tales play out against the ominous backdrop of the Black Forest, Atwood’s fiction is defined in part by the geography of southern Ontario. While her writing often explores our phobias about what she once described as a “malevolent north,” her political stance is one of a staunch defender. “This is wartime,” she wrote in the preface of a 1989 book on how to become a green consumer. “Right now, we’re losing but it’s still a war we can win with some good luck, a lot of goodwill and a great many intelligent choices.”

Those include books. In 2003, Atwood and a handful of Canadian publishers led a high-profile push to persuade printers and publishers to begin using so-called “ancient forest friendly” paper made from 100 per cent post-consumer waste. “We have shown we can create a market,” she told Canadian Press during the Frankfurt book fair that year. Indeed, many publishers have since switched to Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, which is made from trees harvested in sustainable ways.

Perhaps the most interesting detail of Atwood’s activism was her invention of the so-called “long pen,” an electronic device that allowed her to autograph her books remotely, thereby avoiding air travel and all the associated carbon emissions. The device was unveiled during the publicity for The Year of the Flood, which details the lives of a small group of people, “God’s Gardeners,” who survive a devastating global pandemic created by out-of-control science – genetically engineered plants, cloning, etc. – promoted by avaricious corporations. Their leader espouses the need for a “waterless flood” that will sweep away the corruption of near-future humanity and restore the natural environment.

“Science is a tool, like a hammer,” Atwood, ever the scientist’s daughter, observed in one interview. “You can use it for good or ill… Some of the technology in the book is quite handy. It’s not science you have to look at, but the human beings that use it.”

The Actor:

Rachel McAdams

While it’s hardly uncommon for Hollywood stars to promote signature charities, Rachel McAdams seems to have come by her environmentalism, well, organically. The London, Ontario-born actor, who graduated from York University and shot to international celebrity after her role in Mean Girls (2004), has long made a point of steering clear of Hollywood, living a low-carbon, low-profile lifestyle in a west-end Toronto neighbourhood.

Away from film and TV sets, she rode a bike whenever possible, didn’t own a car (until she got knocked off her bike), wore clothes made out of edamame (soy), and cultivated a habit of unplugging all the appliances in her home to save energy (which she buys from Bullfrog Power). McAdams once even enthused about a new eco-friendly funeral method: “I don’t want to have a tombstone,” she told World Entertainment News. “You can now be made into a reef! I was reading that they can make your remains into a reef and put you in the ocean and the fish can feed off you! I want to go back into the earth the same way I came.”

In an interview with The Independent, McAdams related how she discovered her passion for the planet while backpacking across Australia while in university. In her career, she chose to leverage her public profile to advance both environmental causes as well as low-carbon lifestyle choices. In 2007, she and two friends launched an eco-lifestyle consumer products website, Greenissexy.org, which they ran together for five years – an unusual side-gig for an A-list actress.

More recently, McAdams has put her name to high-profile advocacy campaigns, including Naomi Klein’s 2015 Leap Manifesto, which called on the Canadian government to take a social-justice based approach to climate change. McAdams has also used film to advance her environmental interests, narrating two documentaries, Take me to the River and Sonic Sea, which both address ecological issues.

Sonic Sea shines a disturbing light on the unheard impact of shipping-related noise pollution on sea mammals like whales and dolphins. “There is a direct physical correlation between the amount of ship noise and the physiology and stress levels of these animals,” she explains in the film. “We’re putting the ocean at risk; and when you put the ocean at risk you’re putting all of us at risk.”

The Performance Artist:

Rebecca Belmore

In a dramatic and startling video mounted at the Venice Biennale in 2005, Anishinaabekwe performance artist Rebecca Belmore wades labouriously out of the Pacific Ocean, and eventually moves towards the camera filming her. Suddenly, she hurls a bucket of water at the camera, but the liquid it contains is blood, which streams down the lens.

“The bottom line,” Belmore explained in an interview conducted during the prestigious art exhibit, “is that as human beings, we all need water. The future of water is something we should all think about, as a planet of human beings.” As she has pointed out, “We war over oil. What is going to happen when it comes to water?”

Belmore, who was born in 1960 in Upsala, northwest of Thunder Bay, is one of Canada’s most accomplished Indigenous artists, and her work has received national and international acclaim, including the inclusion of “Fountain” in Canada’s Biennale pavilion, a first for Indigenous artists.

Her themes go far beyond water and the natural environment per se. Belmore’s multi-media work explores the harsh legacy of colonization, violence and dispossession on Indigenous women and their bodies. But the suggestive presence of the despoiled natural environment always hovers around works such as “The Great Water,” a canoe tipped on its side and shrouded in a sprawling black canvas.

In some cases, she has directly addressed herself to contentious political issues, such as the Oka crisis of the late 1980s, when a builder sought to expand a golf course into a former Mohawk burial site. With a dramatic installation entitled, “Speaking to Mother” (1991), which is a giant birch-bark and wood megaphone, “the speaker’s voice is meant to reverberate throughout the land, reminding Aboriginals of their heritage and connection to the land,” critic Mia Guttmann observed in Art Toronto.

Belmore took the megaphone to numerous First Nations communities, both on reserves and in more urban settings. As she explains, “I was particularly interested in locating the Aboriginal voice on the land. Asking people to address the land directly was an attempt to hear political protest and poetic action.”

The Enabler:

Jeff Skoll

Silicon Valley billionaire Jeff Skoll, the Montreal-born, University of Toronto educated engineer who was eBay’s first employee, tells a story about how he first encountered Al Gore’s famous climate change slide presentation. In the early 2000s, in the days before TED Talks, Gore was crisscrossing the U.S. armed with a data-dense PowerPoint presentation showing the insidious advance of climate change.

In 2005, Skoll happened to be in the audience for one of Gore’s talks. “Even with all the presentations Al was making, his message would not reach enough people before it was too late,” he wrote in Variety a decade later. After the talk. Skoll, who had launched Participant Media, a film production studio for socially progressive topics, invited Gore to talk to a small group of his co-creators about turning the lecture into a film.

Despite initial skepticism from established Hollywood producers, the result, An Inconvenient Truth, went on to break documentary film records and, more important, shift the global conversation around climate change. “Environmental organizations and teachers embraced the picture in droves,” Skoll noted. “It was adopted as part of the standard curriculum for a number of countries and remains one of the largest-grossing documentaries to this day.”

After retiring from his gig as president of eBay with a $2 billion windfall, Skoll set up a $1 billion foundation dedicated to social impact investing as well as Participant Media, which has, in the past 14 years, racked up an impressive string of critically acclaimed, progressive-minded films, including Spotlight, a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth and Fast Food Nation. Prominent among the company’s output are feature films and documentaries that probe environmental themes, including a drama about the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Last Call at the Oasis, a 2012 film about the global water crisis.

Skoll’s strategy has also been to pair the films with advocacy campaigns – Last Call raised a huge amount to help restore water levels in the Colorado River – and other initiatives run through the foundation, such as the China-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which promotes green technologies and also tracks air pollution in Chinese cities.

Given the latest predictions of rapidly accelerating climate change, Skoll’s creative and advocacy work seems doubly crucial, although he remains an optimist in the face of the abundance of troubling environmental news. “Solutions are now within reach,” he wrote two years ago. “But more than ever, there is no time to waste. We must bring these solutions to every corner of the globe.”

John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist and author specializing in urban issues, business, and culture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

COAL PHASE-OUT BY 2025 AND RENEWABLES AUCTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

NET-ZERO BUILDING CODE AND PACE FINANCING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZERO-EMISSION VEHICLE MANDATES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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