It’s an aggressive target, especially considering that only 8.9% of registered vehicles in Canada were ZEVs in 2022. But it should prevent 430 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, moving the country closer to net-zero.

To reach those goals, the government will need a vast network of researchers, engineers and technicians, all with the flexibility and ambition to undertake this work. They’re going to need students.

Across the country, university students are researching all aspects of ZEVs, from improving battery life and strengthening the electrical grid the cars will rely on, to how best to incentivize Canadian drivers to get behind the wheels of their own ZEVs. There are the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria, producing new batteries with smelting by-products rather than relying on virgin metals. Two researchers at Dalhousie University have joined an exclusive partnership with the car manufacturer Tesla, working to improve the lifespan and performance of its batteries. And recently, Project Arrow, the first fully made-in-Canada electric car, made its debut at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto. The car prototype was designed by students at Carleton University and built at Ontario Tech University, utilizing students’ skills the whole way.

The federal targets “give everyone a deadline to start implementing their solutions,” says Nilou Keshmiri, project manager of the McMaster EcoCAR Challenge team. “Even if it’s slightly aggressive, it’s definitely possible. And it’s necessary.” Keshmiri is leading a team of 180 students and faculty advisors in a competition to modify and improve a fully electric Cadillac. McMaster is one of two Canadian universities participating in the four-year challenge, with benchmarks and goals every month to keep teams on track. The first year, Keshmiri says, the focus is on modelling and simulations, as the team decides how they’ll begin to modify the car in year two. “We’re trying to come up with new technologies or software optimization techniques that are not in common practice in industry as of now. And as we’re in school, we have more flexibility to try these things out,” she says.

Of course, there’s more to cutting emissions than just getting Canadians to buy ZEVs. Once all those cars are in garages across the country, how do we ensure our cities are ready for them? Omid Ardakanian’s team at the University of Alberta is figuring that out, looking into grid-friendly charging, also known as congestion control. If everyone plugs in their cars at the same time, it could overload the capacity of the transformers and power lines. Cities are looking to replace this infrastructure but will have to do it over time because of the immense cost. Ardakanian’s team is looking at ways the power grids can vary the rate of charging based on how many people are tapping into the grid at the same time.

“Some of these technologies already exist,” Ardakanian says. Variable-rate chargers are becoming more common. “We have a very small number of chargers today, and a lot of people are thinking about buying a charger and installing it in their garage, and they’ll have a choice. And if they know that [variable-rate charging] will be a thing, they could make an informed decision.”

Even if it’s slightly aggressive, it’s definitely possible. And it’s necessary.

 

– Nilou Keshmiri, project manager of the McMaster EcoCAR Challenge team

 

Ardakanian’s team is also looking at multi-directional charging. Right now, your ZEV draws power from a charger – but what if your car could also power your house or appliances? “During extreme weather events, natural disasters or just because there’s a contingency on the grid,” Ardakanian explains, “if you have your car with a charged battery, you can use your car.” It’s known as a virtual power plant, where there are decentralized, small power-storage systems in the form of car batteries all across the country. Tesla is experimenting with the idea, working to help consumers rethink how their cars can function. And the Dutch city of Utrecht has installed more than 800 bidirectional chargers that let EV drivers sell electricity back into the grid.

Bringing drivers on board is a crucial step, and one that university research is especially primed to help with, says Tim Burrows, a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Electric Vehicle Society. As the adoption curve of hybrid and electric vehicles ramps up exponentially, drivers will be looking to take their cars on longer trips, so they’ll need consistent and powerful charges on their cars. It’s long been an issue for car manufacturers, but Burrows posits that “for certain aspects of technological development, universities are in a unique position. They’re not necessarily funded for profit, and they have some luxury to do research that a private-industry researcher probably can’t afford to do,” he says. “We need both our learning institutions and private industry working on this challenge.”

Ardakanian agrees and says it comes down to timelines. “University-level research is very important, because we work on things that may not be immediately relevant to the industry – medium-term to long-term projects.” The projects are a risky cost for many smaller car companies and a drain on resources for many larger ones. But universities have both the time and a regularly refreshed pool of talent to tackle them.

If we do not have this research, all the cool things that could happen 10 years or 20 years from now, they won’t.

 

– Omid Ardakanian, University of Alberta assistant professor

To date, the federal government has pushed hundreds of millions of dollars to universities working on EV research. In the past five years, they say they’ve paid out $1 billion in total funding to build up Canada’s EV market, with some of that money going to research at post-secondary institutions. They’ve funded charging stations on campuses and supported research on things like ensuring that vehicle stability mechanisms (like anti-lock brakes and traction control) work within electric systems. However, in order to maintain a well of engineers and technicians, some say the federal government needs to step up its support.

Narayan Kar and Madeline McQueen, with the University of Windsor’s Centre for Hybrid Automotive Research and Green Energy, have been calling for funding for university-level EV research and development that’s “proportional” with the government’s funding of ZEV manufacturing facilities.

“A federal investment to support a pan-Canadian, academia-industry research consortium will complement the government and industry investments on the manufacturing side, and set our country on the path to significant opportunities for EV innovation in the future,” Kar and McQueen wrote in The Hill Times. They add that without this funding, there will not be a large enough workforce for future projects, like the recently announced Stellantis EV research facility and LG battery plant in Windsor, which will need 3,000 skilled workers.

At the University of Alberta, Ardakanian’s own research is funded from a pool of about $8 million from the federal government, which he says is crucial.

“If we do not have this research, all the cool things that could happen 10 years or 20 years from now, they won’t.”

The post Canada will need students’ help to reach its aggressive EV targets appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber may be a competent politician, diplomat and business leader. But whether the United Arab Emirates’ minister of industry and advanced technology is well suited to chair the forthcoming UN climate summit, COP28, in Dubai this November is a different matter.

Besides his cabinet duties, al-Jaber happens to be chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the Middle East’s largest fossil fuel producers. “The appointment of an oil company executive to head COP28 poses a risk to the negotiation process as well as the whole conference itself,” 27 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives wrote in January to John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy on climate change. They urged Kerry to put pressure on the UAE to withdraw al-Jaber’s appointment.

“Having a fossil fuel champion in charge of the world’s most important climate negotiations would be like having the CEO of a cigarette conglomerate in charge of global tobacco policy,” added the lawmakers, all Democrats. Indeed, one of al-Jaber’s goals at ADNOC has been to expand the company’s crude oil output from three million barrels a day in 2016 to five million by 2030.

Activist climate groups, including Greenpeace, Global Witness and Climate Action Network International, have also slammed the UAE’s choice. “You wouldn’t invite arms dealers to lead peace talks,” Alice Harrison of Global Witness told the Associated Press. “So why let oil executives lead climate talks?”

However, Kerry and others have stoutly defended the 49-year-old, California-educated chemical engineer. “Dr. Sultan al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company,” Kerry told the AP. “That company knows it needs to transition.”

Al-Jaber’s supporters point to his role as founder of Masdar, also known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, another UAE government-owned business that develops utility-scale renewable energy projects around the world.

It is true that, despite a long attachment to oil, the UAE has invested heavily in renewables at home and abroad, as well as in technologies such as lower-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture. ADNOC became a shareholder in Masdar last year.

Chances are slim that al-Jaber will be replaced. Even so, the furor over his appointment will have served a purpose if organizers of future climate conferences make a little more effort to ensure that high-level appointments pass the smell test.

The post Zero: Why is COP28 letting a fox guard the henhouse? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But hopeful signs of change are emerging there on a local level, encapsulated in a January decision by Warsaw’s city council to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an emerging global campaign that describes itself as “an international mechanism to manage a fast and fair transition away from coal, oil and natural gas.” Warsaw is the first city in central Europe to make such a move.

So far, more than 80 cities and subnational governments have endorsed the treaty. Along with the nation-states of Vanuatu and Tuvalu, the World Health Organization and the European Parliament are officially urging governments to endorse it. California is the latest consider the treaty.

The proposed treaty would align fossil fuel production with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C using three mechanisms: ending the expansion of fossil fuel production, phasing out fossil fuels, and ensuring a “just” global transition that takes account of each country’s ability to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised new hurdles in Poland’s already sluggish efforts to lower its dependence on fossil fuels but has also created an incentive to move faster. Natural gas was poised to play a key role in weaning Poland off coal, providing a lower-emissions “bridge” from coal to renewable sources. However, much of the gas would have come from Russia, and those plans are now in disarray, since Russia stopped exporting to Poland last year.

“In the conditions of economic recession and growing energy poverty, there is a risk that the energy transition may be slower or even stops altogether,” Ernst & Young warned in a recent report on Poland’s energy sector, estimating that the transformation could now cost €135 billion by 2030, equal to about a quarter of total GDP. The estimate includes measures to soften the blow for coal producers.

Nonetheless, progress is being made. Poland has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing solar energy markets, with capacity soaring from 200 megawatts in 2018 to about 10 gigawatts. It also plans to build 5.9 gigawatts of wind capacity in the Baltic Sea by 2030, rising to 11 by 2040.

Michael Poland, an Australia-based climate justice activist who directs the non-proliferation treaty campaign, says that “we applaud the valiant efforts of generations of Polish climate activists [who] demonstrated that climate progress is attainable through collective action.”

The post Hero: In coal-heavy Poland, Warsaw takes a stand against fossil fuels appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Lewis’s kokum (grandmother) used to tell him that the water was once so pure their ancestors could simply fill their pots and make tea. Now, in the lagoon where he and his kokum would take walks, the water is so polluted “you’ll poison yourself if you take one sip,” he says. The Culture Camps are working to change that.

People start to take on a new responsibility to the land and “become stewards in their own way” once the camp is over, says Lewis, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan with an iyiniw pimatisiwin kiskeyihtamowin – a doctorate in Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

Lewis employs 10 people full-time in a community of 1,600 people. Depending on the season, he can employ another 10 or more. Initiatives like kâniyâsihk preserve Indigenous culture, traditions and languages while boosting local Indigenous economies. Indigenous-owned businesses and projects also tend to protect the lands and waters that they operate on.

Growing the Indigenous-led conservation economy is one of the goals that Canada’s political leaders emphasized at the UN COP15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December. Canada, along with more than 190 countries, committed to protecting 30% of its lands and waters by 2030 (known as the 30×30 target).

“Canada’s biodiversity goals can only be met with the partnership of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people across the country,” said Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault in a statement.

On the opening day of COP15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that $800 million will be invested over seven years to support four Indigenous-led conservation initiatives. After the projects are completed, up to one million square kilometres of land and water will be protected in northern B.C., Nunavut, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. The funding is meant to be a step forward with Indigenous Nations to “deliver a vision of conservation that has partnership and reconciliation at its core,” Trudeau said.

Indigenous communities are already leading the way. Globally, 80% of biodiversity is stewarded by Indigenous Peoples, according to the UN. In Canada, 90% of protection areas established in the last two decades have been the result of Indigenous leadership, according to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI).

First Nation, Inuit and Métis leaders in Canada are creating Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas as large as Costa Rica monitored by Indigenous Guardians, while smaller-scale projects and businesses (ranging from eco-lodges to sustainable fisheries and small-scale forestry) generate good-paying jobs that help unleash investment in regional economies, as the ILI notes.

It’s all part of the Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship economy that’s gaining momentum.

With these investments, Canada is offering a model for supporting Indigenous-led stewardship.

 

—Valérie Courtois, Indigenous Leadership Initiative

One of those people paving the way is Robert Brown, a Haida Fisheries Guardian. He says that Guardians go through weeks of training so they are able to collect data, patrol, and monitor waterways while actively working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Guardians also monitor their own people to ensure that they are not overfishing or overharvesting.

“We need to keep our stock going for future generations, so that my granddaughter could one day go out and fish and harvest where I was,” Brown says. This is Brown’s eighth season being a Guardian, and during this time he has seen drastic changes in the environment that he patrols. “Our beaches have changed dramatically with the bigger tides, and then our fish stocks have dropped, as well as our clam beds,” he says.

Since 2018, there have been 170 Indigenous Guardian programs working to conserve and manage their lands across Canada. With the recent launch of the First Nations National Guardians Network (and $5.8 million in new funding from the feds), those conservation jobs are rapidly multiplying.

“This is the first [network] of its kind in the world,” said ILI director Valérie Courtois in a statement. “With these investments, Canada is offering a model for respecting and supporting the Indigenous-led stewardship – a model we hope spreads around the world.”

Indigenous ecotourism

Kylik Kisoun Taylor is Inuit from the Northwest Territories. He runs a tourism company on the outskirts of Yellowknife. Taylor thinks it is important for settlers and Indigenous Peoples alike to experience Indigenous ecotourism adventures, such as the ones he offers in which participants make their own igloos. “The people that book our trips are investing with my people as opposed to just examining them,” he says.

“We offer a way to immerse people into the cultural way of life in the Arctic.”

Ecotourism businesses are another pathway to upholding Indigenous cultures, traditions, spirituality and values while also boosting the local Indigenous economy and land conservation, says Keith Henry, president and CEO of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC).

“There are a number of businesses that are doing that now today that couldn’t [before]. It wasn’t very marketable, or as competitive, or as sustainable 10 to 15 years ago.”

Henry says the most profitable businesses that Indigenous communities own are multifaceted. They offer cultural centres, culinary experiences, storytelling, powwow performances, ceremonies, Elder teachings and on-the-land experiences.

And the industry is in high demand. ITAC represents around 1,900 Indigenous-owned businesses across Canada. Henry says that these businesses generated roughly $1.9 billion in revenue and employed 39,000 people in 2019 – ITAC’s best year yet. That is, until the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tourism was the first hit, and it’s the last to recover,” Henry explains. Indigenous enterprises lost between 75% and 80% of their staff across the country, and they still have not returned to 2019 levels. But Henry is hopeful. “By 2030, we expect to [represent] at least 4.4 or more billion dollars in direct GDP.” He says there is a renewed interest in authentic Indigenous eco-tourism experiences and teachings after the recent findings of unmarked residential school gravesites. “That has really awoken, especially domestically in Canada, a renewed interest in the large majority of Canadians that realize that we have to correct past history.”

“One of the ways they can do that is to just try to be better partners going forward.”

The post How Indigenous Nations are leading the conservation-based economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Vulnerable and underfunded, municipalities are making brave, future-driven decisions – on climate mitigation, sustainability and inclusion – that put more senior levels of government to shame.

Chicago, for instance, just adopted its first citywide plan in more than 50 years. “We Will Chicago” is a 10-year initiative intended to promote equity, resiliency, neighbourhood growth and “a sense of belonging” for all. Diverse planning groups spent three years devising 150 objectives that span eight “planning pillars,” ranging from arts and culture to climate and energy. Development commissioner Maurice Cox says that “We Will represents the hopes and dreams of Chicagoans for a more equitable and resilient city.”

The program’s first priority: boost climate resiliency efforts in overburdened communities and for low-income individuals.

On a smaller but symbolic scale, Toronto’s city council turned heads in February by overruling then-mayor John Tory by voting 22–3 to make bicycle lanes a permanent fixture along midtown Yonge Street, a key traffic corridor. While Tory pushed for more research, Councillor (and former Ontario environmental commissioner) Dianne Saxe declared that it’s time to “rip off the Band-Aid” and choose pedestrians and cyclists over cars.

Calgary, a city in a flood plain whose historic annual temperature (4.3°C) is expected to double to 9.5°C by 2100, is piloting a new AI tool that collates satellite imagery, heat maps and demographic data to identify the communities or building sites most vulnerable to flooding or extreme heat.

Ontario’s Peel Region – the Toronto suburb whose population is expected to grow by more than 50% in the next 25 years – is next in line to use this tool, which helps planners and developers make better decisions and incorporate natural assets such as green roofs, parks and water bodies.

In the U.S., cities as varied as Baltimore, Buffalo, Tampa and Little Rock, Arkansas, are working to reconnect urban areas divided by ugly, unhealthy expressways built in the 1960s and ’70s – primarily running through marginalized communities. While the Inflation Reduction Act is providing US$1 billion in funding, cities have been called “the tip of the spear” in devising creative, sustainable solutions – such as a 12-acre green “deck plaza” that El Paso, Texas, has designed to cover a swath of Interstate 10.

For years, Ottawa residents have complained about a transport truck corridor that runs through a popular downtown tourist and residential neighbourhood just east of Parliament Hill. In
February, the Canadian Association of Physicians upped the ante by submitting a complaint to the provincial government, calling for an investigation into the route. The complaint will trigger a probe by the Ottawa medical officer of health into whether the trucks’ diesel fumes are a hazard to residents’ health.

Shakespeare got it right 400 years ago: “The people are the city,” and cities that don’t put people and environment first can expect growing opposition.

The post North American cities take the lead on climate mitigation appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We are not too late to safeguard a future worth living in. Every second and fraction of a degree matters.

The solutions to climate change are taking off. A new growth story is beginning. Over the next five years, the world will meet more than half the tipping points for green tech, according to British economist Nicholas Stern, meaning we’re off to the races.

But it will take a quantum leap in climate action to speed things up or global heating will start a fire that sucks all the oxygen up.

If we listen to the fat cats from the oil sector bulging with profits like never before (ExxonMobil should put Vladimir Putin on its Christmas card list): oil is prosperity; it is unrealistic to turn off the taps overnight. Our energy bills would go through the roof, making life even less affordable. Of course, we need to address climate change, but nice and slow, by 2050 or so. While some environmentalists preach that the only option is to atone for our sins, sacrificing our quality of life, and to stop having kids. They both sound out to lunch to me.

First off, fossil fuels as an asset class are like swampland in Florida. It might be a banner year for oil company profits, but make no mistake: oil is a dog – and not a good one. We recently analyzed 14 of Canada’s largest pension funds to see how oil and gas stocks had contributed to their returns over the past 10 years. In every case, they were a substantial drag, draining tens of billions of dollars from people’s retirement accounts, even accounting for the record profits the oil and gas stocks had in 2022 because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

When you look at the stock market performance of the 74 industries that make up the entire economy over the 10 years leading up to the end of 2022, oil and gas stock returns were bottom of the barrel, coming in at number 62. And with electrification about to reduce global oil consumption by millions of barrels per day, the smart money is not betting on the black stuff. Contrast this with the returns of the 430 “green flag” stocks (with a market value of more than US$16 trillion) Corporate Knights tracks, which delivered a cumulative 10-year return of 368% – quadruple what oil and gas managed over the same period.

We know that we have the tools to do it, and that we can move much faster than almost anyone thinks is possible (multibillion-dollar energy companies like Ørsted and Enel have made complete U-turns in half a decade that were supposed to take 30 years).

The economic solutions to global heating are growing faster than the problems. We are replacing cows, coal and cars with plant protein, green power and electric vehicles (including bikes).

We also know that switching out polluting problems for emissions-free solutions is quite often cheaper and better, with fewer moving parts.

Green is not a luxury good. To settle for anything less would be uncivilized. As my six-year-old son, Zia, recently said, “An electric car shouald be $5,000 to $20,000 or else I am telling the boss to fire himself and I will do it myself.”

In Canada for instance, average household energy bills will be lower in 2050 thanks to the transition away from fossil fuels, the Canadian Climate Institute estimates. Consider that an average Canadian driving around 15,000 kilometres will pay about $2,000 a year for gas (ignoring the price spikes seen in 2022) but could recharge an electric vehicle for $350 a year for the same mileage.

Corporate Knights research director Ralph Torrie estimates that aggressively embracing electric vehicles and energy-efficient smart buildings would generate energy savings of $32 billion per year by 2030. That works out to $2,091 for every Canadian household (all 15.3 million of them), not to mention the deflationary benefits of removing 1.5% of GDP costs from our economy permanently.

In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – it starts by electrifying everything, everywhere, all at once (to borrow the phrase from this year’s big Oscar winner).

Every country, every company and everyone must be part of the solution.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently emphasized, “Demanding others move first only ensures humanity comes last. We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge – but we must move into warp-speed climate action now.”

The post Editor’s note: Every country, every company and everyone must work to solve the climate crisis appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That helps explain why the industry is still on a trajectory that will overshoot the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pathway to limit warming to 1.5°C by a wide margin – at least 75% by the year 2050, according to a study by global management consulting firm Kearney. The bright side is that EV sales are surging across North America. In fact, the Tesla Model Y was the sixth-bestselling vehicle in the U.S. in 2022, breaking the brand into the annual top-10 sales list for the first time. This happened despite ongoing supply shortages that continue to impose low inventory and long wait times of up to 24 months for EVs of all types, but particularly for trendy vehicles like the Ioniq 5. The electric SUV with a funky 1980s-inspired aesthetic has been raking in awards and accolades. But can it lure SUV drivers away from gas-powered models?

While EV manufacturers like Ford and Tesla have been dropping their prices in the U.S. and the Inflation Reduction Act offers new incentives for EV buyers, more than half of American consumers think they’re still too expensive, according to new research from Deloitte. The takeaways? Now is the time to push hard on educating consumers about the benefits of EV ownership, while the iron is hot and climate change targets aren’t yet astronomically out of reach.

The EV cost-of-ownership analysis at left is one such educational tool. For Corporate Knights’ fifth EV faceoff, we’re pitting one of the industry’s most awarded EVs, the Ioniq 5 SUV from Hyundai, against the world’s bestselling gas-guzzling SUV, the Toyota RAV4. Here’s how much each of these vehicles costs to own over a 10-year period and how an EV can save money over the long term in ways drivers may not yet have considered.

Canadian analysis

The Ioniq 5 is the second most popular EV in Canada after the Tesla Model 3, and it was named 2023 Canadian Utility Vehicle of the Year and Best EV in Canada for 2023 by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada.
For this analysis, we chose the Ioniq 5 Preferred AWD Long Range trim. Although this is the most expensive model, it has the longer-range battery and all-wheel drive, which are important purchase factors for many Canadian buyers. We skipped the $6,000 Ultimate package, which adds on driver assistance and other technologies, since most essential features are already included in the base purchase price of $57,652, including destination charges of $1,925 and other fees.

To find equivalent features and as a nod to the current trend toward SUVs with added outdoor-focused design elements and features, we’ve priced the Ioniq 5 against the Toyota RAV4 Trail AWD, which carries a price of $43,334, including delivery charges of $1,930 plus other fees.

Notably, these figures are based on prices in Ontario, where there are no provincial rebates available and electricity rates are less favourable, at an off-peak time-of-use rate of 7.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. Even with these factors working against it, our calculations show it’s less expensive to own the Ioniq 5 over 10 years than the RAV4 by $6,726.75.

The Ioniq 5 gains an edge via the RAV4’s fuel costs and a more favourable interest rate: Hyundai is quoting a 72-month financing annual percentage rate (APR) of 5.99% as of late February 2023 for the Ioniq 5, while Toyota is quoting 7.09%. Every RAV4 built will sell, so Toyota has little incentive to offer cut-rate financing. The result is a cost that consumers may not expect up-front.

Note that the Ioniq 5’s cost savings would be even higher in Quebec and British Columbia, where provincial purchase incentives of $7,000 and $4,000, respectively, would apply. In any case, the most challenging part of the decision-making process here is whether to settle in for a long wait for delivery.

U.S. analysis

The Ioniq 5 is just as celebrated in the United States, where MotorTrend has named it SUV of the Year. For our U.S. analysis, we’ve based our calculations on prices in Washington, D.C. We’ve selected the Ioniq 5 SE, which is the most affordable trim that comes with a long-range battery, and we’ve chosen rear-wheel drive. With $1,335 in delivery charges included, the price to buy a new Ioniq 5 SE comes to $42,785 (all prices in U.S. dollars).

For the RAV4, we’ve worked with the XLE Premium trim with front-wheel drive, which is relatively affordable at $33,710 (including $1,335 in delivery charges) and roughly equivalent to the Ioniq 5 SE in included equipment.

A significant change was made to the federal tax rebate program through the Inflation Reduction Act that came into effect on January 1, which has made vehicles built outside of North America ineligible for U.S. EV tax credits.

Ioniq 5 units sold in the U.S. are currently built in South Korea, meaning it no longer qualifies. Hyundai is building a production facility in Georgia, but it will be several years before this comes online.

Even with the lack of rebates, the Ioniq 5 comes out ahead of the RAV4 in cost of ownership over 10 years. This is again thanks to a lower financing APR (4.9% for 72 months for the Ioniq 5 versus 5.49% for the RAV4), plus Hyundai offers an extra year of included scheduled maintenance versus Toyota, which allows us to calculate an even lower upkeep cost. Most importantly, the District of Columbia has a program that gives EV owners access to an off-peak electricity rate of 4.9 cents per kilowatt-hour, which goes a long way in reducing charging costs. Charger installation costs also qualify for a district tax credit of 50% to a maximum of $1,000; we have not included the credit in these calculations as the amount would vary significantly based on actual purchase and installation cost, but the tax credit would equate to an additional few hundred dollars in savings for most owners.

Unfortunately, many U.S. dealers are charging significant markups for the Ioniq 5 because of high demand, and if you relent and pay more than the sticker price, you’ll lose these gains. But if you can find a scrupulous dealer with access to inventory, our calculations show you’ll save $2,892.74 on the Ioniq 5 over the RAV4 over 10 years. And since you’ll also spend that decade driving a vehicle that’s not guzzling gas and spewing fumes, in this scenario the Ioniq 5 is a win-win proposition.

Stephanie Wallcraft is an award-winning automotive journalist based in Toronto and is a past president of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada.

Read more EV Faceoffs to find out how electric vehicles compare to their gas-powered counterparts.

The post EV Faceoff: Does the trendy Ioniq 5 cost less to own than the world’s top-selling gas-powered SUV? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Stockholm

Lowest Scope 1 emissions
The city of Stockholm is a global leader when it comes to cutting urban GHG emissions, largely thanks to its district energy heating system. As of 2019, Stockholm had cut its annual GHG emissions almost in half from 1990 levels. The city has high ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2030. By 2040, Stockholm aims to be completely fossil fuel–free.

Winnipeg

Cleanest air
Winnipeg is the top city on our index for overall air quality thanks to annual average levels of particulate air pollution that are below the World Health Organization’s air quality target. However, an increase in wildfires in Manitoba is threatening the city’s air quality, particularly during the summer months.

Amsterdam

Most sustainable transportation
Amsterdam is a sustainable transport haven: approximately 40% of all travel happens on bikes, 30% on foot. Since 2019, all trams, subway trains and many buses have been running on electricity, and more than 75% of the commercial canal boats are electric. Going the extra mile, the city is investing in shared electric car and scooter services.

Copenhagen

Lowest water consumption
In recent decades, Copenhagen has made every drop of water count. Since the late 1980s, the city has successfully cut back on water use by increasing the fees residents pay for water and installing low-flow toilets and showerheads. In 1987, Copenhageners used an average of more than 170 litres per day. Today that figure is just below 100 litres, with plans to get to 90 by 2025.

Abidjan

Lowest consumption-based emissions
The Ivory Coast aims to be net-zero by 2030. Its capital city, Abidjan, is well on its way with the lowest consumption-based emissions of cities analyzed. However, this is likely due to a high level of poverty rather than a shift in policy or lifestyle – a reminder that many of the world’s developing countries have contributed least to the climate crisis.

Oslo

Most resilient to climate change
Located in a fjord, Oslo is fairly well protected from bad weather, but that may change in decades to come, and the city wants to be ready. In 2015, municipal leaders set out to make their city resilient to the climate crisis. Key to that is improving its stormwater management and making sure that climate adaptation is embedded in its urban planning, among other strategies.

READ MORE: The hunt for the world’s most sustainable cities

The post 6 sustainable cities that stand out appeared first on Corporate Knights.

How do you reduce a city to a score? It’s hard enough for judges when ranking freestyle snowboarders or the best takeout Thai food. With cities, the task is inherently more complex, but it’s pressingly relevant to try since more than half of humanity depends on a city for health, safety and prosperity. And the UN projects that more than two-thirds of us will live in cities by 2050, the same year we need to achieve net-zero.

I’ve attended the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference on sustainable communities for more than a decade, first as a city councillor, then as mayor, and now as an advisor on climate investing and community resilience. After years of relentless focus on climate change mitigation through decarbonization, creating resilience to the changes that are already upon us took centre stage at this year’s conference. This was also true at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November, where a central thrust was negotiating what’s called loss-and-damage funding for the Global South based on the devastating impacts of historic emissions from the Global North on many of the world’s poorest cities.

This might be the last stage of grief (acceptance) or the first step in acknowledging the true scale of the problem.

This is not to say for a minute that we should relent on decarbonization – far from it. If anything, the devastating floods in Pakistan and California over the last year should amplify our resolve to hold warming to the minimum possible scope of devastation while simultaneously increasing resilience to those rising risks, whatever their final apex.

This is the point, and it’s a relentless but critical one: we need to address all facets of resilience and sustainability in parallel. We don’t just have to build the plane while we’re flying it; we have to learn to soft-land it too – an inherently interrelated and complex set of tasks.

Indeed, cities are arguably the most complex systems humans have yet engineered for ourselves. The vast networks of hard infrastructure alone are boggling if you stop to think about them, much less the extraordinary diversity of human activity found in the hive of structures, streets and open spaces. Add in the watersheds, airsheds and ecosystems that many forget are under, around and throughout our cities, and the beautiful complexity of urban systems begins to resolve.

While each city has its unique context, history, geography and culture, there are some features that are more easily comparable, such as water use and air quality. These hard factors are so important to our index that having the best score on particulate air pollution in the entire Corporate Knights database launched Winnipeg into top position among Canadian cities and ninth overall. A strong showing for the city’s first year included in the index.

However we measure sustainability, some cities tend to come out consistently at the top based on all-around excellence. Despite adding 20 more cities to the 2023 Sustainable Cities Index, the top five cities did not change position from the 2022 ranking: Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Lahti and London, indicating strong consistency in their performance and robustness in the ranking methodology.

The three Scandinavian cities at the top each take best in show in at least one sustainability KPI (key performance indicator). Stockholm ranks highest on Scope 1 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thanks to longstanding decarbonization policies, extensive public transit and a strong tradition of well-built buildings fed from co-generating district energy systems. The Swedish capital also received top scores on open public space, the lowest automobile dependence and best solid waste avoidance in the index.

READ MORE: These circular cities want to send landfills to the trash bin of history

Oslo ranks highest on climate resilience for its green roofs and climate-anticipatory stormwater strategies while also maintaining the best water access among all ranked cities, as well as strong electrification progress, from cars to construction. Copenhagen, meanwhile, has the strongest results on water consumption. It is worth asking ourselves what is in that proverbial water in these Nordic communities that engenders such a strong commitment to systems-level approaches to sustainability and how can the rest of us emulate it?

In addition to the hard measures of emissions and the data about transportation systems, we can also test for an appreciation of complexity by looking at cities’ sustainability policies. Sydney, Australia (seventh place), or example, engaged very actively in the survey this year and was able to move up 19 positions from its rank last year by showing it has robust sustainability policies, coming up right below Oceania leader Auckland (sixth), with their best-in-region climate adaptation and resilience policies.

Correspondingly, cities with poor policy showings had weak results in other output categories and thus on overall scores. Karachi, Pakistan (70th), and Mumbai, India (65th), score zero on the sustainability policy framework and also have serious GHG, air-quality and water-access challenges.

Do policies shift outcomes, or is it easier to make bold policy if you already run on hydro power instead of legacy coal? Either way, cities must nurture policy sophistication (both on decarbonization pathways and adaptation to weirder, wilder and wetter weather) to drive material improvements in sustainability.

Network initiatives like C40 Cities strive to bring Global North and Global South cities together to build capacity and solutions that work in different contexts while holding each other accountable to deliver through consistent public reporting. But most of the world lives in the hundreds of smaller cities, communities that aren’t necessarily at those prominent tables, or included in this index. Nevertheless, we need all our cities to aim higher, especially the fast-growing megacities in the bottom half of our rankings.

One might reasonably ask whether it is fair or even just to evaluate all cities to the same standard, when some are still recovering from colonial exploitation, or imposed austerity policies, and even war. Or whether it is comparable to juxtapose cities with massive informal settlements like São Paulo, Brazil (55th), with top-ranked San Francisco (21st), where almost nobody can afford to live.

One related challenge is reconciling the interplay of social and economic inequality with environmental outcomes. Which is why this year the analytics team developed the Corporate Knights Socio-Economic Adjustment Factor to adjust environmental performance indicators where they coincide with unsustainable social and economic conditions.

As our research analyst Nadia Morson notes, “Indicators such as per capita greenhouse gas emissions or per capita water consumption will be low in wealthier cities if water conservation and efficiency are priorities, but they will also be low in lower-income cities due to poverty and limited access to fuels, electricity and potable water.” Megacities of poverty may have a lower per capita carbon footprint but are problematic in a different way than wealthy cities with specific sustainability blind spots because of mass human suffering and lower inherent resiliency to rising perils. The adjustment is meant to account for that by considering a blend of income inequality, per capita GDP and human development index scores.

In a dominantly urban age, with deep social and environmental challenges facing all species, including us, how and whether our cities attain sustainability may make all the difference for our future. So while cities are inherently difficult to compare, it is worth lifting up high achievers and considering what may be required to better support those that are lagging behind.

Don Iveson advises a number of NGOs as well as cleantech, insurance and social impact businesses. He was mayor of Edmonton from 2013 to 2021.

This year we have organized the ranking by region. Click on each region below so see which cities scored A, B, C, D or F.

INDICATORS

The 2023 Sustainable Cities Index is composed of 12 quantitative indicators of environmental sustainability performance. The method is simple: for each of the indicators, the necessary data points are collected, either from public data sources or directly from the cities themselves, through our interactive data hub.

Values for each of the 12 indicators are converted to a score out of 1.0. Based on the scores of each indicator, each city will receive a letter grade and rank for their overall score on the index. Detailed scoring method is available in the full methodology document.

The post The hunt for the world’s most sustainable cities appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Inside their postcard of a home, the family enjoyed a lifestyle not so different from ours in North Toronto. Except for one thing: nothing in that house was wasted. Once a month, a garbage truck trundled down the ribbon of road running through the valley and the four-member family contributed their monthly yield: one small shopping bag of trash.

An environmentalist at heart, my mother came home bursting with inspiration. Henceforth, we were going to shoehorn our North Toronto lifestyle into Black Forest standards of sustainability. But try as we might – recycling scraps of cellophane, crushing cardboard boxes, patching pants – it couldn’t be done. Not even close. Our weekly garbage bins – like those of our neighbours – remained full to overflowing, and when Toronto introduced recycling bins in 1988, they were too.

Cities are incredibly wasteful places. They generate mountains of garbage: discarded items of all kinds, many still containing most of their value. And then there’s the waste that results from poor policy and planning: roads clogged with single-driver SUVs, suburbanites commuting hours to work, the unhoused having to pitch tents in parks for lack of affordable housing. Wastes of time and space, of human potential and planetary health.

Among economists, there’s a growing consensus that the inherently wasteful linear model that has defined industrial production and economic growth for the last two centuries – of take, make, use and lose – is no longer tenable. In its stead, a circular model is being proposed, one that “uses less materials, for longer, again and again,” in the words of Joanne Gauci, a senior policy advisor to Metro Vancouver. In 2013, Metro Vancouver launched the National Zero Waste Council, which aims to promote circularity in Canadian cities by bringing municipal leaders together with representatives of government, business, academia and the non-profit sector.

It’s a global trend; Swiss-based sustainable building materials firm Holcim, which has developed a “Circular Cities Barometer,” counts Delhi, Lagos, Bogotá, Wuhan and Manila among the most circular cities in the world. Isolating the metrics on the Corporate Knights Sustainable Cities Index that reflect circularity – consumption-based emissions, water usage and waste generated – the cities that rise to the top include the likely Nordic candidates, but also Auckland (New Zealand), Arequipa (Peru) and Taichung (Taiwan). And while waste reduction is a higher priority in high-income countries – which account for 16% of the world’s population but 34% of its waste – the balance is set to shift.

The World Bank expects that as their populations and economies grow, low-income countries will assert waste dominance, tripling their current levels of production by 2050. By then, South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will likely be the world’s most prodigious waste-producers in absolute terms: a serious problem, as most disposal in these regions takes the form of open dumping.

Atinuke Chineme is tackling the challenge already. Having grown up in Nigeria, she is now working on a biowaste treatment project on the outskirts of the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, while pursuing a doctorate in environmental design at the University of Calgary. For this pilot project, members of a women’s collective gather organic waste from local markets and deposit it in purpose-built bins to be broken down by the famously voracious black soldier fly. The process is an odourless, contained alternative to open dumping that yields commercial by-products: the fly’s protein-rich larvae, which is used as animal feedstock, and rich soil for fertilizer.

“In the West, the focus is on the technological aspects of the circular economy. In the Global South, it’s more on the biological cycle,” says Chineme, who considers the circular economy an “internationally accepted term” for what she would otherwise call traditional practice. “It’s good for us to realize the value in what we already have. We’ve always known that waste can be used,” she says.

This perspective has long since been lost in high-income countries. Contrary to our righteous self-image as stewards of a vast natural landscape, Canadians are among the world’s most wasteful citizens, consuming more materials, water and energy per capita than almost any other country, according to a 2021 report by the Council of Canadian Academies. Canada tops the charts for waste per capita, followed by Bulgaria and the United States, and almost three-quarters (73%) of waste in Canada is incinerated or ends up in landfill, which in turn accounts for 24% of the country’s methane emissions.

It’s good for us to realize the value in what we already have. We’ve always known that waste can be used.

 

–Atinuke Chineme,University of Calgary

Stockholm, which ranks first on Corporate Knights’ index again in 2023, benefits from Sweden’s long embrace of circularity: from the country’s deposit system on bottles and cans, which dates from the 1980s, to the 2017 tax reform that favours second-hand purchases and repairs, to the 2018 creation of a national advisory group that integrates circularity into government policy. But the European city that has embraced circularity most ambitiously is Amsterdam, which, in 2020, resolved to halve its use of natural resources by 2030 and achieve complete circularity and climate neutrality by 2050. It is the first city to attempt to implement British economist Kate Raworth’s “doughnut” economic model: an aspirational schematic that constrains economic activity to the sweet spot between an ecological ceiling of natural limits (represented by the doughnut’s outer ring) and a social foundation of basic human needs and rights (the inner ring).

For some, models of doughnuts and circles are just old wine in new bottles, fancy riffs on the folk wisdom of doing more with less. But at the very least, the push toward a non-linear economic model is impelling cities to take stock. The City of Toronto, for instance, established a dedicated circular economy team within its Solid Waste Management Services division in 2018, one of the first municipalities in North America to do so. Three years later, it generated a baseline report that shows how materials flow through the city in three key sectors: waste management, food and construction.

Colourful diagrams illustrate where the city’s annual 2.1 million tonnes of waste come from, and where they end up. It’s instructive; the bulk (60%) of the city’s waste is generated by non-residential sources: institutions, businesses and industry, construction and demolition. Most of that waste is handled by private contractors looking for the cheapest disposal option, which is generally landfill. So, try as the city may to increase the portion of residential waste that it diverts from landfill and into recycling programs (currently 53%), the lion’s share of its waste problem will remain unresolved until it gets other levels of government and the private sector on board: “radical collaboration” is what Gauci says the circular economy demands.

Beyond the bold policies, lofty aspirations and savvy entrepreneurs, there has to be a fundamental shift in mentality

 

It also requires bold policy. San Francisco has paved the way in waste reduction with a steady stream of initiatives, beginning with a 2003 Zero Waste resolution to stop landfill dumping by 2020. In 2009, it passed a mandatory recycling and composting ordinance for all residences and businesses, the first of its kind in the U.S. It also set fees for garbage collection higher than those for recycling and composting and calibrated residential bin size to its priorities: recycling at 64 gallons, composting at 32, garbage at 16. Unlike most North American cities, which contract out waste management to multiple companies, San Francisco has an exclusive relationship with one, making it easier to align priorities. While San Francisco didn’t meet its 2020 target, it’s getting there, currently diverting more than 80% of its waste from landfill; New York City’s diversion rate, by comparison, is 17%.

Despite these kinds of gains, sustainability experts agree that of the three Rs, the emphasis must now be on the first two: reduce and reuse. The notion that recycling would be a waste panacea – allowing us to have our consumption cake and eat it too – has gone up in smoke. Metro Vancouver, with one of the most successful recycling programs in Canada, is diverting only 65% of the 450 kilograms that its citizens throw out annually, into recycling programs. And even when those programs work like well-oiled machines, as Recycle BC does, only a fraction of the recycled material (46%, in the case of recycled plastics) is being recovered in a usable form. The rest ends up in landfill: 976,230 tonnes of solid waste in 2021.

To some, “reduce” implies loss, economic contraction, fewer shiny new things. A 2021 report published by the National Zero Waste Council suggests otherwise, estimating that 20,000 jobs and $41 billion in revenue could be generated through 15 “interventions” such as mandating the minimum recycled content in plastic, insisting that buildings be designed for disassembly, and facilitating the repair and reuse of appliances and furniture. On top of that is the climate case: the 4.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and 4.9 million tonnes of waste that such measures would spare.

Gauci points to a growing number of Vancouver businesses that are thriving from the regenerative economy – like ChopValue, which converts used chopsticks into furniture and now has locations across seven countries, and Unbuilders, which dismantles and salvages the reusable elements of homes slated for demolition.

But beyond the bold policies, lofty aspirations and savvy entrepreneurs, there has to be a fundamental shift in mentality: from the Costco logic of buying more because it’s cheap, to buying less because what we have is dear. We can’t shop our way out of this problem. A wholesale switch to electric vehicles does nothing to address the problem of congestion, whereas more HOV lanes, ride-sharing apps and better public transit does. This is where cities can take the lead: modelling fairness and efficiency, encouraging less wasteful behaviour, making the most of what they have.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

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