At the heart of the climate change challenge is the dependence on fossil fuels that is built into every sector, from buildings and vehicles to power plants and farm equipment, steel mills and breweries. With that built-in fossil fuel dependence comes locked-in greenhouse gas emissions. Sure, policies and behaviour change can reduce fossil fuel use, buy time and facilitate growth of zero-emission solutions, but eliminating fossil fuel dependence requires a transformation of that capital stock. 

The capital investment needed to decarbonize the Canadian economy was first estimated by Corporate Knights at about $150 billion per year, and the federal government and others have since corroborated that finding. For context, this amounts to the annual total raised by sales taxes in Canada. Total capital spending in Canada runs around $650 billion per year, most of which is making the problem worse and some of which, perhaps 10%, is providing some incremental moderation of emissions. Unless and until the majority of capital spending is aligned with our climate change commitments, we will not get at the root cause of the heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires that are eating away at our prosperity.

Such an alignment is possible. Scores of innovations in recent years have opened up pathways to zero emissions. Super-efficient and fossil-free buildings, electric vehicles, cold-climate heat pumps, smart building design and operation, electrification of industrial processes, energy storage, regenerative agriculture, circular industrial production systems, wind and solar electricity, battery storage – climate solutions are growing at unprecedented rates. 

Globally, a post-fossil-fuel energy system is emerging, centred on efficiency, electrification and renewable energy. The carbon-free solutions often bring highly valued collateral benefits – better vehicle performance, healthier and more productive built environments, enhanced productivity and cost savings – that act as accelerants in the market uptake of the new technologies.

And yet, a yawning gap remains between current levels of investment in climate solutions and what it would take to get the job done. This “decarbonization capex (capital expenditure) gap” is the focus of the Climate Dollars research project at Corporate Knights. For each of the three most important sectors – buildings, transportation and power – there is an annual decarbonization capex gap of $30 to $40 billion, and the longer it takes to close it the more Canada will fall behind in the global energy transition that is underway, and the more disruptive will be the changes to our climate, our economy and our communities. 

The decarbonization gap is made up of stranded opportunities – investments needed to decarbonize that are technologically and economically feasible but that are left unrealized for a host of reasons. For many opportunities, the payback is too long for private investors or is out of scope for the traditional portfolio of the public investor. Other opportunities are stranded by perceived risk, incorrect or lack of information, lack of access to capital, regulatory roadblocks, and ineffective or conflicting public policies. Cementing the problem are underdeveloped supply chains, labour shortages, the inertia and entrenched advantages of the incumbent fossil fuel industry, as well as lacklustre rates of innovation in business models and a lack of public policies for clearing the financing and logistical barriers that are holding back progress. 

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Private investors account for 83% of all capital expenditures in Canada, and the private sector has the expertise for mobilizing capital on the scale needed to respond to the climate crisis. But timely decarbonization will require increased public investment in opportunities that are currently stranded in the gap. Corporate Knights has partnered with York University’s Schulich School of Business to develop a Canadian climate-finance index that tracks and measures private-sector climate-finance flows. 

Beyond the widely acknowledged need for more blended finance, closing the gap will require revising century-old utility mandates and regulatory frameworks, capturing inter-sector opportunities that are currently falling through the cracks, financing innovations to eliminate first-cost barriers, incentives and business models that avoid the half-measures that drive up costs in the long run, and a level of determination and cooperation across all sectors of society that has yet to materialize in Canada.

This is a big transition.  It is disruptive, messy and full of wicked complications and pleasant surprises. But the map to a low-carbon future is taking shape, the climate imperative provides a compelling destination, and pioneering explorers and innovators are finding pathways through the decarbonization capex gap.

Ralph Torrie is the research director at Corporate Knights.

The post Closing the climate funding gap is key to Canada’s prosperity appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It was a sunny Saturday, and my co-adventurer and I had paddled through the shimmering waters of Georgian Bay and landed on the distant Beckwith Island, home to beautiful sand beaches on Lake Huron. I had glanced at the weather, noting that a lightning storm was expected to roll in the next day (which we had planned to avoid), but I neglected to check the prevailing wind currents.

Around 4 a.m., I awoke to 50-kilometre-per-hour winds battering the tent and quickly pulled up the wind charts on my trusty BlackBerry. To my dismay, the high winds would hold steady for the next 48 hours.

This was a bit of a problem. I needed to be back in Toronto to present our latest sustainable investment research to attendees at a summit hosted by the Principles for Responsible Investment, whose signatories manage US$121 trillion in assets. 

We tried calling a water taxi, but none were seaworthy in the high winds. So we called members of the Beausoleil First Nation, on whose territory we were trespassing (albeit lightly and with great awe). Sue, who runs the Bayshore Variety, Video & Restaurant on Christian Island, answered the phone and said to give her 10 minutes. Constable Elijah from the Anishinabek Police Service quickly called me back. I confessed our trespasses, but her focus was getting us to safety. A half hour later, a large sturdy Ontario Provincial Police ship motored into the bay to ferry us back to the mainland.

It hit home that we are all in this together, and the human instinct when someone is in harm’s way is to help.

We are all in harm’s way when it comes to the floods, fires and sweltering heat brought by extreme climate change. People, governments and businesses are doing more than we tend to appreciate to get us out of this climate conundrum – which is why more than twice as much clean energy was added to the global mix the past few years compared to conventional energy.

But it isn’t fast enough.

Just like I got distracted by the lightning storm and failed to take note of the prevailing wind patterns, as a society we pay too much attention to the storms and flashes of the political economy, unaware of the prevailing winds of the real economy.

Let’s be clear here: the sustainable clean energy economy is experiencing exponential growth. It is going parabolic because most clean technology options are superior and only getting better.

Corporate Knights data shows that for the large companies that make up 80% of global market capitalization, sustainable revenues and capital expenditures are growing more than twice as fast as everything else over the past five years. This trend holds across sectors and regions and puts the sustainable economy on a path to dominate the global economy by the end of the next decade.

People bay at the moon for political leadership, but it didn’t seem to matter who was president of the United States the past eight years when it comes to this sector. Oil and gas continued to rise under both administrations, yes, but there was no stopping the clean economy, regardless of rhetoric at the top. Clean energy investment surged under Trump and Biden, comprising the bulk of all energy investment under both guys in each of their last years in office, according to data from Clean Investment Monitor and the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Investment. 

While the die is cast on the direction of travel of our global economy, we can speed it up.

Rather than climate transition plans, we need economic transition plans focused on the high-growth areas of our economy – and the climate solutions (the highest-growth part of the economy) will come along for the ride. The main business association in Europe (BusinessEurope) recently embraced this logic, as did the Business Council of Australia a few years ago.

These business associations have critical roles to play in setting the parameters for what is seen as politically possible, and both the U.S. and Canada would do well to get on board.

Roughly 150 countries have set a goal for net-zero, and this target is now backed by financial players representing $150 trillion in combined assets (a 30-fold increase over the past four years). Paraphrasing former governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney, when society sets a clear goal and technology makes it possible, it becomes increasingly profitable to become part of the solution and increasingly costly to be part of the problem.

That’s where we are right now. If we want to deploy these climate solutions to power and move our economies, there are some basic things we need to do.

Number one: stop gridlocking renewable-energy potential by updating energy-regulator mandates to focus on rapid permitting and shortening the grid-connection queue. According to the IEA, 1,650 gigawatts (more than double the 666 GW added this year) of clean energy capacity in advanced development stages is waiting for grid connections.

Number two: stop allowing incumbents from the fossil fuel sector (including those with vested interest in dragging out the decline of the internal combustion engine economy) to weaponize our fears about losing jobs (subsidized to the tune of $10 million per job) to China, delaying inevitable balance-sheet write-downs. It does not serve our interest to make trade in low-carbon goods and services a political football.

Number three: start spending more public money now. While the private sector will provide the dominant supply of capital in the latter half of the race to net-zero by 2050, publicly sourced money will be necessary to close the climate investment gap (which sits around 5% of GDP) between now and 2030.

With technology on our side, staying in touch with the prevailing economic winds, and the public purse to help us through choppy waters, blue skies are ahead.

Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights. 

The post Publisher’s Note: Harnessing high winds in times of urgent action appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With little to no power to enforce compliance, Stiell has responsibility without authority. In two years as the UN’s executive secretary for climate change, he has pushed for action at two COP conferences in oil-producing countries (Egypt and the United Arab Emirates) while seeing the number of fossil-firm lobbyists in attendance quadruple. And he’s about to do it again at COP29 in Azerbaijan. He has learned not just to argue for change, but to paint vivid pictures of the costly dangers we now face – and the safer, more just world we could build for a fraction of that cost.

In mid-July, Stiell stood in a roofless home on Carriacou, his home island, surveying the damage from Hurricane Beryl. “I and my community are experiencing the devastation that has become all too familiar to hundreds of millions,” he said in a UN video. “Beryl is yet more painful proof: every year, fossil-fuel-driven climate costs are an economic wrecking ball hitting billions of households and small businesses.”

If no action is taken to slow climate change, a German government-backed report released in April says the costs will total US$38 trillion a year through 2050. “The same report,” Stiell noted, “says climate action will cost less than a sixth of that.”

With degrees in business and engineering, eight years with Finnish-based Nokia, and business development experience with a Silicon Valley AI start-up, Stiell moves easily between the public and private sectors. He’s also led the fight for a multibillion-dollar loss and damage fund for hard-hit developing countries, to be paid for by affluent industrial nations. With Canada and other G20 nations dragging their feet, the fund was finally established – if not yet funded – at COP28 in Dubai last December.

Now Stiell says the world has just two years left to agree on actions to achieve the Paris goals. To save COP29 this month in Baku, he’s been arm-twisting for a “quantum leap” in climate financing, including non-loan programs to help struggling nations cut emissions without drowning in debt. On the bright side, says Stiell, “Bold new national climate plans will be a jobs jackpot and economic springboard.”

Rick Spence is a business writer, speaker and consultant in Toronto specializing in entrepreneurship, innovation and growth. He is also a senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Meet the man most responsible for saving COP29 from irrelevancy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The conference begins November 11 in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a shaky petrostate that earns 92% of its export revenue from oil and gas. This is the country where the very first oil wells in the world appeared in the 1840s. This year’s conference president, Mukhtar Babayev, is the nation’s ecology and natural resources minister, and a 26-year veteran of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. 

Moreover, the UN’s visionary commitment to develop a more just, tolerant society as part of its Paris Agreement goals also looks shaky when it works with an authoritarian family dictatorship. Freedom House, a Washington, D.C.–based non-profit, gives Azerbaijan a “freedom score” of seven out of 100 (down from nine last year, and well below the U.A.E.’s score of 18/100). An undercover investigation by Global Witness, detailed in a report released last week, exposed the interest of Azerbaijan leaders to use their COP leadership position to facilitate discussion of fossil fuel deals. The NGO secretly filmed Elnur Soltanov, the CEO of COP, discussing oil and gas deals ahead of the climate summit. 

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003, when he succeeded his father, Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official who ruled the country when it was a Soviet republic. The family has stayed in power by suppressing dissent, restricting press freedom and limiting civil liberties.

We have neither the time nor the patience for more scams or games of smoke and mirrors like your greenwashing fund.

– Pacific Climate Warrior Joseph Zane Sikulu

Earlier this year, Aliyev called Azerbaijan’s oil, which fuelled Russia for a century, “a gift from God” – signalling he’s not about to leave it in the ground. When Azerbaijan’s first large-scale solar power plant opened last October, Aliyev boasted of “moving towards a green agenda.” But the project offers few environmental benefits, since Azerbaijan plans to export the gas its own power plants no longer need. Worse, Azerbaijan waged war for three years against ethnic Armenians in their disputed, semi-autonomous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s initiative, which the European Parliament labelled ethnic cleansing, resulted in the flight of 136,000 Armenians. The region, Aliyev says, will now become a “green energy zone.”

Babayev likes to say that the country is acting as a bridge between East and West and the wealthy Global North and the Global South, seeking to raise US$1 billion from fossil fuel producers for a climate fund to help poor nations. Pacific Climate Warrior Joseph Zane Sikulu, from the low-lying islands of Tonga, calls it greenwash. “We have neither the time nor the patience for more scams or games of smoke and mirrors like your greenwashing fund.” 

The post An authoritarian petrostate takes centre stage as COP29 host appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It’s critical for students to engage with case studies that reflect local conditions, offer context-specific solutions and link them to global discourse,” explains professor Manoj Chiba, GIBS’ MBA director at GIBS.

This shift, he says, reflects a growing recognition of the continent’s unique business landscape, “giving students a deeper understanding of the complexities and opportunities they’ll encounter in their own markets.”

Across the continent,  business schools are embracing local narratives, turning the classroom into a space where African ingenuity and global relevance meet and changing how students see themselves – not just as participants but as creators of a more sustainable and equitable global economy.

“African business students are no longer simply inheriting frameworks from Western institutions; they are now developing the tools to shape them,” says Chiba.

Addressing climate change impacts in Africa

Europe’s colonial rule in Africa may have largely ended by the 1960s, but its legacy has profoundly influenced the continent’s modern education system. Historically, African education, from primary to post-secondary levels, has mirrored Western models while often sidelining Indigenous knowledge and local contexts. But now, African business schools are developing programs that move beyond colonial influences toward a more inclusive and relevant future. This involves not just revising curricula but also integrating African perspectives and addressing local challenges directly – including the impacts of climate change on the continent.

Despite contributing only 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa suffers some of the most severe consequences of global warming. From erratic prolonged droughts in the Sahel region and East Africa to devastating floods in countries like Mozambique and Nigeria, these climatic shifts are catalysts for broader socio-economic issues, including migration, health crises and conflicts over dwindling resources.

By 2050, up to 86 million Africans could become internal climate migrants due to deteriorating living conditions, according to the World Bank. And Africa’s youth – 60% of the continent’s population is below the age of 25 – say they want business to respond. According to a 2023 World Economic Forum report, 65% of African youth are interested in sustainable business practices. In this challenging landscape, African institutions have an opportunity to develop sustainable solutions tailored to the continent’s specific needs.

And more are stepping into the spotlight for doing just that.

Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.

– Jackson Omondi, graduate of Strathmore University Business School 

Fostering entrepreneurship and sustainable development

This year, Corporate Knights’ 2024 Better World MBA ranking of the top 40 business schools for sustainability shines a light on this progress, with two MBA programs from African institutions making the cut: GIBS and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT), ranked 25th and 7th, respectively.

Since becoming a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education in 2009, GIBS has woven the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deeply into its curriculum, Chiba explains. This commitment “is central to GIBS’s mission to drive businesses to contribute positively to healthier economies and communities,” he says. Post-graduate diploma students, for instance, are required to incorporate at least one of the 17 SDGs into their first-year business projects, ensuring that real-world impact is woven into academic rigour.

The school also offers specialty programs tailor-made for changemakers, including its social entrepreneurship program as well as its Corteva Women Agripreneurs program. In the CWA program, women entrepreneurs in farming engage in a blended curriculum that combines theory, workshops, field immersions and mentorship, all aimed at fostering sustainable business skills. Chiba notes that in a world of rapid change, “business education must be as dynamic and forward-thinking as the environments it seeks to serve.”

UCT’s Graduate School of Business has similarly put local realities at the heart of its curriculum by incorporating in themes like water management and transportation. The university’s Centre for Transport Studies is developing solutions such as electric bus networks to tackle the challenges of growing pollution, a warming climate and rapid urbanization in African cities. MBA students can work directly on projects such as these, using local case studies to understand and address real-world issues.

GIBS and UCT are far from the only African business schools reimagining business education that is rooted in local context while connected to global discourse. While not part of Corporate Knights Top 40, Lagos Business School in southwestern Nigeria is homing in on entrepreneurship and sustainable development in the region’s dynamic tech ecosystem, fields critical to the continent’s growth trajectory. In North Africa, the American University in Cairo is making strides in research on economic development and governance, further cementing the university’s role as a key player in addressing regional challenges.

Jackson Omondi, an East African supply chain expert who graduated from Strathmore University Business School’s leadership program, in Kenya, more than a decade ago, notes how much it has evolved. “Ten years ago, sustainability wasn’t part of the conversation, and the program was built around a narrow curriculum. The focus was squarely on business ethics and leadership, and most participants were sponsored by Kenyan corporations like Kenya Airways,” he says. “Today, the shift towards sustainability is not only timely but essential. It goes beyond business ethics to encompass broader challenges relevant to both African and global markets.”

MBAs serving African climate priorities

African universities are also gaining ground as climate leaders on the global stage, thanks in part to initiatives like Business Schools for Climate Leadership (BS4CL) Africa, which emerged from last year’s COP27 in Egypt. Launched by PRME Chapter Africa (whose goal is to develop the Principles for Responsible Management Education) and BS4CL Europe, this collaboration promises to redefine business education across the continent by putting climate action at its core.

“BS4CL Africa gives voice, advocacy and action to Africa’s unique requirements as we craft our fit-for-purpose responses to what is fast being recognised as a climate catastrophe bearing down on Africa and the world,” GIBS professor Roze Phillips told University World News in 2022. She noted that it’s in line with the saying “Nothing about us without us.”

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The six founding schools will collaborate on joint courses and research that serve African climate priorities, as well as student competitions and corporate partnerships, all focused on accelerating impact and fostering future business leaders who actively contribute to a more climate-resilient future.

The pan-African collaboration exemplifies the drive toward reclaiming agency and ensuring that African voices dominate discussions on sustainability and development. African business schools are now focusing on outcomes that benefit a diverse range of stakeholders, beyond corporate shareholders. To truly decolonize the curriculum, schools are going beyond diversifying reading lists. They are taking tangible steps to incorporate diverse knowledge sources and educational methodologies from various cultural and philosophical backgrounds.

It’s a sizeable task, as Phillips said in 2022: “We will need to question the very basis of business school education and what business schools stand for.”

Howard Thomas, professor extraordinaire with GIBS, argues that business schools around the world have deviated from their mission of creating public value, becoming too aligned with business interests and maximizing shareholder returns. That also creates an opportunity for African business schools that are redefining responsible leadership.

In rapidly evolving climate emergency, it’s a something more African youth are demanding – and more schools are beginning to deliver.

Shilpa Tiwari is an ESG strategy and communications consultant, and the founder of No Women No Spice. She lives in Tanzania and Toronto.

The post African MBA programs are reclaiming sustainability in business education appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The shift, while heartening, presents a challenge: how best to measure these programs’ commitment to sustainability and the impact they’re having on the world of business more broadly? For this year’s Better World MBA ranking, the Corporate Knights team considered two metrics: what is being taught and where graduates end up.

“Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output,” says Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “If a business program is excelling on the sustainability dimension of these two measurements, it’s a strong signal they are leading the way fostering holistic business leaders of the future.”

Stonemeijer, who graduated from the University of Exeter’s Business School in 2018, may be one of them. He entered the program with five years’ experience in the fast fashion industry and a growing frustration with its priorities. He’d always had a thing against waste – in his early 20s, he and a carpenter friend launched a start-up, crafting wooden bow ties and tie clips out of offcuts from his friend’s workshop – and wanted to see genuine efforts to reduce it.

Courses are the main input for an MBA program, and the impact that graduates have in the world is their main output.

–Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps

“Sustainability is not just one way to approach business,” Stonemeijer says from his London office. “It is the only way.” He found a match in the Exeter program (which ranks 10th overall on the Top 40 and is in the top five for impact grads, see table below); all courses were taught through the lens of how to make business “not just less bad, but more good.”

After graduating, he worked as a consultant on sustainable strategy in the retail and manufacturing sectors before joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity founded in 2010 by the eponymous sailboat racer who was prompted by her 2005 solo circumnavigation of the globe to dedicate her life to promoting waste reduction and the circular economy. Stonemeijer manages special projects for the foundation, in areas beyond the classic waste triumvirate of clothes, plastics and food. He says the MBA allowed him to reframe his focus, from one industry to innovation generally, while also introducing him to the foundation, which is part of Exeter’s network of partners.

Alyssa Stankiewicz also encountered her future employer while doing her MBA, at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. Raised Quaker in a small town in the Mad River Valley of Vermont, Stankiewicz did a degree in linguistics at a liberal arts college in Virginia before going to work for American Flatbread, a Vermont-based bakery and restaurant that champions local and organic food. For a decade, she baked, gardened and worked her way up to restaurant manager. She was impressed by how well the company treated its employees – offering kitchen staff weekly massage therapy, for instance – and by the central role it played in the community at large.

Interested in this business model, she enrolled in the Grossman program with a mind to possibly starting her own company. As a weaver, she was toying with the idea of an art therapy centre. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would land where she has: working for the financial services company Morningstar, where she reviews portfolios, develops qualitative rating frameworks and works to improve transparency on sustainability funds.

Sustainability is not just one way to approach business. It is the only way.

–Tim Stonemeijer, University of Exeter Class of 2018 and special projects manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

“I think about this work as serving my parents, who are not financial people,” she says on the phone from the Morningstar headquarters in Chicago. “Finance can feel exclusive and confusing. It needs someone to clean it up, to decipher the language.”

Stankiewicz attributes the unexpected twist in her career to the finance professors at Grossman, who persuaded her that she had a knack for analysis. With their encouragement, she entered an annual nationwide challenge issued by the renowned Wharton School, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, to develop a hypothetical investment portfolio that adhered to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Her group won. The program also introduced her to Morningstar, where she did the practicum that serves as the capstone of the Grossman MBA. She was surprised to discover that its mission – to ensure that everyday investors have the tools to understand where their money is going – aligned with her own values.

Together with Bard College in New York State, the Grossman School tops the Corporate Knights charts for alumni impact. Sanjay Sharma, dean of the Grossman program, says this is very much its goal: to have an impact not only on graduates, but also on their future employers.

As an example, he recalls a phone call he received in 2020 from Steve Phelps, then CEO of NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) and a Grossman alumnus. Phelps was looking for advice on how to respond to the discovery of a noose in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at an Alabama speedway. The much-publicized incident unleashed a charged discussion about racism in the stock-car racing world.

I was starting to think about the bigger picture. I was looking for purpose.

–Jonaki Majumdar, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics Executive MBA Class of 2023, and global sustainability manager at Siegwerk

After much consideration, Phelps decided to make a plea for diversity and to ban the Confederate flag from all NASCAR racecourses: a controversial move that, Sharma says, ultimately resulted in a significant increase in race attendance. While acknowledging that NASCAR is an unlikely poster child for sustainability, Sharma cites the proverbial sustainability mountain.

“You have to take the first step, then you start to see opportunities,” he says from his office in Burlington, Vermont. In recent years, two other Grossman graduates have joined NASCAR, including the company’s current chief sustainability officer, who has committed to net-zero operating emissions by 2035.

Graduates cite the network of like-minded peers as one of the greatest benefits they derive from these MBA programs. “We have a common outlook,” says Jonaki Majumdar, describing her fellow students at the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, the top European program in this year’s ranking. “We’re certainly not saints, but we’re also not selfish. We’re interested in the more altruistic side of life.”

Majumdar entered the Maastricht program as a self-described hard-core finance professional. With an undergraduate business degree and chartered accountant accreditation from her native Kolkata, she had worked as a risk-management and security consultant for several multinationals. She had been exposed to lots of money and power but felt that something was missing. “I was starting to think about the bigger picture,” she says from her home in the Dutch city of Utrecht. “I was looking for purpose.”

Maastricht’s MBA, which is offered in English and is available only to working professionals, is very international, with more than 50 nationalities represented in its present cohort. Ron Jacobs, the program’s executive director, characterizes sustainability as the “matrix” covering the entire curriculum, which is constantly expanding to incorporate new issues and understandings.

“Leadership is no longer about command and control,” Jacobs says, as an example. “It’s about employee health and creating a sustainable working environment.”

Majumdar is now sustainability manager for Siegwerk, a global ink and packaging firm based in Siegburg, Germany. She works on all aspects of the company’s sustainability strategy, including the circularity of its products, its carbon footprint and compliance with regulations across the many jurisdictions in which it operates. She finds the work vastly more rewarding than anything she did prior to the degree.

She describes the Maastricht MBA as the best life choice she’s ever made. “If I have one regret,” she says, “it’s that I didn’t do it earlier in my career.”

Given current trends, chances are that sooner than later, MBA programs that don’t teach through a sustainability lens will be the slimmer of the pickings.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

2024 Better World MBA Top 40

*As scores are normalized against the top five, the top schools are tied. We used pre-normalized scores for ranking purposes.

**Schools are tied due to having the same final weighted score.

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2024 Better World MBA – Top 10 Large Schools

*Average of 2022 and 2023 MBA graduates

Note: A large school is defined as an MBA program with over 80 graduates a year.

Methodology

The 2024 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 174 business schools, drawn from the most recent Financial Times list of the top-100 global MBA programs; the Princeton Review’s Best Green MBA list; the schools that made the 2023 Corporate Knights Better World top-40 roster; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent graduates employed with impact organizations for up to a 10% alumni impact bonus to their overall score. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story understated the number of nationalities represented in the MBA cohort at Maastricht University.

The post The world’s most sustainable MBA programs are producing a generation of changemakers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

THE CITY ELECTRIFIER

Ali Husnain

27, St. John’s, NL

Sustainability coordinator – City of St. John’s

Growing up in Pakistan during an energy crisis, Ali Husnain lived through frequent blackouts and limited electricity access. “Witnessing the disproportionate impacts of climate change – floods, earthquakes and heat waves – deepened my resolve,” he says. While studying electrical engineering, he got excited about renewable energy. “I knew I wanted to dedicate my career to sustainability.” Just three years after immigrating to Canada, the sustainability coordinator for St. John’s has already secured a$6 million in funding for sustainability and climate change projects and is overseeing the deep retrofit of 101 affordable housing units, as well as a corporate energy-efficiency project that will cut 11% of the city’s footprint. “Cities are where climate action truly impacts daily life.” Husnain’s approach to sustainability is driven by the belief that “drop by drop makes the ocean.” While individual efforts, like electrifying a single building, may seem small from the outside, he knows his small team at the City of St. John’s is driving meaningful action and making the coastal city more resilient.

THE RECIPROCAL COLLABORATOR

Freddie Huppé Campbell

28, The Kootenays, BC
Director, Energy & Climate program
Indigenous Clean Energy

“It is not possible to decolonize a colonial system; therefore, new systems must be created that uphold sovereignty,” Freddie Huppé Campbell says. With the teachings of a rural and mountainous upbringing sewn into her ways of being, Huppé Campbell, a proud Two-Spirit Michif, works to uphold reciprocal relationships with human and non-human kin in everything she does. Lately, that has focused on empowering Indigenous communities around the globe to seek control of their own renewable-energy solutions. She established the Energy & Climate program at Indigenous Clean Energy (ICE), fostering collaborations and training with communities and organizations in Colombia, Ecuador, New Zealand and Australia. She has also developed ICE’s National Hub, leading policy endeavours at the federal, provincial and territorial levels. “There are many things I dream of doing that do not fit on a linear timeline. Whatever is ahead, I intend to greet it warmly, nourish what needs to grow and adapt as needed.”

THE RENEWABLE-ENERGY CATALYST

Jasmine Lyn

28, Scarborough, ON
Program manager, Women in Renewable Energy
Project lead, City of Toronto

Jasmine Lyn found her inspiration to safeguard the future by looking to the past, and the knowledge that ancient civilizations held about how to steward the riches of the earth. Equity and equality are at the heart of Lyn’s work. She helped Women in Renewable Energy, an organization that started in Toronto, broaden its reach across the globe, launching chapters in the United Kingdom and Iceland that enable women and underrepresented groups to network and grow their professional skills. In Toronto’s municipal government, Lyn has been focused on meeting the city’s net-zero goal by 2040, working with operators of dozens of affordable housing buildings to help connect them to funding, resources and opportunities for green retrofits, which have lowered energy bills. Prior to that, she led the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in Orillia, Ontario, implementing new EV chargers and undertaking an energy-management analysis of city facilities.

THE ELECTRICAL FIREBRAND

Anik Rahman

29, Toronto
Vice-chair, Memorial University of Newfoundland; advisor, Independent Electricity
System Operator

Anik Rahman witnessed firsthand how unfair climate change can be, seeing his homeland of Bangladesh battered by flooding and cyclones when it’s responsible for only 0.56% of global carbon emissions. Rahman graduated from Newfoundland’s Memorial University as a licensed engineer in 2017; by 2021, he was one of three Canadians appointed to the World Energy Council’s Future Energy Leaders program. He is now vice-chair of Memorial University, where he oversees the university’s emissions- and carbon-footprint-reduction efforts, including an electrification project that is removing emissions equivalent to taking 6,200 cars off the streets. Rahman is also an advisor for the Independent Electricity System Operator, the not-for-profit that operates Ontario’s electrical grid, managing the grid-reliability contracts and designing procurement mechanisms for renewables and non-emitting resources.

INNOVATORS

THE CLEANTECH INCUBATOR

Morgan Lehtinen

& Sebastian Alamillo

29, Kingston, ON; 24, Kingston, ON
Co-founders, RXN Hub

When BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig ruptured in 2010, a 15-year-old Morgan Lehtinen watched the disaster unfold and knew her future would be shaped by it. “That propelled me to spin out my PhD research into a company to clean contaminated water systems,” she says. Always destined for science, Lehtinen hit a roadblock in graduate school, frustrated by how much groundbreaking research “never leaves the lab.” Fast forward to today: Lehtinen, a serial entrepreneur, is the co-founder and executive director of RXN Hub, a $15-million, 65,000-square-foot facility designed to pilot and scale sustainable chemical innovations. She and co-founder Sebastian Alamillo, the director of strategic development, have helped more than 100 start-ups navigate commercialization; now they’re bringing vital research and development facilities online, aiming to create more than 400 green jobs over the next three years. “We built the kind of place I wish I had as a founder,” Lehtinen explains. Alamillo echoes this vision: “Chemistry got us into this climate mess, and chemtech will get us out.”

THE SEAWEED ECO-PRENEUR

Majid Hajibeigy

29, surrey, BC
Founder & CEO
Canadian Pacifico Seaweeds Ltd

At 23, Majid Hajibeigy decided to return to his family’s farming roots, but his fields would be the crashing shores of the Pacific; his crop, seaweed. Since then, the founder of Canadian Pacifico Seaweeds has worked with researchers, chefs and food scientists to create products like seaweed gel for locally made hand sanitizer in the pandemic and has partnered with Konscious Foods, a plant-based seafood brand, to put new plant-based sushi products in the marketplace. “My goal is also to unite academia and industry in a powerful alliance, harnessing groundbreaking research and translating it into practical, commercially viable solutions.” The work hasn’t been without its challenges: “Recent environmental changes, such as rising ocean temperatures and acidification, have severely impacted seaweed production.” But Hajibeigy’s company has raised more than $3.5 million to fund projects like KelpSpat, which increases seaweed cultivation productivity by up to 400%, boosting its carbon-storing potential. “I aim to revolutionize the way we approach conservation by creating a scalable, for-profit conservation business model.”

THE INVENTIVE COLOURIST

Iris Redinger

26, Toronto/Waterloo, ON
CEO and founder
Material Futures

Sometimes, climate solutions can be found just by looking at our surroundings differently. You could say that is how Iris Redinger stumbled on one. The University of Waterloo architecture grad founded Material Futures, which uses microorganisms to produce all-natural, biodegradable dyes, instead of chemical ones. Or, as Redinger puts it, turning microbes in food waste “into miniature dye factories” that produce vegan colourants that are longer-lasting than plant-based dyes. The technology is applicable across industries like food, cosmetics, fashion and packaging, Redinger says. “Understanding how different offshoots from one industry can be used as an input in another industry requires interdisciplinary thinking,” she says. “If we want to address our climate crisis effectively, we need to start thinking holistically and not in silos.” Her idea is already turning heads, earning her a Mitacs Entrepreneur Award, which honours students, professors and partner organizations, and some $1.5 million in financing so she can scale up her waste-diversion process to reach her goal of diverting 500,000 kilograms of waste from treatment and landfill by 2030.

THE WASTE WIZARDS

Prishita Agarwal

& Abhiudai Mishra

22, 23, Vancouver
Co-founders, Mosa Technologies

Prishita Agarwal and Abhi Mishra first met in high school at a boarding school in South India. “We became friends and discovered our shared interest in social impact,” Agarwal says. Coincidentally, they both decided to study at the University of British Columbia. “When I moved from India, where resources were scarce, to Canada, a land of abundance, I noticed a stark contrast in the public mindset,” Agarwal says. It was at a house party, seeing glass bottles being tossed in the trash, that the idea for Mosa was born. Since then, they’ve kept 20,000 bottles from landfills by upcycling them into home decor products. “While plastic is often highlighted [as a problem], 78% of recyclable glass ends up in landfills,” Mishra explains. The Mosa founders see business as a force for good: “By integrating sustainability into the core of our operations,” Mishra says, “we can prove that it is possible to be both profitable and responsible.”

THE INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SCHOLAR

Janna Wale

28, Snuneymuxw territory (Nanaimo, BC)
Indigenous research and partnerships lead Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions

The salmon had a message. As a child in British Columbia, and a member of the Gitanmaax First Nation, Janna Wale became attuned to the changing climate as she observed how much harder it was for her family to harvest salmon. She decided early on that she wanted to help ensure that future generations would be able to continue those and other traditions that are rooted in territory. As a policy advisor for the Canadian Climate Institute, the climate researcher demonstrated how Indigenous research can be integrated into climate policy. Her report with the Yellowhead Institute, Bad Forecast, exposed the lack of meaningful Indigenous inclusion in climate-adaptation policy-making in Canada. She is also a CBC columnist and spoke at COP28 in Dubai as a representative of SevenGen, a collective of Indigenous youth energy leaders. “We need more young leaders, more diverse knowledges and more Indigenous people included in policy- and decision-making,” she says. “We are leaders, we are scientists, and we are ready to contribute and make change.”

THE EMPOWERERS

Leïla Cantave

& Tyjana Connolly

27, 26, Montreal & Calgary
Co-founders, Black Eco Bloom

After meeting while interning at COP26 in 2021, Leïla Cantave and Tyjana Connolly couldn’t ignore the reality that they saw no other Black youth at the summit. Frustration quickly turned into action: in 2022 they founded Black Eco Bloom to empower Black women to take on leadership roles in the fight against climate change. “Our work is about more than just environmental sustainability; it’s about redefining who is seen and ensuring that the experiences and knowledge of marginalized communities are not just included but prioritized,” says BEB chair Cantave, who has also been the Quebec lead with Climate Action Network Canada since 2022. Connolly is BEB’s executive director as well as a program officer at United Nations Canada and the co-author of Green Is Not White: Giving Voice to Indigenous, Black, and Racially Marginalized Workers in the Environmental Justice Movement. She explains that BEB has grown to provide guidance on green job pathways and funding for community resilience projects. “This work is very daunting to do alone; there’s so much power in community.” 

THE CONVERSATION SETTER

Nic Raytek

25, Toronto
Senior manager, sustainable programs
GLOBE Series

Nic Raytek wasn’t expecting her internship at a think tank to upend her worldview. But as she sifted through data on global emissions, she recalls, “It was clear that reaching 1.5°C wasn’t going to happen.” That sparked a deep climate anxiety that stayed with her – until she found a way to channel it into action. “I decided that by pursuing a career in sustainability, I could actively shape a more certain, sustainable future for all.” Now, as senior manager of sustainable programs at GLOBE (Global Opportunities for Business and the Environment) Series, Raytek is steering the conversation on sustainability at the highest levels. Whether through her programming at GLOBE Forum in Vancouver, GLOBExCHANGE in Toronto or helping with global events like the Canada pavilion of COP27, COP28 and soon COP29, thousands of leaders and innovators have walked away from her programs armed with the connections and insights to drive change.

THE GREEN CREATIVE

Smiely Khurana

26, Vancouver
founder of The Sustainable Act

As the former sustainability lead at Reel Green, Smiely Khurana was called “the face of the sustainability movement in Hollywood North,” helping major studios and films of all sizes in British Columbia shrink their carbon footprints. In 2020, the creative powerhouse also launched The Sustainable Act, which began as a podcast on greening the film industry and has expanded to empower communities to go greener with tools, workshops and events. Her next act hits even closer to home for Khurana. She’s launching the Climate Wellness Network, offering resources and support for those struggling with climate anxiety. “The 2021 floods in my hometown of Abbotsford caused by an atmospheric river have profoundly influenced my work. Seeing my community struggle through such devastation brought my climate anxiety to its peak.” Khurana says she’s committed to leveraging the power of media not just to amplify environmental efforts, but to ensure that young people have the emotional support needed to navigate an uncertain future.

POLICY PUSHERS

THE GOVERNMENT WHISPERER

Shoshana Pasternak

28, Toronto
Senior associate, government affairs
Invenergy

Shoshana Pasternak had heard the utopic stories of what electrification could do for our economies, our planet and the people on it, but every plan she encountered came with a caveat. “That ‘but’ told me a transition was possible,” she recalls, “but we need to support these innovations with systems that reduce risk.” As policy director for Ontario’s Ministry of Energy and Electrification, Shoshana brought forward policies that advanced hundreds of megawatts of renewable power, including rooftop solar, and expedited the build-out of transmission lines in the province, reaching more clean energy projects. Now overseeing government relations at Invenergy in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, she has advanced more than 30 renewable-energy projects, including wind, solar and energy storage. “Even getting one clean energy project off the ground can power a small town – it’s about those tangible impacts,” she says.

THE PMO INFLUENCER

Harry Orbach-Miller

29, Toronto/Ottawa
Policy advisor
Prime Minister’s Office, Government of Canada

Harry Orbach-Miller is used to being the youngest person in the room. Often, that room is at the centre of decision-making in Canada. For more than five years, he has helped shape public policy as an advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I feel incredibly privileged to be able to play a small role in the central nervous system of the federal government’s policy-making process,” says Orbach-Miller, who is one of the youngest members of the Prime Minister’s Office. “Working in politics can be a frenetic experience at the best of times,” he notes, so he tries to focus on what he can control, putting his energy into areas where he can actually move the needle. His work on the Electoral Participation Act helped expand advance polls and ensure on-campus voting. He helped to develop Canada’s Public Transit Fund and the $6-billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund and to secure $500 million for the Green and Inclusive Community Buildings program, initiatives that are designed to drive climate action and create more sustainable cities. Orbach-Miller also helped steer $77 million in relief funding to Lytton, the B.C. village that was devastated by wildfires in 2022.

THE JUST-TRANSITION WARRIOR

Jodi-Ann Jue Xuan Wang

26, Oxford, UK
Policy analyst, sustainable finance & just transition, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

Among the mantras that drive Jodi-Ann Jue Xuan Wang is one from Audre Lorde: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” That sums up how Wang, raised in White Rock, B.C., views her own work, which sits, as she describes it, at the intersection of finance and climate justice. “My pursuit of climate justice work is informed by my womanhood, my race, my youth and as a daughter of first-generation immigrants, raised in the diaspora,” she says. She specializes in climate policy and finance, advising investors and governments on an equitable transition to net-zero. She was the lead author on the U.K. Transition Plan Taskforce’s just-transition guidance, serves as a member of the UN Expert Group on Resource Management and leads the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network. This year, the PhD candidate at the University of Oxford co-authored a UN report on intergenerational equity in resource management. “Advocacy and activism exist on a spectrum,” she notes. “Many of the most tedious, unglorified tasks are what secure the movement and a better outcome for all.”

THE NET-ZERO DOCTOR

Owen Dan Luo

25, Montreal
Resident physician, internal medicine
McGill University Health Centre

Owen Dan Luo has seen the health impacts of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss up close as a medical student treating patients at hospitals and clinics around Montreal. That’s why he’s made it his mission to raise awareness of the impact that healthcare has on the climate crisis and prepare physicians and trainees to decarbonize the Canadian healthcare system. “Our healthcare system is responsible for approximately 5% of our nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions – twice as much as the aviation industry,” he notes. As a past co-chair of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students’ Health and Environment Adaptive Response Task Force, Luo developed national standards for medical education on planetary health. He founded Project Green Healthcare/Project Vert la Santé, which provides funding and facilitates mentorships to launch sustainability projects in Canadian healthcare. So far, more than 100 medical students from 14 medical schools in nine provinces have launched projects, from a personal-protective-equipment recycling program in Saskatoon to composting programs in Trois-Rivières.

THE FOOD-SYSTEM FIXER

Allison Penner

28, Saskatoon, SK
Executive director
Reimagine Agriculture

Allison Penner never imagined that a college paper would change her life. In her second year of an environmental governance degree, she uncovered a startling truth: more than 80% of global fisheries were either fully exploited or collapsing. “I had no idea the food system was in such crisis,” she recalls. Even more shocking? Neither did her classmates. It catalyzed Penner’s commitment to fixing the food system. She went on to found Reimagine Agriculture, a non-profit dedicated to systemic change in the sector, which raised more than $250,000 to tackle food-system challenges, and helped shape new legislation to combat food waste while leading a collaboration with law schools. “We started as a small group of friends with a dream, and now we’re making real change,” she says. Whether advocating for cultivated meat or advancing policy reform, Penner is a rising leader in Canada’s sustainable food movement, ensuring that we can continue to nourish a growing global population.

THE MONEY GREENERS

THE ECO-FINANCE MAVERICK

Mégane Mandruzzato

29, Quebec City
Director of sustainability
iA Financial Group

In three short years, Mégane Mandruzzato rose to a leadership position in one of the largest insurance and wealth management groups in Canada, becoming the iA Financial Group’s first director of sustainability. “Her strategic influence contributed not only to the creation of this position, but also to the establishment of a dedicated sustainability team,” her nominee says. Mandruzzato knows that while financial institutions might serve as the backbone of Canada’s economy, their investment portfolios could contribute to 90% of greenhouse gas emissions. So far she has spearheaded decarbonization targets for a $13-million asset portfolio and 38 buildings across Canada. But her proudest achievement is helping to create a “bridge between the academic and professional worlds.” In addition to her award-winning research on integrating sustainable finance values into insurance companies, she helped forge a partnership for a research chair in sustainable finance at HEC Montréal.

THE GREEN BANKER

Mitch McEwen

27, Montreal
Senior manager, Enterprise Sustainable Finance
TD Bank Group

Mitch McEwen had always envisioned a career for himself in conventional finance. But studying abroad while the Paris Agreement was being adopted changed everything. “Realizing that financial systems could support environmental goals and sustainable development inspired me.” Now, McEwen is at the forefront of sustainable finance, wielding his influence to make change happen. Since joining TD, he has spearheaded the $500-billion Sustainable & Decarbonization Finance Target and leads the TD Sustainable Bonds program, with several-hundred-million dollars aimed at projects that promote climate change mitigation and adaptation across North America – winning Environmental Finance’s Green Bond of the Year in 2024. But McEwen is quick to stress that collaboration is essential: “No one tackles sustainability alone, and it requires all disciplines.” It’s a philosophy he echoes with a quote from author Rachel Carson: “In nature, nothing exists alone.

THE SYSTEMS THINKER

Savannah Sarosiak-Larter

28, Toronto
Manager
Quinn & Partners

Drawn to problem-solving from an early age, Savannah Sarosiak-Larter went into engineering at the University of Toronto to tackle the biggest challenge of our time: decarbonizing the economy. “By influencing companies and investors to pursue low-carbon strategies, we can achieve outcomes that create a positive impact on a national and global level,” she says. At just 28, the rising leader is doing just that for clients of Quinn & Partners, one of Canada’s fastest-growing sustainability firms, getting 13,000 buildings to track their emissions and curb an estimated 100,000-plus tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and developing strategies for building out 100,000 electric-vehicle charging stations. “The accomplishment I’m most proud of is building the investment criteria to evaluate positive climate and social impacts for the $15-billion Canada Growth Fund” – a public fund set up to accelerate the deployment of carbon-curbing technology. Her advice for up-and-comers: “Adopt a systems-thinking approach to address global sustainability challenges to determine which solutions will alleviate systemic inequities rather than exacerbate them.”

THE CARBON HUNTERS

THE CARBON FOOTPRINT TRACKER

Ben Grande

28, Calgary
Co-founder & chief technology officer
Arbor

Ben Grande’s dad encouraged him to find a mission that allowed him to meet three goals: enjoy what you do, make money and make a difference. He hit the nail on the head with Arbor, a successful global platform that calculates the carbon impact of products, assets and supply chains. “Companies often set reduction targets with no clear direction on how to hit them,” Grande says. As chief technology officer for Arbor, he set out to rectify that, knowing that “most of the ‘sustainability’ data out there was flawed. We knew that we had to be diligent in our pursuit of accurate data and sensible methodology.” To date, Arbor has helped hundreds of businesses – from small “mom and pop shops” to large global companies such as Crocs – identify opportunities to avoid up to 373,000 tonnes of emissions, and Grande has no plans to slow down. “I have a goal to help every willing business measure and communicate the environmental impact of everything they buy, make or sell.”

THE CARBON-CAPTURE CRUSADER

Isabelle Callaghan

26, Toronto
Project manager
Deep Sky Labs

Isabelle Callaghan attended her first climate rally when she was 10 years old, hoisting up a handmade sign of a burning earth. Decades later, she has a key role in the world’s first carbon-removal-technology validation centre. As a project manager at Deep Sky, a Canadian carbon-removal developer, Callaghan is coordinating Deep Sky Labs, a $50-million, 217,000-square-foot facility in Innisfail, Alberta, that is about to break ground. She combed through 50 potential sites across two provinces, conducting assessments, site visits and negotiations. Once operational, the plant will remove 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Prior to Deep Sky, Callaghan was a senior business analyst at McKinsey & Company, working with Fortune 500 companies such as energy utilities and mining companies on sustainability and decarbonization. “In five years, I want to look back and say I played a key role in bringing one of today’s many solutions to life,” she says. “My focus is on scale. We have the solutions; now it’s time to execute.”

THE RETROFIT CHAMPION

Fellipe Falluh

28, Montreal
Founder/president
Retrofit Construction

Buildings account for roughly 18% of Canada’s emissions. While a lot of political attention and legislation focuses on curbing the carbon footprint of new construction, Fellipe Falluh believes the big challenge lies within the built environment we already have around us. That’s why, at the age of 24, the civil and environmental engineer founded Retrofit Construction, a company that tackles retrofits of older buildings to make them more energy efficient. “By doing so, we also make these buildings more resilient, comfortable, healthy and more valuable,” he says. Falluh comes from a family of builders in Brazil and says that the importance of sustainability and the environment was always emphasized as he grew up. The vice-president of Quebec’s passive-building association, and recent recipient of a King Charles III coronation medal, he transformed his own 130-year-old duplex in Montreal into the first certified net-zero-ready building in the province and is now sharing his knowledge in a podcast on high-performance construction and buildings.

THE BUILDING DECARBONIZER

Vit Vimal

28, Toronto
CEO & co-founder
Tuuli

Vit Vimal was studying architecture when he noticed a gap in the curriculum: “There was little emphasis on how our designs would impact the environment.” As a young architect, Vimal was tired of working on the sidelines of the climate change battle, consulting on how to make buildings prettier rather than greener. “I couldn’t accept the direction the building industry was heading, so I made the bold decision to leave my job and step onto the front lines of this fight.” He left to start Tuuli, a firm dedicated to sustainable architecture through software that helps developers measure, reduce and monitor the carbon emissions of their assets. “The fight against climate change starts with how we build,” he says, emphasizing that the Paris Agreement targets can’t be met without rethinking architecture, since buildings are responsible for 40% of global carbon emissions. “I will never stop pushing to make it a reality.”

YOUTH MOTIVATORS

THE GALVANIZER

Aubrey-Anne Laliberte-Pewapisconias

25, Saskatoon, SK
Director of DEI, Leading Change Canada; program manager
ImaGENation

“‘Always remember where you came from.’ My parents always tell me this before walking into new spaces to remind me to stay rooted in my teachings. It allows me to stay grounded in an approach to life and sustainability work that leads with Indigenous values and decolonization in mind,” says Aubrey-Anne Laliberte-Pewapisconias, who is a nêhiyâskwew from Canoe Lake Cree First Nation on Treaty 10 Territory and Little Pine First Nation on Treaty 6 Territory. That means incorporating interconnectedness, stewardship and relationships with the land, water and other living relatives in all that she does. She puts those values into practice as the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Leading Change Canada and as ImaGENation program manager at Indigenous Clean Energy, where she works with Indigenous youth who are spearheading clean energy projects across Canada. Recently, she helped install an electric vehicle charger on Flying Dust First Nation in Saskatchewan. Laliberte-Pewapisconias also served as Canada’s 2023 Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction negotiator at the G20 YouthSummit.

THE SOLUTIONS COACH

Cameron Toy Kluger

20, Montreal & NYC
Founder, Student Education for Environmental Development (SEED)

Growing up in Brooklyn, Cameron Toy Kluger’s connection to nature was mostly limited to squirrels and pigeons. He began developing a deeper appreciation of conservation through his first job, working as a guide in the Prospect Park Zoo. “I’ve pushed myself to explore how cities and nature can work together to strengthen our communities and build a resilient future,” he says. In 2022, Kluger founded Student Education for Environmental Development, or SEED, an initiative that brings free environmental education to schools, with a focus on underprivileged students in Canada and the United States, using a “hopeful, solution-oriented perspective” to inspire a younger generation. He also serves as a member of the Sustainability Projects Fund at McGill University, where he’s an environmental sciences undergrad, and oversees the distribution of $1 million annually to campus environmental projects.

THE YOUTH ENABLER

Gareth Gransaull

26, Toronto
Co-executive director
re•generation

“Every job should be a climate job, and all employees have a role to play.” That’s one of the key messages behind re-generation, a youth-empowering digital platform co-created by Gareth Gransaull, who has been motivated to tackle climate change since the tender age of nine. He charts his young awakening to the trailblazing Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and the ambivalent reaction he received from a neighbour about it. “I have since spent the rest of my life trying to get adults to change,” he says. That motivation spurred him to co-create re•generation, which connects young people with clean-economy jobs and provides a tool kit for employees to nudge their employers to be more climate-conscious. Gransaull has helped raise more than $1.5 million for their work. “We exist to help the next generation of leaders to develop critical-systems-thinking abilities, particularly by raising awareness about problems of inequality, shareholder primacy, neocolonialism and the structural barriers that exist which prevent the emergence of a more equitable economy,” he says.

THE BRIDGE BUILDER

Justin Langan

25, Winnipeg, MB
Founder and executive director
O’Kanata

Back in Swan River, a rural community in northern Manitoba, Justin Langan was taught by his father and elders about the connection between the land and his people. Starting as an 11-year-old working at his community’s Friendship Centre, he has been involved in various projects promoting Métis political and community engagement. The 2SLGBTQIA+ youth has taken that vision forward, creating O’Kanata in 2023 to support Indigenous youth. His goal is to bridge the gap between traditional ecological Indigenous knowledge and modern sustainability practices. “By empowering Indigenous youth through education and sustainable economic opportunities, I aim to create a future where our communities thrive both culturally and economically,” he says. O’Kanata has provided educational opportunities to more than 1,000 Indigenous youth and led to the reduction of 2.7 tons of carbon emissions in Manitoba.

NATURE TRAILBLAZERS

THE QUEEN OF INCLUSIVE GREEN SPACES

Kiana Bonnick

29, Whitby, ON
Climate change and community engagement specialist, Womxn of Colour Durham Collective

As a child exploring her Jamaican grandfather’s garden, Kiana Bonnick was captivated by the love he poured into nurturing his plants. For the last five years, she’s poured her own love of nature into the Womxn of Colour Durham Collective, promoting access to green spaces for racialized women through programs she has spearheaded like Get Outdoors, We Outside and Reclaiming Our Roots. “Understanding the technical and scientific aspects of climate change and the environment is important, but it tells us one part of the story,” Bonnick says. “Social aspects of climate change and different forms of knowledge are equally essential in this story.” Her community-building approach has also been reducing “eco-anxiety,” all while challenging the barriers faced by racialized individuals in outdoor spaces. She’s also been busy training the next generation of climate leaders, educating eight- to 16-year-olds to take the reins as part of the Lead Like a Girl program at DYLOTT (Developing Young Leaders of Tomorrow, Today).

THE CONSERVATION HAWK

Calder Schweitzer

27, Gananoque, ON
Executive director
Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust

Calder Schweitzer’s passion for the territory stewarded by the Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust is palpable. The trust is located within one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. “This means that you find species here living next to one another that don’t co-occur anywhere else in Canada,” Schweitzer says. His passion supercharged his rise through the ranks, moving from field biologist at the land trust in 2019 to executive director five years later. The trust protects and manages land donated by private owners for the purpose of conservation. Schweitzer has led the protection of 850 acres of conservation land, preserving ecosystems that prevent floods and droughts while safeguarding vital habitat for biodiversity and carbon sequestration. “Fighting for conservation can often feel like an uphill battle,” he says. “My advice is to stay balanced and maintain your passion in the face of this adversity.”

The post These 30 under 30 are leading a green youthquake appeared first on Corporate Knights.

One of the first classes she took in her freshman year was about science and society. And the professor who taught the course encouraged students to do their own research and bring evidence to support opinions that might challenge their own. Zakrzewski accepted the challenge wholeheartedly but soon realized there wasn’t any concrete data to support the views of people in her community that climate change was a hoax.

“I kept doing research and was like, ‘Man, the data’s not adding up, and this is not looking good for me,’” she says. She grappled with the idea that maybe what she had been brought up to believe was wrong and turned to her parish priest for advice. He told her to set aside politics and do what she felt was right.

Her light-bulb moment was quickly followed by an “oh-no” moment – Zakrzewski felt she had to make up for the time she had spent denying climate science. She started actively lobbying members of Congress on climate policy and in 2020 began working for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a national non-partisan environmental organization. 

For Zakrzewski, environmentalism and conservativism aren’t opposing forces. “It doesn’t make any sense to say you’re as vehemently pro-life as I am and then say, ‘But the environment doesn’t matter, clean air doesn’t matter, and clean water doesn’t matter,’” she says. “That didn’t add up.”

Feeling like she didn’t have a home in today’s Republican Party, Zakrzewski and a couple of like-minded young conservative environmentalists launched a podcast last year called Green Tea Party Radio in the hope of giving a voice to others with similar views. Zakrzewski, now 26, is part of a growing minority of young conservatives who are deeply concerned about the warming planet and want to see their concerns reflected in a GOP they feel has strayed from its conservationist roots. 

Researchers say there is a widening generational divide among Republicans when it comes to their concerns about climate change and some of their views on energy policy. Since early 2021, when the Biden administration came into power, this trend has only gotten worse for the party, as support among Republicans in general for renewable-energy development has shrunk, while the support among younger conservatives specifically has grown, according to polling by Pew Research. “So in effect, what we’re seeing here is a bigger gap between younger and older Republicans in their views about the direction we should go on energy than even four years ago,” says Alec Tyson, an associate director of research at Pew Research. 

Republicans aged 18 to 29 are 30 percentage points more likely to support more wind power and 26 percentage points more likely to favour more solar power than those 65 and older. When it comes to their views on climate, 79% of younger Republicans acknowledge that human activity contributes to climate change, whereas only 47% of elder GOP voters say the same. 

For the longest [time], the GOP has kind of kicked the can down the road and said, ‘We’ll worry about that later.’  The time is now.

—Katie Zakrzewski, Green Tea Party Radio

Observers say the GOP would ignore these shifting dynamics at its own peril as millennials and Gen Zs become a voter block that can make or break an election. In November, when Americans will be asked to choose either former president Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, 40 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. In 2020, millennials surpassed baby boomers as the United States’ largest generation, with more than 70 million people. While Corporate Knights went to press before the election results were known, young voters could prove a decisive force.

Green at heart

As one of the founders of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), Danielle Butcher Franz, 27, has been working to mobilize young conservatives around climate change since 2017. Recently, the organization attended the Republican National Convention, with a booth on the “new youth movement,” encouraging passersby to “leave a legacy” of environmental conservation. 

Unlike Zakrzewski, who came from a conservative family, Butcher Franz grew up in what she described as a left-of-centre family that listened to National Public Radio and supported candidates from the left-leaning Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). Some of her earliest memories are of handing out stickers at parades for various DFL candidates in northern Minnesota. 

In her teenage angsty years, she found herself playing devil’s advocate in dinnertime discussions about current events. Eventually she realized that she believed some of the things she was saying to stir the pot and that she was actually more conservative-leaning than her family. But she was too afraid to tell her parents at the time and started an anonymous Twitter account with the handle @RepublicanSass to engage with other conservatives. “I started just tweeting out hot takes and opinions and trying to find a community, really, to test my own views and see if these were things that I really agreed with,” she says.

The account took off. Soon it had more than 20,000 followers, leading to opportunities to attend conservative conferences, do internships and write op-eds. She eventually changed her handle to her own name. Shortly after, the 17-year-old got the opportunity to go to the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she met ACC co-founder Benji Backer, then 16, in person for the first time. The two became fast friends and quickly realized there was a gap in the right-of-centre when it came to environmentalism, and the issue of the climate crisis specifically.

Their conversations eventually led them to create the ACC, to give conservatives a voice on these issues and “to show them that they can be at the table and propose their own solutions,” says Butcher Franz, now the organization’s CEO. “These were issues that we cared a lot about personally and we knew our peers cared a lot about, but there really weren’t any Republican leaders talking about these issues in a way that was productive and that resonated with young people.”

She says that this will have to change if the GOP wants to be electable in the future: “If Republicans don’t come up with an answer to the climate question, they will become politically irrelevant.”

A green tradition 

The Republican Party was not always seen as inhospitable to environmentalists. 

Often referred to as the “conservation president,” Theodore Roosevelt created 23 new sites in the U.S. national park system. During his presidency, Roosevelt also established 230 million acres of public lands for conservation efforts. Richard Nixon, for his part, created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And in 1987, Ronald Reagan signed on to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that helped shrink a gaping ozone hole over Antarctica.

But in recent decades, Republicans have ratcheted up their opposition to environmental policies and international agreements that hope to lessen humans’ impacts on the world. Not a single Republican member of Congress voted for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which environmentalists heralded as the largest climate investment the country had ever made but conservatives criticized as big government spending that would fuel inflation. Critics say the undercurrent of climate denialism that exists within the party has been politically driven – an act of opposition to eight years of former president Barack Obama and four years of Biden-administration policies. But the seeds of that opposition to green policies were planted much earlier than that. 

Despite supporting the Montreal Protocol, Reagan’s administration also worked to roll back environmental regulations and cut the EPA’s budget in the 1980s. In 2001, then-president George W. Bush announced to the world that his government would not implement the Kyoto Protocol, a predecessor to the Paris Agreement that Donald Trump would eventually pull the country out of, too. While in power, Trump called climate change a “hoax” and dismantled almost 100 environmental rules and regulations, according to a New York Times analysis. 

If Republicans don’t come up with an answer to the climate question, they will become politically irrelevant.

—Danielle Butcher Franz, CEO, American Conservation Coalition

Some green Republicans are still encouraged by positive movement they’ve seen in the last few years. In 2021, Utah Representative John Curtis, who is running for Mitt Romney’s Senate seat, founded the Conservative Climate Caucus, a group of more than 80 Republican members of Congress. The group has acknowledged that emissions need to be cut to tackle climate change. Caucuses don’t have any power to propose legislation, but they serve to educate lawmakers on particular issues.

These lawmakers tend to support technologies such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen fuel rather than phasing out fossil fuels in favour of more wind and solar energy. They also oppose regulations and taxes as emissions-cutting tools. “[We focus on] policy around scaling up innovations of advancements in technologies so that we can reduce emissions using innovation and policies that support innovation more than a heavy-handed government approach,” says Luke Bolar, the chief external affairs officer at ClearPath, a conservative clean-energy think tank.

The party, however, still faces an uphill battle in convincing young voters that it’s getting serious on climate change. Project 2025, a 900-page document that the Heritage Foundation – a conservative think tank – produced as a road map for a second Trump administration, doesn’t help much. A recent study by Energy Innovation found that if Trump wins the election and implements the plan’s recommendations, it could result in billions of tonnes of additional carbon emissions.

The party’s official 16-page platform for the presidential campaign doesn’t even mention climate change and reaffirms Trump’s promise to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”   

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Another recent report from the Center for American Progress said that 23% of federal elected officials in Congress were climate deniers, and all the members identified as climate deniers were Republicans. But Bolar disputes the report’s conclusions, saying that some of the statements used to paint lawmakers as climate deniers are from as far back as 2010. He adds that many of them have since joined the Conservative Climate Caucus. 

Bolar says that most Republican lawmakers are aware that younger conservatives have a “higher sense of urgency” when it comes to the climate crisis and that they need to “build a bridge” to them by talking about solutions. “The gulf there is communicating what they’re for and the policies that they support,” he says. “That’s a challenge, and I think it’s improving but not fully solved yet.”

What about the Democrats?

For Democrats, age isn’t as much a factor as it is for Republicans when it comes to attitudes toward climate change and energy issues, according to Pew Research. Alec Tyson says that a large majority of Democrats think climate change is a big problem that needs to be addressed and that renewables need to be prioritized over fossil fuels. That level of support doesn’t change much across age groups within that voting block. 

Some commentators say there isn’t much fear in Democratic circles that they’ll lose young climate-conscious voters to the Republicans, even if Harris stood up for fracking on the campaign trail and kept climate talk to a minimum. The larger concern is that they simply might not show up to vote at all if they feel candidates aren’t strong enough on environmental issues. In the presidential election, Trump had closed the gap with President Joe Biden when it came to young voters, but Harris’s candidacy reversed this trend. Since its early days, the Harris campaign has caused a “youthquake,” as polls in early August showed her more than 20 points ahead of Trump with young voters in four swing states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania. By September, 52% of registered voters and 61% of likely voters under 30 backed Harris; only 29% to 30% planned to vote for Trump, according to national polling by Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

In the long-term view, young conservatives think these dynamics could evolve if Republican leadership can change its tune by acknowledging man-made climate change and proposing solutions. “So much of the GOP says, ‘We hate the Green New Deal, we hate what they’re proposing,’ and then they don’t propose anything,” Zakrzewski says. “It’s not good enough to shoot something down. If we’re going to say something is bad, then what’s your alternative?”

As November approaches, young conservatives who care about environmental policy are grappling with how to approach voting this year. For Zakrzewski, she’s likely going to vote in the down-ballot races and leave the top of the ticket blank, given Trump’s anti-climate rhetoric. “It seems like every four years, I might as well write in Mickey Mouse,” she says. 

Historically, Republicans have been far better than their Democratic opponents at uniting around common causes – namely low taxes and limited government – and leaving behind what they disagree on. But if the GOP fails to evolve in significant ways on climate and energy policy (or at the very least in how it is perceived on these issues), researchers question whether those ties will hold the party’s supporters together or lead to a realignment of American politics.

A study from University of Colorado Boulder found that voters’ opinions on climate change are already making a significant difference in close presidential elections. Researchers found that views on climate cost Republicans the 2020 presidential election and that, for voters, climate “was one of the strongest predictors of whom they voted for in 2020, especially among independents.” The study estimated that there would have been a 3% swing in favour of Republicans that election year had voters’ level of concern about climate remained the same as it was in 2016. This electoral reality could get more challenging for Republicans, as young conservatives and voters generally are increasingly anxious about global warming. 

It remains to be seen how youth on both sides of the aisle will shape not just the November election, but the future of American climate policy and the global energy transition. 

Environmental conservatives are hopeful that there could be a strong shakeup in the GOP’s policies on climate as younger generations of voters start to run for public office and rise through the party’s ranks. But for Zakrzewski, there’s no time like the present to start making change within the party. “For the longest [time] the GOP has kind of kicked the can down the road and said, ‘We’ll worry about that later.’ The time is now, and I think this election is going to be a decisive one. You’re either at the table or you’re on the menu,” she says.

Alex Robinson is a journalist based in Ottawa.

The post Can young Republicans wake their party up to climate change? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But what makes this development – which includes 12 deeply affordable apartments to be operated by a local non-profit – unusual is that it is hooked into a geo-exchange system. That means it is tapping the earth’s heat, rather than conventional gas-fired boilers, to warm and cool the building’s interior spaces. 

According to Adam Molson, vice-president of the Daniels Corporation, the project’s developer, Uniti is one of the first completed projects in the company’s 2030 decarbonization strategy, which begins with geo-exchange systems or air-source heat pumps in all its new rental projects, followed by the use of low-carbon concrete, efficiency improvements in the building’s exterior walls, rooftop solar and mass timber. 

“We broke the ice and got over the fear factor,” Molson says of the geo-exchange system. “That essentially opened the floodgates to us being able to move to geothermal as our default heating system. Unless there are site-specific reasons to pursue another technology, which there may be, we’re not using natural-gas space heating anymore.” 

The one-two punch of the climate crisis driving up utility bills in buildings that already generate 40% of global carbon emissions, while the housing crisis leaves few affordable rental options, puts units like the ones in Uniti in high demand. 

Across North America, rental units represent roughly one-third of dwellings, and steep rent hikes in many metropolitan areas have added enormous strain to those household budgets. A March 2024 research report for Canada’s Task Force for Housing and Climate recommended that purpose-built rentals account for 35% to 40% of all new starts for the balance of the decade. 

With condos, there’s little incentive for developers to invest in low-carbon systems because the benefits don’t accrue to the developers, whose goal is to sell off the units as quickly as possible, nor their investors – that is, the people who buy condos and rent them out, and thus pass on the utility costs to their tenants. But the math works quite differently for an asset manager that’s going to own and operate an apartment building for decades, especially if their institutional investors have explicit ESG (environmental, social and governance) targets, including emission reductions, as is the case with Choice Properties, the real estate investment trust that partnered with Daniels to build Uniti. What’s more, geo-exchange infrastructure, which remains costly to build and install, is ideal for larger buildings that can create the economies of scale necessary to deliver those lower operating costs over the long term. When the planets align, the sustainability investments yield meaningful emission reductions and a payoff for the owner. 

Investors are shopping for rental buildings

In fact, there’s good evidence in both Canada and the United States that investment capital is now flowing into rental apartments at a pace not seen in decades. There are various reasons for the shift, including the high interest rates of recent years that have scared off condo buyers, as well as the fact that all forms of housing, including condos, have become so expensive that most people are completely priced out of the market. 

While the market transition toward purpose-built rentals may bring about more lower-carbon housing because landlords have a financial incentive to minimize energy costs, the change isn’t sufficient to guarantee a payoff that is both green and affordable, nor does this trend assure a supply of affordable rentals. Deep retrofits of drafty older rental stock remain financially daunting, especially for affordable housing providers. Some landlords have struggled to comply with strict decarbonization regulations cropping up in jurisdictions like British Columbia and California, among them building code requirements to “fuel switch” (i.e., from gas to electricity), slash carbon embodied in building materials (e.g., by constructing with mass timber to reduce concrete) or add battery storage systems. 

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Others, meanwhile, have resorted to greenwashing, touting essentially cosmetic environmental improvements in their buildings as a way of justifying rent hikes and displacing low-income tenants. Case in point: a rental high-rise in northwest Toronto, where tenants last year staged a rent strike, accusing the owners of using an energy retrofit renovation to justify above-guideline rent increases of as much as 7% to 10% (Ontario landlords are permitted to increase rents by no more than 2.5% per year but can apply for more if they’ve renovated the building significantly). “This year, my rent went up from $2,100 to almost $2,400 per month,” one tenant told The National Observer. “I don’t know any tenants in Ontario right now who are getting a 10% increase in their income every year, including myself.” (The landlord, Dream Unlimited, disputed the accusations.)

Indeed, as tenant advocacy groups point out, there’s no guarantee that the benefits from energy-efficiency improvements – everything from installing new appliances to replacing drafty windows or baseboard heaters – will trickle down to renters in the form of lower rental rates or reduced energy bills. “We do believe that in many ways, tenants and landlords have differing interests,” says Eddy Roué, chair of the Central Ottawa chapter of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a tenants’ advocacy union that recently launched an “eco-tenant” platform for its membership. “But when it comes to things like energy efficiency, this can absolutely be a win-win scenario.” The wrinkle, he adds, is finding the right way to pressure property managers to make the investments. 

Roué cites ACORN’s advocacy strategy, which includes calling for reforms such as anti-eviction covenants on publicly subsidized retrofit projects, free heat pumps for low-income tenants, and a requirement that landlords “demonstrate that the retrofits will result in benefits for tenants, particularly in cases where the landlord pays the energy costs.”

What it takes to green a retrofit

Retrofits on older rental apartments are capital-intensive because they involve the transplant of vital organs – from mechanical HVAC systems to insulation, windows and exterior cladding – in structures filled with tenants. Many property managers will stage these retrofits over a longer period, replacing the various elements only when they’ve reached the end of their usable life. Some cleantech start-ups are also developing approaches to take some of the pain out of retrofits, such as New York–based Hydronic Shell Technologies, which is developing a concept for exterior facade panels that incorporate heat pumps. 

The question confronting policy-makers is how to accelerate this transition. 

Certain jurisdictions have made energy retrofits mandatory. New York City, for example, enacted Local Law 97, which requires landlords of large buildings, many of them rentals that use carbon-intensive heating oil, to meet emission targets or face stiff fines. Some New York landlords have also experimented with so-called green leases, which are structured so that the property manager and tenants share the upfront capital costs for retrofits while also dividing up the savings from lower utility bills. 

Other governments have opted for carrots instead of sticks. The State of Massachusetts last year established a Community Climate Bank to fund low-carbon projects aimed at affordable rental housing agencies. The Canadian government, in turn, has begun offering loans for purpose-built rental development and retrofit projects in multi-family buildings.

It can sometimes just be cheaper to knock down a building rather than retrofit it. It’s hugely destructive and very environmentally unfriendly.

—Tom Wainwright, London’s Royal Holloway University

Yet some places have seen backsliding from earlier efforts to decarbonize rental housing, including housing targeted at low-income households. Before the election of a Labour government in the United Kingdom last summer, initiatives to backstop energy-efficiency programs targeting private rental housing were either stalled or cancelled. 

Real estate expert Tom Wainwright, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London’s Royal Holloway University, also points to unresolved policy contradictions. In the U.K., rental housing developers no longer pay value-added taxes on their projects. However, there’s no such exemption for retrofits, which creates a perverse incentive for landlords, including the removal of existing apartments from the market. “It can sometimes just be cheaper to knock down a building rather than retrofit it,” Wainwright observes. “When you think about all the embodied carbon in the concrete that gets knocked down or landfilled and doesn’t get recycled, it’s hugely destructive and very environmentally unfriendly.” 

Even in climate- and rental-friendly jurisdictions, like Germany, the payback on energy retrofits is difficult to realize. As a 2022 University of Regensburg study found, landlords couldn’t expect to recoup their investment by charging a “green premium” for retrofitted rental units, even after the government kicked in some of the carbon levy as an incentive. 

Scaling low-carbon rentals

The prospect of building new low-carbon rental projects involves far fewer obstacles and has attracted the attention of not just policy-makers and investors, but also innovative designers eager to push well beyond the familiar green benchmarks, like LEED certification.

Shawn Lapointe, a principal with Vancouver-based Henriquez Partners Architects (HPA), describes one such initiative the firm has created with developer Westbank, dubbed Prototype. It’s an attempt to determine an optimal design for a 25-storey mass timber building in Vancouver (that will use some steel) while minimizing cement-hungry underground parking and exterior windows (floor-to-ceiling “glass curtain walls” being incredibly inefficient). They’re also folding in plans for a connection to a local district-energy utility. (District-energy systems distribute low-emission forms of energy such as deep lake water for cooling or recovered sewer gas to run boilers to generate steam for heat.) Prototype, moreover, will be entirely rental, with 20% of the units set at below-market rates and a third suitable for families with children. The project is located on a transit corridor in Vancouver where the city is encouraging rental development by offering density bonuses to builders willing to forgo the condo model.  

What’s more, the design is intended to be portable, meaning that all of HPA’s calculations can be put to use in other locations. “We wanted to make sure that what we’ve developed works for a variety of different sites and conditions, so it can be as replicable as possible,” says Lapointe, who is overseeing Westbank’s Mirvish Village development in downtown Toronto. “We’re also hoping to be able to share that information with others.”

As he looks at Daniels Corporation’s project pipeline, Adam Molson reckons that the current policy and investment climate favours low-carbon purpose-built rentals. With governments scrambling to meet public outcry over the lack of affordable housing, the public policy environment has become highly receptive, with grant programs and tax credits meant to assist both affordable rental and previously unattainable carbon-reducing features, such as geothermal heating. 

There is one storm cloud in Canada, however: natural gas prices, which are now high enough to make the math work on the geo-exchange infrastructure planned for future Daniels/Choice rental projects. But if a future Conservative government slashes or eliminates Canada’s carbon-pricing system, all bets are off. “Right now, you have a payback that might be 10 to 15 years,” Molson says. Without carbon pricing to prime the pump of sustainable rental housing, “you could have a payback that’s well in excess of that, and maybe no longer under-writeable on a purely economic case.”

In that case, it’s hard to imagine that the much-touted financial benefits of “axing the tax” will trickle down to renters living in all those gas-heated buildings. Either way, sky-high rents and energy-inefficient apartments are a burden millennials and Gen Z simply should no longer tolerate.

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

The post The rental market has a carbon problem – here’s how to solve it appeared first on Corporate Knights.