There are different paths to achieving a net-zero economy, but getting there affordably won’t be possible with an “all of the above” approach. To keep the costs of the transition as low as possible, we need to be strategic. Setting aside false and inefficient solutions, here’s a snapshot of how our cleaner, greener future will look:

Electrified transport

EV prices reach parity and become less costly than gasoline vehicles in the 2030s, while the average range of a full battery exceeds 550 kilometres. Drivers reap a giant clean-energy dividend on fuel, saving billions on energy costs compared to the fossil fuel era.

Vehicle-to-grid technology

The batteries in tens of millions of interconnected EVs provide additional energy storage to ensure a reliable grid. By 2050, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology saves hundreds of billions in grid investments and puts money in vehicle owners’ pockets.

Utility-scale battery storage 

Quicker to build than gas plants, large battery farms are critical to the transition to a renewable-based electricity supply. Over the longer term, they are supplemented by V2G storage (see below), shaving billions off utility costs and consumer bills.

Green buildings

Existing buildings are retrofit with heat pumps, and new buildings are efficient, electric, EV-ready and climate resilient. Home energy bills go down and are more resilient to inflation.  

Long-distance transmission 

Sharing is caring – and also energy efficient. Rather than segregated electricity systems, jurisdictions have access to electricity-generating capacity in wider regions. Prairie sunshine powers the dinner-hour peak along the Atlantic, and winds in the East supply morning electricity in the West.

Heat pumps 

Three to five times more efficient than gas boilers, heat pumps drastically reduce the energy consumption of buildings and protect households from big spikes in fossil fuel prices. They replace many air conditioners, too, for even more savings. 

This article was published in the Knight Bites section of the summer 2025 issue of Corporate Knights magazine. Order your copy here.

The post Meet the low-cost, low-emission economy of the future appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The convergence of this moment and your leadership gives us a rare chance to break free from the status quo. We cannot let this golden opportunity to make Canada a beacon for the world slip through our fingers. 

Like a championship hockey team, Team Canada Inc. has all the right ingredients – talent, capital and resources – to win big on the global stage. 

As Canada’s head coach, we’re counting on you to channel the wisdom and boldness of our hockey legends, making the tough calls so we can finally deliver on Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s century-old promise that the 20th century would be the century of Canada. That can be true for the century we’re in now, if we avoid getting stuck in the past with outdated technology. 

Where do we play? Fossil fuels are fading, even as their lobbyists grow louder, while clean industries — renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, clean AI, electrification and modular construction – are rising with unstoppable momentum.

In electro-economics, the more you build, the cheaper it gets; in petro-economics, the more you extract, the higher the cost. Do we invest in the future or cling to the past? Like the Great One, we need to skate to where the puck is going. 

Who do we play with? Will we keep relying on a single, increasingly unreliable trading partner for three-quarters of our exports? Or will we reach for opportunity by diversifying with traditional allies and markets like China and India, where nearly 40% of global growth will occur by 2050? It’s time for some bold deal-making to set up more productive games with our rivals in the spirit of Alan Eagleson’s 1972 hockey Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. 

Who owns Team Canada Inc.? Do we settle for branch-plant status and domestic oligopolies, or do we become masters in our own house – with an inclusive wealth fund, stronger support for co-ops and employee ownership, and a strategy to scale Canadian champions? Denmark, with just six million people, is home to global leaders in cleantech, shipping, beer and pharma. We’re not too small or too poor – our AAA credit rating and $14 trillion in institutional capital say otherwise. Let’s play with our elbows up like the legendary Gordie Howe. 

How do we stop scoring on ourselves? Our slow-moving bureaucracy and risk aversion have stalled $89 billion in clean economy funds and cost us billions more in trade barriers, red tape, wildfires and fragmented energy systems. It’s time to move fast, break the right things and unite as one economy – not 13 – while ensuring that Indigenous communities have real equity in our future. We can’t afford to put Steve Smith (who scored the most infamous goal on his own net in the 1986 Smythe Division final) on the ice.  

How do we keep our skills sharp? Denmark invests 1.7% of GDP in active labour market policies – six times more than Canada – helping workers retool for the jobs of tomorrow. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development puts us near the bottom of advanced economies. Are we ready to invest in our people and win, just as Scotty Bowman always did with his teams? 

Let’s seize this chance and play to win – because the 21st century can still be Canada’s century, if we have the courage to skate hard to where the puck is going, pass boldly and shoot for the stars.

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

The post Publisher’s Note: Canada needs to play to win appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The appeal of the AOTA position to politicians is obvious: it allows them to pander to every constituency and avoid alienating potential supporters. It is not leadership, but as political expediency it is tried and true. 

The AOTA position can also be justified as a legitimate strategy in the early phases of understanding and confronting a challenge like climate change where the path forward is not yet clear. AOTA “keeps all options open” until the choices crystallize. 

But we are no longer just beginning to consider our options for effectively responding to climate change. We know that the response must give priority to electrifying the end uses of energy and building up a supply of renewable, emission-free electricity. And from Tinseltown to Tennessee, the devastating impacts of climate change have come to America, with the global cost of wildfires, floods and killer heat waves now more than $2 trillion and growing exponentially.

We are entering the endgame in our encounter with global warming. Time is short, capital is limited, and the penalties for bad moves at this stage in the game are severe.

Climate denial 2.0 

Climate denial comes in many forms, many of which are disingenuous and driven by self-interest, but some of which are genuinely held by people informed by and with respect for the science. 

Climate denial 1.0 refers to the outright denial that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing global warming or, in its more extreme form, that global warming is even happening. When scientific concern about human-caused global warming began to grow, it was based on our understanding of the greenhouse effect and what the climate models of the day predicted would be the deleterious impact of continued reliance on and growth in fossil fuel combustion.

The scientific skepticism melted away in the 1990s as the models improved, rising temperatures rocketed out of the background noise, and the consequences began to multiply. 

But then a new type of climate denial began to take hold; let’s call it climate denial 2.0. This more insidious type of denial does not reject the scientific fact of human-caused climate change, but it does reject the need for or the feasibility of an urgent response. And this in turn leads to the “madly off in all directions” response – more respectfully known as “all of the above” – that characterizes too much of the current policy and business response to the climate emergency. 

Not all winners 

In our Climate Dollars project, we have been quantifying the capital costs of the transition to zero emissions for Canada by 2050, and the results underscore how much more the transition will cost if we do not make smart choices. 

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Among the clear positive choices are heat pumps, electric vehicles, wind turbines, vehicle-to-grid storage infrastructure and continental grid interconnectivity. Working together, these technologies can cut a path to zero emissions that demands about $1.5 trillion in capital investment over the next 25 years. At an average of $60 billion per year, this is well within the capability of Canadian capital spending and tracks below our own and others’ previous estimates of the cost of the transition. The returns are positive, the economic benefits are clear, and Canada would secure its position in the 21st-century global economy. 

This is not an AOTA approach. Several popular climate solutions fail to pass muster when viewed through the twin lenses of urgency and affordability. 

Deep residential retrofits. Viewed strictly as climate mitigation, deep residential retrofits cost more than the capacity investments they avoid. Unless and until the retrofit industry can come up with technological and business practices that cut the cost of deep retrofits by 50% or more, our strategy for new and existing buildings must focus on affordability, electrification and resilience to extreme weather. 

Public transit megaprojects. Public transit is an essential component of a highly functional modern urban community, but it is a slow, expensive and relatively ineffective approach to driving down emissions; it didn’t make the cut in our capital budget for responding to the climate emergency

Nuclear power generation. New nuclear capacity drives up the overall cost of decarbonization, even after allowing for the lower investment in renewables and transmission infrastructure it facilitates, so it did not make the cut either. 

When we include these options, the capital requirements increase to more than $2.3 trillion. And it goes without saying that we should be past the point where investments in the production and use of fossil fuels should still be happening. Such investments are antithetical to an emergency response to climate change. They lock in fossil fuel dependence and draw capital away from urgently needed options that can make a positive difference. They literally add fuel to the fire and when favoured provide a strong indication that climate denial 2.0 is afoot.

It’s choosing time.

Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights.

The post Why ‘all of the above’ energy policies won’t work appeared first on Corporate Knights.

On that day, Steyer changed, too. The company he’d founded, Farallon Capital, had long invested in fossil fuels. But Steyer realized climate change was “happening much faster than most of us imagined,” he wrote of the experience. He started speaking out, lobbied politicians and established a family foundation to support alternative systems, such as organic agriculture. Tom and his wife, Kathryn, also endowed the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University, where young entrepreneurs are developing innovations such as hydrogen-fuel systems for heavy trucks, safer and more powerful lithium batteries, and fertilizers made of almond shells. 

In 2012, Steyer stepped down from Farallon. “I have a passion to push for what I believe is the right thing,” he told The Globe and Mail. Soon after, he founded NextGen America, a political action committee that mobilizes young people to vote. Steyer himself became the biggest donor in Democratic party history and helped convince Barack Obama to veto the northern section of the Keystone oil-sands pipeline. Disillusioned by politicians’ reluctance to act, he ran for president in 2020, promising to use executive power to enact a green new deal.

Steyer had little impact on the campaign and dropped out after focusing all his attention on delegates in South Carolina – who voted for Joe Biden. At that point, he might have vanished into the limbo that awaits most independent presidential candidates. But Steyer returned to his roots and founded Galvanize Climate Solutions, to use the power of finance to accelerate new climate technologies. The firm has raised more than US$1 billion. 

But Steyer still worries that Americans aren’t listening. Last year, he released a book, Cheaper, Faster, Better, that reframes this crisis as an opportunity. With renewable energy now cheaper than fossil fuels, he says, climate solutions aren’t just a last hope but our best bet. The journey to net-zero will give us cleaner air, more energy at a lower cost, better products for less money and improvements in just about every aspect of society, he writes. “It’s a fight we’re already starting to win.” 

The post How a billionaire fossil fuel investor became a climate crusader appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The pugilistic 80-year-old founder of Florida hedge fund Elliott Management has been described as a “financial terrorist” for his practice of buying sizeable stakes in public companies and then pressuring them to alter their strategies, sell assets or fire top leaders. He’s also been called a “vulture capitalist” because he’s made an art of scooping up defaulted debt from struggling countries and then demanding payment in full.

In the media, however, Singer is more genteel. On a recent podcast he described himself as an activist shareholder who simply works “to control or influence outcomes.”

As the United States is learning, however, control-seeking billionaires rarely serve the public interest. The Manhattan Institute – a hard-right lobbying group that attacks regulation, the green energy transition, public education, social services and DEI – held an awards dinner for Singer in May, noting that all its recent success in these areas “would not be possible without Paul Singer.” (Recent headline on the institute’s website: “ESG Is Coming for Your Candy Bars.”)

As a libertarian, Singer has long supported the Koch family’s notorious promotion of tax cuts and fossil fuels. He donates generously to Republican causes, including US$63 million in the 2024 election, and $5 million to Trump’s campaign specifically.

Besides “control,” note Singer’s use of the word “influence.” In 2008, he flew with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to a US$1,000-a-day fishing lodge in Alaska, according to reporting by ProPublica. In the following years, Alito ruled on about 10 cases that Elliott Management brought to the Supreme Court as part of its high-stakes collection campaigns. Alito never disclosed Singer’s gift, nor did he recuse himself – even in a dispute with Argentina that netted Elliott US$2.4 billion.

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Singer has used his strong-arm tactics to halt the energy transition at fossil fuel companies. When Elliott muscled in on Canadian oil-sands giant Suncor in 2022, he demanded five board seats and a management review. Suncor promptly sold off $730 million in wind and solar assets that had been the company’s big bet on the future. The pressure also led Suncor to hire a new CEO, veteran Exxon executive Rich Kruger, who believes Suncor’s future lies in bitumen – the world’s dirtiest oil.

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 ‘vulture capitalist’ working to prop up fossil fuels appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But the Cambridge, Ontario, resident is “constantly evaluating” all her family’s consumer choices, she says. They watch how they shop and invest, but it wasn’t until last year, while attending an online class with financial consultant and podcaster Tim Nash, that Graham started thinking about the environmental and social impacts of the money in her chequing account. “I have been interested in sustainable investing for over 10 years but had never really thought about the money that wasn’t invested,” she says.

Since banks and credit unions lend about 20 times more funds than they hold in deposits, where we choose to bank has ripple effects, like any other consumer choice. While big banks lend to fossil fuel companies and other “sin” industries, money lent by credit unions stays in communities, supporting neighbours and local businesses.

Credit unions are also greener than big banks, with smaller footprints and outsized sustainability initiatives. “Credit unions can utilize their influence to facilitate a just [green energy] transition by supporting their members and local businesses in reducing their emissions,” writes Helen Tooze, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, in a 2023 report. Several credit unions already do this by offering lower-interest-rate loans for energy-efficient home renovations. Other Canadian credit unions, such as Vancity, Coast Capital and southwestern Ontario’s Libro Credit Union, have achieved B Corp certification – a designation that for-profit companies can attain if they meet high social and environmental standards, which no major Canadian consumer bank has attained.

The last time North American credit unions saw a major influx of new customers was on November 5, 2011, when about 40,000 people in the United States reportedly fled their banks to protest a monthly debit card fee at Bank of America. But no mass movement to credit unions exists today, with growth in Canada stagnating despite committing to positive environmental, social and governance practices. The big banks dominate about 90% of financial services in Canada.

It’s usually not that they’re eager to run to a credit union. It’s usually that they are eager to run away from their bank.

—Tim Nash, founder, Good Investing

For the past decade, observers and the industry itself have warned that the main body of credit union members is aging, and the next generation isn’t filling their place at the same rate. When younger people make the switch, it’s because big banks have financial links that don’t reflect their values, such as to fossil fuels, weapons manufacturing and the war in Gaza. “It’s usually not that they’re eager to run to a credit union,” Nash says. “It’s usually that they are eager to run away from their bank.”

A BDO Canada survey of 35 executives and other managers at Canadian credit unions reported expanding their member base as the second top challenge after “optimizing customer experience.”

Some industry publications suggest that the way to attract younger members is with flashy tech and modernization, but others say an analog, feelings-focused message could have a bigger effect. As a group of McKinsey financial services consultants put it in 2024, the trick might be highlighting the “credit unions’ history of commitment to social impact” and tying this to values consumers are trying to live by.

Making the connection

The first North American credit union opened in 1900 and was pioneered by Alphonse Desjardins, a Quebec journalist and stenographer. He wanted to offer working-class families affordable access to credit, combatting rapacious interest rates flogged by other lenders.

Today there are about 400 credit unions in Canada, ranging from large, full-service organizations with flashy marketing and dozens of branches to single outlets with a handful of employees. But in a noisy market full of traditional banks and emerging fintech companies like Wealthsimple, there’s more competition than ever.

“Credit unions do talk about their ESG bona fides,” says Chris Atchison of Shockwave Strategic Communications, a firm that frequently works on accounting and finance ad campaigns. “But they just don’t have the same marketing machines behind them that the big banks do.” The mission for shareholder-owned banks is to earn profit, he points out, so the marketing push is more aggressive than at credit unions, where cooperative-based sustainable growth is the priority. 

Read more from our collective economy series

Cooperative housing is making a comeback

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

The return of the collective economy

What Canada can learn from co-op power in the rural United States 

Another challenge is inertia. Most Canadians with traditional banks say they are satisfied with their banks, but Nilesh Kavia of Saskatoon-headquartered Affinity Credit Union says credit union members have higher satisfaction rates. A recent Canadian Credit Union Association survey found that 84% of credit union members rate their financial well-being as good or very good, compared to 78% of non-members. 

Kavia says that family is a key factor influencing the youth market: young people frequently stick with the bank their parents choose for them. And new immigrants, who tend to skew younger, have a “familiarity gap” with the concept of a credit union, he says.

Maria Phillips, marketing director at London, Ontario–headquartered Libro Credit Union, says the bank knows that younger generations want to see themselves reflected in the brands they trust. “That’s why we’ve shifted to featuring real Libro members in our marketing – showcasing the individuals and communities we serve,” she says. 

Success through social purpose

“Credit unions tend to attract an older crowd and – similar to churches – have struggled to redefine their value proposition to a younger generation as our membership ages,” says Sam Herscovitch of Coast Capital, a British Columbia credit union with 52 branches. Coast Capital launched a plan in 2020 to refresh the credit union, which included an additional focus on attracting new millennial and Gen Z members. To achieve this, the financial cooperative shifted to what it calls a “social purpose” business model, which focuses on helping members grow their incomes and financial opportunities. This includes financial education tailored to young clients and offering discounted or free services for students and members under 25. It also includes investing in community employment programs for female newcomers and young people with disabilities. Herscovitch says the efforts are paying off. “In 2024, 52% of new members were under the age of 35.”

For her part, Julie Graham closed her accounts at two other banks and opened a new one at a nearby regional credit union branch. She considers it low-hanging fruit compared to other consumer decisions she tried to align with her family’s values. “It seemed to be a very easy decision to make.” Next up? Setting up accounts for her husband and eventually her daughter, and enjoying the peace of mind that she’s putting her money where her values are.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist specializing in business and investigative reporting, as well as long-form features.

The post How credit unions are pushing a just energy transition appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Based in Marana outside Tucson, Trico received US$83.5 million in forgivable loans through Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to expand its number of solar array systems and battery storage capabilities. The co-op has been on a growth spurt and now serves approximately 48,000 members in and around the Tucson area, extending southward for almost 160 kilometres toward the Mexico border. In this part of the state, small towns dot the landscape, several of which depend on a single power line for their energy supply.

“Trico started from humble beginnings,” says Eric Hawkins, COO of the cooperative, which was founded by six ranching families in 1945 who pooled their meager resources to buy a generator and install transmission lines. “As a distribution co-op, we purchased whatever energy was available. But as we grew, we gradually started adding renewables.”

Over the past 12 years, the energy mix increased from 3% to 4% renewables to nearly 40% today. Upon project completion, that percentage will leap to 50%.

Trico intends to use the government financing to increase grid resilience and reliability for its members and has initiated plans to install 43 MW of battery storage capacity. This is especially important given the energy precarity of some of the areas that Trico services. 

While the Trump administration’s determination to slash government funding, including to renewable-energy initiatives, has created widespread uncertainty across the United States, the corporate sector has been injecting serious money into clean energy co-ops that are delivering electricity to places where poverty levels are high and renewable energy scarce. Google, Intuit, Microsoft, Patagonia, Rivian and REI have all negotiated deals with rural energy co-ops that either supply clean power or support energy-efficiency measures. Microsoft is working with Clearloop, a Nashville, Tennessee, company bringing solar power to underserved communities. Google is supporting rural electric cooperatives in North and South Carolina with financing for energy-efficiency upgrades and other improvements. In return, corporations can purchase “environmental attribute certificates” – the equivalent of carbon credits – and count those toward their emission-reduction goals. 

It is a far cry from the typical Canadian clean energy cooperative, which is almost exclusively urban, receives little government support and must adhere to a regulatory regime built for a centralized energy distribution system that buys energy from large producers. (Alberta is the exception. There the energy system is not centralized; instead, it operates on an open, competitive market.)

Read more from our collective economy series

Cooperative housing is making a comeback

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

The return of the collective economy

“Even Canada’s clean energy grants don’t recognize energy co-ops,” says Martin Boucher, research chair in sustainability at NorQuest College in Edmonton. “Those grants support specific programs or non-profits, but not a for-profit co-op.”

“You won’t find an energy co-op in rural areas,” he adds. “Here, co-ops are urban, and the investors tend to be middle class.”

Boucher and others believe that failing to recognize clean energy co-ops as another tool to help mitigate harmful emissions from fossil fuels while continuing to meet electricity demand – which is predicted to double or even triple by 2050 – is a missed opportunity. 

One key benefit is that energy cooperatives can be deployed in places that are difficult to access, offering emission-free energy at affordable rates. Because generation and transmission is local, the power supply is highly resilient: when there is an outage on the main power grid, small-scale energy systems like the ones created by co-ops can keep working.

“Our biggest challenge,” observes Marion Siekierski, general manager of the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative (OREC), “is that people don’t understand what a renewable-energy co-op can do. It’s just not a concept that’s present here.”

Green power in the rural U.S.

A cooperative is a corporation owned by members who use the corporation’s products or services. Community energy cooperatives typically generate or invest in renewable energy. 

Cooperatives sell shares to people in the community to secure financing for the projects they wish to build or invest in. The revenue generated from selling that energy is used to pay back the investors and earn a return over time.

The economics of an energy co-op can be daunting in certain parts of the world. In Canada, co-ops must source financing from reluctant lenders who see collectives as a risky investment. In a 2021 census released by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, participants mentioned high transmission and distribution costs, and onerous grid-connection costs, as also being significant barriers. 

But in the United States, several legislative tools have rejuvenated clean energy cooperatives; so far, those tools are still active. Hawkins says that some of the biggest energy co-ops, including Trico, are lobbying the White House to retain the programs and that he is feeling “generally optimistic” that funding will remain in place given rising demand.

You won’t find an energy co-op in rural areas [in Canada]. Here, co-ops are urban, and the investors tend to
be middle class.

– Martin Boucher, research chair in sustainability, NorQuest College

The Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) Program, created through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration, is a partially forgivable loan program for rural electric cooperatives, non-profits and other entities to install solar and battery storage projects in rural communities. Up to 60% of the loan is forgivable, depending on where the clean energy project is located. Awash with financing from PACE, other government programs and corporate interest, clean energy cooperatives have announced more than 5.3 gigawatts of renewable capacity additions through 2027. Some 900 rural electric co-ops provide power to more than 40 million homes and businesses.

On the other side of the Atlantic, 10,000 community energy associations operate in northwestern Europe, mostly in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain. The European Commission estimates that, by 2050, half of Europe’s population could be producing energy through rooftop solar on homes and other methods, with 37% of that energy coming from energy cooperatives.

Untapped superpower 

In Canada, there were just 97 renewable-energy co-operatives in 2021, with roughly half of those active. 

Simply put, the energy sector’s governing structures and regulatory regimes are not designed to accommodate the small scale and business model of a co-op. 

Yet, renewable-energy cooperatives can offer community benefits in the form of stable, low-cost power, as well as contribute to the energy transition. In April of this year alone, OREC’s combined clean energy projects posted 109.8 tonnes of avoided greenhouse gases. Since 2013, OREC projects have avoided 7,383 tonnes of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the emissions generated by 79,635 road trips between Ottawa and Toronto. In the United States, 16 rural electric cooperatives that receive government funding will avoid more than 43 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually, equivalent to the emissions from 10 million gas-powered cars each year.

Canada’s new prime minister has pledged that the country will become an energy superpower under his watch in both conventional and renewable power. While cooperatives may not have the swagger of superpower status, the energy sector may have underestimated their potential. Indeed, clean energy collectives could make a significant contribution to meeting demand in communities that can least afford to invest in renewables while continuing down the path to a net-zero 2050.

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

The post What Canada can learn from co-op power in the rural United States appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“A number of us were working in food-security and food-systems advocacy and seeing the interconnection between food insecurity and the housing crisis,” she recounts. “We [took] those skills that we had in grassroots community organizing and said, ‘Let’s become housing developers.’” None of them, Harris admits, had a clue how to do it. 

Five years later, Propolis has secured a piece of land, raised $1.1 million through a community bond and attracted private backers. They’re currently applying for a low-interest loan from Canada’s $1.5-billion fund to increase co-op housing nationwide, launched in 2022. 

The group will also apply for a municipal building permit this summer, allowing them to construct a six-storey apartment building with 53 units, some community and retail space at street level, a rooftop garden and a car share program. “We’re working really hard for there to be a consistent level of affordability across all of the units,” says Harris, who is Propolis’s executive director, “understanding that the real benefit of cooperative housing is that it becomes permanently affordable.”

At a time when even basic housing has become unattainable for many in advanced economies, the housing co-op movement – which was born in England in 1844 and reached peak popularity in the 1960s and 1970s before a multi-decade decline – is making a comeback, at least in Canada. In February 2025, an Abacus poll of 6,000 Canadians found that three in five respondents “believe there isn’t enough non-profit and co-op housing in their communities, and 61% say increasing availability should be a top priority.” 

“This is a high moment,” says Tom Clement, the executive director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto (CHFT). “I’m very optimistic.” Julie LaPalme, secretary-general of Ottawa-based Cooperative Housing International, agrees. “Affordability is affecting all ages, [but] it’s different with younger generations in that they’re pretty much priced out of the purchasing market,” she says. “The resurgence [of cooperative housing] is driven by necessity.”

Read more from our collective economy series

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

The return of the collective economy

The confidence barometer, however, varies by geography. About half of the 1.2 million co-op apartments in the United States are located in New York City. These are infamous for their exclusivity and low rents, but there’s not much growth elsewhere. Likewise in the United Kingdom, the co-op housing sector is “stagnant,” says Rebecca Harvey, executive editor at Co-operative News, a Manchester, U.K.–based trade publication. But, she adds, the movement has made rapid gains in Europe and Australia and will get a plug at the United Nations’ Second World Summit for Social Development, in Doha in November. “There’s going to be a big co-op delegation heading there to present the cooperative case for a lot of the issues that exacerbate housing issues around the world.” (A March 2025 report by Housing Europe estimates that there are about 7.9 million co-op dwellings in the European Union as well as non-EU countries like Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.)

Cooperative housing, Harvey explains, isn’t just about affordability. The sector is defined by seven guiding principles, which delineate the democratic ways in which cooperative housing societies are managed. Residents own them jointly, on a not-for-profit basis. They are expected to take part in the work of running their dwellings but also to participate in the communal life of communities where tenants will share everything from amenity spaces to bikes and tools. 

Some sectors of the movement are seeing especially robust growth, such as student housing co-ops, land trusts and intergenerational projects. “Loneliness of elderly or older people is being mitigated by having a mixed-use cooperative housing where older people and younger people are in the same space,” Harvey says. “Actually, that works really, really well.”

The real benefit of cooperative housing is that it becomes permanently affordable.

— Lindsay Harris, executive director, Propolis Housing Cooperative

LaPalme points to Zurich, where the municipality adds co-ops on a yearly basis, with a goal of reaching a third of all housing in the city. One of the most notable is Mehr als Wohnen, which means “more than living.” Built on a former industrial site owned by the city and leased to the cooperative for a century, Mehr als Wohnen is a cluster of 13 six- to seven-storey blocks constructed between 2008 and 2015, with more than 370 apartments for some 1,300 residents, as well as amenities such as daycares, cafés and co-working spaces. It offers leases 20% below average market rates in Zurich. The project attracted serious architectural talent and was backed by 35 Swiss co-ops, which collectively contributed the professional and financial heft to bring such a large venture to fruition. 

Despite the long decline of public support for co-op housing in Canadian cities, the Toronto federation, Clement says, continued to create or refurbish some co-ops over the past 25 years – a total of 548 units in six projects between 2000 and 2022, compared to 2,500 to 3,000 in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Yet the recent public policy pivot has resulted in some landmark new ventures. Case in point: a newly approved three-tower joint venture between CHFT, Civic Developments and Windmill Developments to construct 612 co-op apartments and 306 condos in three towers on a city-owned property next to a major transit hub. It’s the largest co-op to be built in Canada in three decades. 

There will likely be more at this scale, given the new federal funding and municipal contributions of land. Vancouver City Council, for example, voted last fall to fast-track social and cooperative housing projects. Not all communities, however, have welcomed these ventures. In March, the eastern Ontario city of Kingston blocked a $127-million/248-unit co-op proposal.

In Kamloops, Propolis is now vetting architects and contractors and grappling with the task of translating lofty design principles – resilience and energy efficiency, for instance – into bricks and mortar. 

“It requires so many people pulling together to make it happen,” Harris says, echoing the essence of the co-op philosophy. 

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

The post Cooperative housing is making a comeback appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The resentment fuelling this campaign, for which nobody took responsibility, was widely shared. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, as post-pandemic food price inflation peaked, the three grocery conglomerates that control the majority of the food retail market in Canada – Loblaw, Empire (owner of Sobeys) and Metro – were turning record profits, as their executives pocketed bonuses in the millions. All that in the wake of revelations that they had been colluding to fix the price of bread over a 14-year period. 

Today, as the ongoing trade war with the United States drives food prices up even further, many Canadians approach the grocery store with some combination of anxiety, dread and rage. But a small subset feels quite differently. 

“Spending money on food feels like an investment to me,” says Jon Steinman, a resident of Nelson, B.C., and author of the 2019 book Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants. 

Steinman is an enthusiastic participant in the cooperative food economy, which accounts for some 4% of Canada’s total grocery market, according to the Retail Council of Canada. And he believes that now, as Canadians express their patriotism in the grocery aisles, seeing their consumer habits as political choices, the food co-op’s moment may have truly come. “Many Canadians talk about the need for greater food sovereignty or security,” Steinman says, “without realizing that they could actually have ownership of the system.” 

Born and raised in Toronto, Steinman was oblivious to the co-op concept – which was not even mentioned in the bachelor of commerce degree he did at the University of Guelph – until he moved to British Columbia in the early 2000s to work in the wine industry. On a stop in Nelson, a former mining town in the Selkirk Mountains, he found himself listening with interest to the local radio station. When he learned that it was run as a co-op, he began volunteering. Soon he was hosting the morning news show. Then he discovered that his favourite grocery store in town was also member-owned; he paid his $50 and joined the Kootenay Co-op. Before long, Steinman had dropped his wine plans and committed himself to Nelson’s vibrant cooperative economy.

Read more from our collective economy series

What appealed to Steinman about the Kootenay Co-op is the most distinctive feature of co-ops generally: their ability to reflect the needs and priorities of their customers, who are also their owners. If affordability is an issue, a co-op may vote – and many do – to apply all profits above a certain threshold to lowering prices. If business is booming and demand growing, it may opt to expand. If national sovereignty is under threat, it may elect to reconsider its suppliers. 

So why have food co-ops not made bigger inroads into the Canadian food economy? Many living in central Canada barely have access to them (Toronto, for instance, has only two), while Western Canadians may take them for granted, forgetting that the iconic red Co-op brand in fact belongs to Federated Co-operatives Limited, the largest non-financial co-op in Canada, which operates gas stations, car washes and liquor, food and convenience stores. And misconceptions about co-ops abound. For many, the term suggests added expense and effort, or a sense that they are buying into something ideological, less profit-driven and therefore inefficient. 

But consider the Swiss example. In the business-friendly banking capital of the world, 80% of the grocery market is controlled by two co-ops: Coop and Migros, respectively the 34th and 41st largest retailers in the world, according to Deloitte’s most recent ranking. Both have more than two million members – membership is free to all Swiss citizens – and play a significant and progressive role in Swiss life. It was thanks in large part to Migros that Swiss women earned the right to vote federally in 1971 – the co-op was the campaign’s largest corporate backer, advertising its support on its shopping bags – and it has, since 1957, contributed 1% of its turnover to cultural and social projects. Both Migros and Coop have been pioneers in launching organic product lines and discontinuing the use of plastic bags. 

Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian, but we’ve been having that conversation for eons.

— Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada

As in Switzerland, the majority of Canada’s food co-ops grew out of agricultural co-ops: established by dairy producers in the late 19th century and Western grain farmers in the early 20th century. Then there was the more recent wave, inspired by the “Small is beautiful” economic and natural food movements of the 1970s, to which the Kootenay Co-op belongs. Frustrated by the high prices and limited selection of corporate chains, a small group of Nelson locals formed a buyers’ club, purchasing bulk staples with an emphasis on local and unprocessed foods. Today, the Kootenay Co-op, which operates out of a building on Nelson’s main drag, has more than 16,000 members and does roughly $28 million in sales annually, making it Canada’s largest independent natural foods co-op. 

Beyond providing a grocery supply aligned with its membership’s values – fair labour practices, organic, Canadian – Steinman says the co-op has served as an incubator for the local food system. The soft winter wheat used in the pumpkin butter tarts he just baked, he tells me, came from the nearby Creston Valley; the grain farmers in that region had been growing for export and the mass market until the co-op approached them and offered a local customer base. Likewise, the co-op provides grants and donations to local producers and supports local cultural initiatives; overall, Steinman says, it strengthens the local economy in a way that outlives electoral cycles. 

In a time of exceptional geopolitical and economic volatility, the timing does seem ripe. “Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian,” says Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs for Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, “but we’ve been having that conversation for eons. The biggest hurdle to co-ops is the perception that they’re some kind of marginal alternative. They’re not. They’re a very well-established practice in this country. They happen whenever people come together around a common need.”

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Rather than throw in the towel, they pooled their resources, bought the leftover workout machines, rented a cheaper building on the edge of town, and opened the Kincardine Ladies Fitness Co-operative. It’s still going strong today.

Throughout history, co-ops have filled such voids: picking up where governments or companies or services have left off. But there’s a growing sense that, at this moment, co-ops could and should be playing a much more active role in the global economy. The United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the potential of cooperatives to help deliver on its largely unfulfilled Sustainable Development Goals as the clock ticks down to 2030. 

Some 12% of humanity today belongs to a co-op and the numbers are growing, according to the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), the Brussels-based body established in 1895 to represent cooperatives the world over. In an era of rising wealth disparity, autocracy and geopolitical instability, the values at the root of the cooperative model – democratic, community-based, fundamentally decent – would seem to be in short supply and high demand.

Democratizing prosperity

The cooperative movement traces its roots to the northern English town of Rochdale where, in 1844, a group of weavers who had been marginalized by the industrial revolution banded together to establish a shop that sold basic foodstuffs at affordable prices. Customers were also part owners; they had a say in the shop’s management and shared in the profits that eventually flowed. 

At roughly the same time, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, the mayor of a small town in the German Rheinland, set up what would become the world’s first credit union – a financial cooperative – to offer indebted farmers reasonable loans. The rejection of self-interested, far-away market forces, investment in community and insistence on democratic decision-making remain at the core of the cooperative identity. 

Today, co-ops are often hidden in plain sight; the Associated Press, Best Western Hotels and Ocean Spray are all cooperative fixtures in their respective industries. And contrary to common conception, they often operate for profit: 42% of Canadian co-ops fall into this category. The model has leant stability to many agricultural sectors, from French wine to Italian parmesan to Canadian dairy, and has long protected the interests of certain worker groups, from seafood producers in Alaska to construction workers in Kerala, India. But it is the role cooperatives are playing in innovating and expanding vital sectors like affordable housing and renewable energy that has sparked renewed interest. 

Cooperatives emerged during the golden age of traditional capitalism. What we’re seeing now feels like the end stage of capitalism. And I think co-ops may be the next big story.

— Jeroen Douglas, director general, International Cooperative Alliance 

Last year, Keir Starmer’s Labour government in Britain announced plans to double the size of the country’s cooperative economy, in large part to stimulate growth in community-owned renewable-energy projects and to help the country reach its goal of a clean power grid by 2030. Decentralized technologies like wind and solar photovoltaic power are ideal vehicles for community ownership, allowing citizens to literally buy in to clean energy production. In 2000, when Denmark launched what was, at the time, the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, the government invited Danish citizens to participate; the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative raised half of the project’s construction costs and continues to own half of the project. Wind energy in Denmark – now the source of most of the country’s electricity – has been built on the cooperative model; since 2009, Danish law has mandated that 20% of all new projects be community-owned. 

Read more about the collective economy

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

Cooperative housing is making a comeback

What Canada can learn from co-op power in the rural United States

How credit unions are pushing a just energy transition

“The beauty of renewable energy is that you can make your own,” says Chris Caners, general manager of SolarShare, which owns and operates more than 50 solar installations across Ontario. “It’s the democratization of energy, and it goes hand in hand with the democratization of business.” Since its founding in 2010, SolarShare has grown to more than 2,000 members, who have collectively invested some $80 million through solar bonds; by installed capacity, it is now Canada’s largest renewable-energy co-op. 

Co-ops will also be part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis. Across major Canadian cities, rents in cooperative housing are on average 33% lower than private-sector market units. The Canadian government recently announced a $1.5-billion Cooperative Housing Development Program, which is providing loans and contributions to new and existing housing co-ops (see “Housing” story, page 33). 

A new era for the co-op economy

Despite such advances, cooperative advocates lament an ongoing lack of support for the model. Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs for Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, says this is a matter of political will. He cites Quebec, home of Canada’s largest cooperative financial services group, Desjardins, as one of the world’s most favourable jurisdictions for co-ops, where financing and insurance are readily available and cooperative associations receive consistent government support.

“In the 1970s, the provincial government really wanted to empower communities and the social economy generally,” Brunette says on the phone from Gatineau. It is no coincidence that 45% of Canada’s co-ops are located in Quebec – nor that several of the world’s most established cooperative cultures are to be found in similarly distinct societies, like Mondragon in the Basque Country of Spain and Italy’s Emilia-Romagna.

Many consider the untapped potential of the cooperative as a function of its image problem. “The Eastern Bloc regimes really soiled the concept of collective enterprise,” Brunette says, referring to a sense that co-ops are inefficient, slow-moving and ideologically encumbered. “When you say ‘co-op,’ many Canadians think of the three Hs: hay, housing and health food.” The attitude is not limited to Canada. At a recent conference in Britain, cooperative business adviser Alex Bird said he’s constantly fighting the perception that “co-ops are for people with stripy jumpers and sandals, not for normal people.”

Many consider the untapped potential of the cooperative as a function of its image problem. But those who harbour such attitudes may be left in the dust.

But those who harbour such attitudes may be left in the dust. In 2022, the United Arab Emirates passed a law designed to promote growth of the cooperative economy from 1% to 5% of its national non-oil gross domestic product, encouraging its expansion into non-traditional sectors including healthcare, education and the digital economy. Authority over cooperative regulation passed from the ministry of social affairs to the ministry of the economy in a bid to stimulate a more commercial approach: among other provisions, the law allows cooperatives to list and trade their shares on the country’s financial markets. Since its passing, the country’s cooperative sector has seen 8% growth. 

Meanwhile on the global stage, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) has convened a group of executives representing the world’s 50 largest cooperatives – the CM50 – which will attend the UN World Summit for Social Development this November in Doha. “We will present ourselves as the obvious partner to the UN,” ICA director general Jeroen Douglas says, noting that only 17% of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals have been met.

“Cooperatives emerged during the golden age of traditional capitalism,” Douglas says on the phone from his garden cottage in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. “What we’re seeing now feels like the end stage of capitalism. And I think co-ops may be the next big story.” 

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post The return of the collective economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.