The Laura Maersk says a lot about her country of origin. Denmark, the Nordic nation of some six million people, is a leader in clean technology, emission reductions and the energy transition. It is home to an extraordinary number of sector-leading companies whose sustainability performance soars above global standards. And as much of Europe and the world walk back or water down their climate ambitions, Denmark just keeps steaming ahead, a shining example of how sustainability and economic competitiveness can go hand in hand.

The most recent edition of the Climate Change Performance Index, which assesses countries’ efforts to meet Paris Agreement goals, gives Denmark the top ranking of all jurisdictions it surveys: 63 countries plus the European Union. The index looks at greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, renewable energy and climate policy. Denmark’s climate minister, Lars Aagaard, hammered this home when he announced, at COP30 in Brazil last November, that his country was setting itself one of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world: an 82% reduction from 1990 levels by 2035, blowing past the EU’s broad goal of something between 66.3% and 72.5% by that same year. Canada, by comparison, has pledged to reduce emissions by 45% and 50% of 2005 levels by 2035. These aren’t just grand aspirations from Denmark: it is currently on track to meet its 2030 emissions goal and seems within reach of climate neutrality by 2045, five years before the EU.

So how does Denmark do it? What combination of factors has enabled the country to reduce emissions, excel in clean technology, cultivate broad public support for ambitious climate and sustainability policy while, at the same time, maintaining the fourth-highest gross domestic product per capita in Europe? “There’s a saying in Danish: ‘If two Danes meet, they shake hands. If three Danes meet, they form an association,’” says Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, a professor of political science at Aarhus University and an expert in social capital and climate policy. Svendsen believes that Denmark’s ability to problem-solve quickly and to rally around the collective good is rooted in something quite intangible.

Social trust – faith in the words and deeds of other people – runs exceptionally high in Denmark: when surveyed, 75% of Danes claim to trust others, well above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average. Svendsen traces the attribute back to the seafaring Vikings of the early medieval period, who plied the world’s oceans in search of trading opportunities. Largely illiterate, they cemented deals with handshakes: an informal way of doing things that rewarded honesty and “created a norm for good behaviour,” as Svendsen puts it. He sees that same pragmatism and bedrock of social trust as the basis of Denmark’s energy transition, citing as an example the astonishing transformation of the island of Samsø. Facing a rising tide of out-migration and unemployment, the 4,000 residents of this small island off the Jutland peninsula decided, in 1997, to go all in on renewable energy. Through the installation of 11 onshore and 10 offshore wind turbines, four biomass-fuelled district-heating plants and solar panels, a wholescale reduction in energy consumption, and conversion to electric vehicles, the island was able to run entirely off renewables by 2007: a first in the world.

Key to the success of this project, and Denmark’s energy transition more broadly, has been the prioritization of local ownership and direct economic participation. On Samsø, the rule was if you could see a windmill from your home, you had the right to invest in it. Turbines, once viewed as visual blights, were suddenly retirement plans. This shift in mindset has been key to the Danish energy transition. In 1996, when Copenhagen’s municipal energy utility launched what was, at the time, the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, it invited locals to participate. The 8,650 members of the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative raised half the project’s construction costs and continue to own half the project. It’s a prime example of the Danish public–private partnership, aligning government policy with private capital and community ownership. Wind energy in Denmark, which now accounts for 60% of the country’s electricity – the highest per capita generation in the world – has been built on the model; since 2009, Danish law has mandated that 20% of all new projects be community-owned.

There’s a saying in Danish: ‘If two Danes meet, they shake hands. If three Danes meet, they form an association.

— Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, a professor of political science at Aarhus University

Local ownership means that the benefits of renewables are directly felt, and this has engendered a sense of civic pride in Danes, who view the energy transition less as a mandated concession to planetary limits than an exciting opportunity. Copenhagen’s new power plant, which converts municipal waste to both heat and electricity, takes pride of place on the city’s waterfront. Designed by the Danish architectural Bjarke Ingels Group, the eye-catching building, which opened in 2017, features a ski hill on its sloping roof and a climbing wall on its aluminum facade: a model of what Ingels calls “hedonistic sustainability.”

Sustainability has become Denmark’s brand. Since 2019, its foreign ministry has explicitly put green diplomacy at the centre of its foreign, trade and development policy. As current holder of the Council of the European Union presidency, Denmark has been framing the energy transition – and dissociation from Russian oil – as a security imperative. It also continues to nudge international organizations toward greater climate ambition.

Which brings us back to the Laura Maersk, the methanol-fuelled container ship. As the sixth-largest shipping nation in the world, Denmark has been pushing the International Maritime Organization to adopt regulations that will make global shipping, which currently accounts for some 2% to 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, net-zero by 2050. Laura’s launch reflected Denmark’s determination to meet this goal. It also highlights a feature of Danish corporate culture that has made the country’s private sector more committed to sustainability than most.

Like several of Denmark’s most successful companies, Maersk is owned by a foundation. According to Steen Thomsen, professor of corporate governance at the Copenhagen Business School, 1,400 such enterprise foundations are registered in Denmark, among them roughly 20 multinationals, including Maersk (officially A.P. Møller-Maersk), brewer Carlsberg, pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk and water pump manufacturer Grundfos. In an inverse of the North American model – where companies set up foundations to run arm’s-length philanthropic projects in their names – Danish enterprise foundations run their companies, by holding a majority of their shares, voting rights or both. (Enterprise foundations exist outside of Denmark as well – Ikea in Sweden, Bosch in Germany, Rolex in Switzerland, Tata in India to name a few – but Denmark is home to the highest concentration.)

As Thomsen explains, enterprise foundations are, by their very nature, inclined to invest more in research, be better employers and perform more responsibly on environmental and social fronts than their publicly owned peers. “The foundation has a dual purpose: to be a good long-term owner and to practise some form of philanthropy,” Thomsen says. “It can’t be schizophrenic. It can’t very well exploit its labour force, then turn around and donate to poverty reduction.”

The prevalence of enterprise foundations in Denmark has shaped its economy in fundamental ways. For one, it has meant that the country’s 1% has been less tempted to participate in extravagant personal (and carbon-intensive) consumption – private jets, fancy cars, holiday homes and the like – and more likely to invest in a family enterprise or foundation that will outlive them. (Thomsen says the enterprise foundation model is, in large part, a function of Denmark’s historically high wealth taxes.) It has also meant that Danish companies have been more committed to long-term, collective gain than most – from Carlsberg founder J.C. Jacobsen’s sharing of the discovery of yeast purification with brewers across Europe in 1883, through Maersk’s more recent investment in the research and development of technologies to accelerate shipping decarbonization.

The Danish model may be difficult to reproduce elsewhere, but it does serve as inspiration, as evidence of what can be made possible. When the Laura Maersk first launched, there was some grumbling about the future of decarbonized shipping, given the limited supply of green methanol. Last May, a joint Danish–Japanese consortium cut the ribbon on the world’s first commercial-scale green methanol plant in southern Denmark. Among the customers for its methanol, which is produced with renewable energy and carbon dioxide captured from waste incineration and biogas plants, as opposed to fossil fuels, are Novo Nordisk for its insulin injection pens and Lego for its plastic blocks. Laura was also at the plant’s opening, waiting to tank up.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.  

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California-based shareholder advocates As You Sow and Corporate Knights today released the new cohort of the Carbon Clean200, a global list of 200 publicly traded companies leading the sustainable clean energy economy.

From China to France, the United Kingdom to the United States, this crop of industry-leading companies generated $2.5 trillion in revenue from services and products that reduce demand for fossil fuels and water while offering investors more than double the returns of the fossil-fuel-heavy MSCI ACWI Energy Index. They also beat the global benchmark MSCI ACWI by 30% from July 1, 2016, to January 29, 2025.

Clean200 data show 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 all other revenues over the past five years.

This trend holds across sectors and regions and puts sustainable companies on a path to dominate the global economy by the end of the next decade, despite political attacks. (All figures in PPP, purchasing power parity, which is based on the rate at which the currency of one country is converted into that of another country to buy the same amount of goods and services in each country.)

Key findings include:

• The top 10 companies on the list by revenue include Apple, Contemporary Amperex Technology, Microsoft, Tesla, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Volkswagen.
• Thirty-five countries are represented in the Clean200, including the United States (41), China (21), Japan (18), Germany (14), and France and Canada (11 each).
• Clean200 companies earned more than $2.5 trillion in sustainable revenue in 2023 (the most recent year for which full-year results are available).
• Clean200 companies generated a total return of 190.9% on a sustainable-revenue-weighted basis, outperforming the MSCI ACWI index (162.0%) and the MSCI ACWI/Energy Index of fossil fuel companies (76.7%) on Total Return Gross – USD Basis from the Clean200 inception of July 1, 2016, to January 29, 2025.
• $10,000 invested in the Clean200 on July 1, 2016, would have grown to $29,090 by January 29, 2025, versus $17,670 for the MSCI ACWI/Energy benchmark for fossil fuel.
• The industrial sector accounts for 52 companies on the list, followed by information technology (32), and consumer discretionary and materials (29 each). IT companies had the highest total sustainable revenue, a cumulative total of more than US$687 billion.

The 10 companies that contributed the most to the Clean200’s performance over the past year were from China (3), the United States (2), France (2), Taiwan (1), Germany (1) and the United Kingdom (1). They include sustainably certified tech hardware, electric vehicles and electric rail equipment.

“In 2016, we created the Clean200 in response to investors saying, ‘If we divest fossil fuels, there is nothing to invest in,’” says Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow and co-author of the Carbon Clean 200 report that accompanies the ranking. “The Clean200 has consistently demonstrated that the ‘clean energy’ future of eight years ago is now the clean energy present. This year, the scale and global diversity of leading companies continue to expand and redefine the term ‘cleantech’ to be any company with products and services that will reduce demand for fossil fuels and water.”

“It is telling that clean energy stocks generated more than double the returns of fossil fuel stocks since 2016, despite political headwinds, underlining that stock markets care more about economic materiality of the parabolic growth in clean energy than the political leanings of the day,” says Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights and co-author of the report.

The Clean200 utilizes the Corporate Knights Sustainable Revenue database, which tracks the percentage of revenue companies earn from sustainable economy themes ranging from green power to electric vehicles to plant protein and smart buildings.

The list excludes companies that are flagged on Corporate Knights’ list of “red flag” companies and As You Sow’s Invest Your Values suite of mutual-fund transparency tools that identify companies involved in fossil fuels, deforestation, the prison industrial complex, weapons and tobacco, as well as the exclusionary screens that form part of the Corporate Knights Global 100 methodology.

“We will continue to track and share the emergence of the clean energy economic powerhouse,” Behar says. “There is clear financial evidence showing a broad spectrum of companies defining this economic transformation away from an extractive economy and into a regenerative economy based on justice and sustainability. The job growth and resilience demonstrated by these companies are our greatest hope in controlling climate change and achieving a safe, just and sustainable world that benefits all.”

Methodology

The Clean200 are the largest 200 public companies ranked by clean revenue. The ranking was first calculated on July 1, 2016, and publicly released on August 15, 2016, by Corporate Knights and As You Sow. The current list has been updated with data through January 29, 2025.

The Clean200 companies are ranked by their clean revenues in U.S. dollars. The data set is developed through assessment of a company’s revenue that aligns with the definitions laid out in the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, primarily sourced from Corporate Knights research. To be eligible, a company must earn more than 10% of total revenues from clean sources.

The Clean200 uses negative screens. It excludes carbon laggards in the cement industry, oil and gas companies and those found on the Global Oil & Gas Exit List, coal companies found on the Global Coal Exit List, all utilities that generate less than 50% of their power from green sources, the top 200 carbon reserve owners in the Carbon Underground 200 list, fossil-fuel financers found on the Banking for Climate Chaos list, fossil-fuel insurers found on the Insure Our Future list, companies involved in for-profit prison operations recommended for divestment by the Investigate project of the American Friends Service Committee, companies involved in severe environmental or human rights violation, and those which were involved in illegal activities where the ratio of fines, penalties or settlements over revenue for the most recent twelve months period exceeded 1.0%. In addition, the Clean200 excludes weapons companies, including major military arms manufacturers found on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Top 100 arms-producing and military services list, as well as cluster munitions, nuclear weapons, and civilian firearm manufacturers screened on As You Sow’s Weapon Free Funds. The Clean200 also excludes palm oil, paper/pulp, rubber, timber, cattle, and soy producers that are screened on As You Sow’s Deforestation Free Funds; companies that use child or forced labor, are involved in the manufacture of harmful pesticides, and that engage in negative climate lobbying are not included.

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There is much evidence to justify this sentiment. Case in point: his pick for energy secretary, oil wildcatter Chris Wright, said last year, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” But what if a different outcome is possible?

To explore this question in a clear-eyed way, two things matter: how much can a president tip the scale on climate solutions, and in which direction will it tip?

Let’s follow the money: the United States accounts for 15% of global investments in climate solutions, so 85% of the action is elsewhere (mostly China).

Download research brief from Corporate Knights: Sustainability transition gains momentum

Also, don’t forget that while the executive branch of the U.S. government can be a powerful bully pulpit, there are other influential actors, including the private sector, state and local governments, and civil society.

It’s also worth reviewing Trump 1.0.

Despite Trump’s promises to “bring back coal,” a record 50 coal plants were shuttered during his first term, plus another 51 announcements of closures as the economics of coal went into the toilet.

In terms of U.S. energy investments, green energy and fossil fuels ballooned across the board during Biden’s presidency, but green energy as a proportion of total energy investments were not that much different than in Trump’s time (55% versus 51% in each of their last years in office).

President Trump 2.0 is not a blanket negative and could be an inadvertent net positive on the sway he holds over the world’s march toward a climate solutions economy.

  – Toby Heaps, Publisher, Corporate Knights

Many people still believe that the primary factors driving demand for green power and electric cars are politically driven subsidies, but that is no longer the case. Economic logic is now the primary driver. Green power and electric cars have become a lot cheaper to the point where they are now better bargains than their fossil fuel counterparts – without subsidies. Solar and wind combined with battery power are now cheaper than fossil fuels in most cases.

Despite all the market imperfections, for every $1 invested in fossil fuels globally, $2 is now invested in clean energy, while electric or hybrid cars now account for more than half of new cars sold in China.

Three factors that matter most to climate solutions

There are a few important elements to keep in mind when evaluating the potential impact of Trump’s presidency.

1. Red tape: 2,500 gigawatts of green energy in the United States is in limbo waiting for grid connection permits, roughly double the entire installed electricity capacity.

2. Interest rates: They represent up to 40% of renewable energy costs when rates are high.

3. Oil prices: When the price of oil goes up, it increases the earnings, economic clout and political power of oil and gas companies.

In other words, if you have less red tape to tangle up green energy projects, lower costs of capital and lower oil prices (so big oil has less cash in its jeans to tip the political scales), then you get more climate solutions deployed.

And there is a wild card this time: Elon Musk, who recently reiterated his long-standing mission to achieve national and individual energy independence underpinned by a vertically integrated sustainable-energy ecosystem.

Three factors that may work in favour of clean power

Trump’s impact on renewables won’t be all negative, for several reasons:

1. Musk’s new role in the White House overseeing a vast deregulation agenda will not be all bad news for the environment. Fossil fuel projects will be green-lit faster, but renewables will benefit too, and we already know they have the cost-competitiveness to be market winners.

2. Trump loves low interest rates (and he is happy to twist the Fed’s arm as required) because they buoy stock markets (potential inflationary effects of tariffs be damned).

3. Trump’s obsession with cheap gas contributed to cutting the valuation of oil and gas companies in half during his first term, a stark contrast to the 100% increase we saw during Biden’s presidency.

Bottom line for climate action: president Trump 2.0 is not a blanket negative and could be an inadvertent net positive on the sway he holds over the world’s march toward a climate solutions economy.

If you believe in economic logic, the takeaway is that the right time to go all in on the energy transition was yesterday. The second-best time is now, and that’s true no matter who’s president of the United States.

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

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It also happened to be the same year Corporate Knights and As You Sow launched the Clean200 – a list of publicly traded companies worldwide that are leading the clean energy charge. Things have changed quite a bit since then as investors have poured a growing amount of money into the energy transition and green companies have thrived. If an investor had put $10,000 into the Clean200 in July 2016, that investment would have grown to $19,121 by the end of January 2023. 

“The Clean200 has demonstrated consistently that what we called the ‘clean energy’ future seven years ago is now the clean energy present,” says Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow. “This year, the scale and global diversity of leading companies continue to expand and redefine the term ‘cleantech’ to be any company that has products and services that will reduce demand for fossil fuels and water.” 

The Clean200 lists the 200 major corporate players from 35 countries around the world that are at the forefront of the energy transition and put sustainability at the heart of their products, services, business models and investments, helping to move the world onto a more sustainable trajectory. On average, 58.3% of revenues earned by Clean200 companies are classified as sustainable, representing close to $2.4 trillion (all figures in U.S. dollars) in revenue, roughly unchanged from last year and significantly above the 5% average sustainable revenue for their MSCI ACWI peers.  

The United States dominated the 2023 list, with 42 companies on the Clean200, while China had the second-largest share with 21, followed by Japan, which is headquarters to 16 Clean200 companies. U.S. companies had, on average, the highest sustainable revenue at $23 billion. This is followed by Germany with $18 billion and South Korea at $17 billion. 

There are 90 new companies on the list this year, and some of those companies cracked the top 10, including Deutsche Telekom (in third place), Verizon Communications (fourth), Agricultural Bank of China (sixth) and Contemporary Amperex Technology (10th). Apple and Alphabet, as last year, ranked first and second, respectively.  

Of the 2023 Clean200 companies, the information technology sector accounted for nearly a quarter of the total sustainable revenue at $586 billion, followed by the communications services sector ($542 billion) and the industrials sector ($400 billion).

This year’s Clean200 companies rose to the top of a pool of 6,720 global firms based on rigorous assessment of the amount of revenue each company earns from products and services aligned with the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, while also ensuring that their businesses are not fundamentally offside important criteria for socially responsible investors, including being a company flagged by As You Sow’s Invest Your Values platform, which identifies fossil fuels, weapons, private prisons, thermal coal or having a record of systemically obstructing climate policy. 

CLEAN200 PERFORMANCE VS. BENCHMARK

Of note, it was found that on average 44.4% of the capital expenditure, acquisitions, and research and development expenses among the Clean200 companies were defined as sustainable by the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, compared to only 7% among MSCI ACWI constituents. On sustainable investments, the utilities and industrials sectors led with $50 billion each, followed by the communications services sector at $24 billion in sustainable investments. 

“It is telling that even on the back of a banner year for fossil fuel stocks, the Clean200 continued its six-plus-year track record of outperformance against both fossil-fuel and blue-chip benchmarks,” says Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights. 

While we’ve made great progress since 2016, we need to go further faster. For the first time, global investment in renewables rose above $1 trillion in 2022. But the International Energy Agency says we need to increase that amount to around $4 trillion per year by 2030 in order to reach net-zero by 2050.  

THE CLEAN200

METHODOLOGY

The Clean200 are the largest 200 public companies ranked by clean revenue. The ranking was first calculated on July 1, 2016, and publicly released on August 15, 2016, by Corporate Knights and As You Sow. The current list has been updated with data through January 31, 2023.  

The Clean200 companies are ranked by their clean revenues in U.S. dollars. The data set is developed through assessment of a company’s revenue that aligns with the definitions laid out in the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, primarily sourced from Corporate Knights research. To be eligible, a company must earn more than 10% of total revenues from clean sources. 

The Clean200 uses negative screens. It excludes all oil and gas companies, all utilities that generate less than 50% of their power from green sources, the top 100 coal companies measured by reserves, the top 100 oil and gas companies as measured by reserves, as well as all fossil fuel companies, majority fossil-fired utilities, pipeline and oil-field-services companies, and other fossil-fuel-related companies screened on As You Sow’s Fossil Free Funds. In addition, the Clean200 excludes weapons companies, including major military arms manufacturers found on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Top 100 arms-producing and military services list, as well as cluster munitions, nuclear weapons and civilian firearm manufacturers screened on As You Sow’s Weapon Free Funds. The Clean200 also excludes palm oil, paper/pulp, rubber, timber, cattle and soy producers that are screened on As You Sow’s Deforestation Free Funds; companies that use child or forced labour, are involved in the manufacture of harmful pesticides, and that engage in negative climate lobbying are not included. The full list of exclusionary screens is provided below.  

The post These 200 companies are leading the clean economy in 2023 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Canadian policymakers today face a litany of challenges unlike any encountered in the last decade: Putin’s war in Ukraine, record inflationary pressures, a looming global recession and the battle to get ahead of the ongoing climate crisis.

It’s this latter crisis that will have disproportionate, long-term impacts on Canada’s economy. The good news is that the climate crisis is not merely a massive challenge we must solve; it’s also a multi-trillion-dollar economic opportunity for our region, its businesses and workforce.

Consider these two facts alone: the global cleantech market is projected to exceed US$3.3 trillion in 2022, accounting for 2% of global GDP. On a global scale, bold climate action could deliver more than US$26 trillion in economic benefits in the lead-up to 2030.

Canada has a head start in the race to lead the emerging climate economy, with world-leading innovators and a booming tech sector. Earlier this year, research firm Startup Genome recognized the Toronto-Waterloo corridor, Vancouver and Calgary as the country’s best cleantech start-up ecosystems. In fact, clean technology products represented 3.3% of Canada’s total GDP in 2020, accounting for almost 323,000 jobs. Notably, 13 Canadian companies made the prestigious 2022 Global Cleantech 100 list: no small feat for an economy of our size.

Now is the time for Canadian governments at every level – and from every political stripe – to capitalize on this economic opportunity. By adapting and implementing climate strategies today and homegrown technologies, we can reach our climate targets by 2040 and lay the underpinnings for a stronger, more internationally competitive economy as we emerge from today’s period of acute economic uncertainty.

The Board of Trade’s in-depth conversations with our members have shown us that businesses are ready to invest in reducing their emissions but require a stable and competitive policy environment to do so.

Clean technology investments often have high upfront capital costs and long payback periods. Governments at all levels should introduce a more comprehensive set of incentives to de-risk business investments in clean technology solutions.

Federal cleantech investment tax credits should be stackable, transferable and applicable to a wide range of cleantech investments. Provinces such as Ontario should also provide targeted support of electricity rate guarantees to secure investment in large electrification projects – such as the current proposal to introduce a more affordable interruptible electricity rate for hydrogen production.

For smaller and medium-sized manufacturers in particular, these investments in decarbonization, while highly desirable, are less commercially attractive, particularly in today’s high interest rate environment.

American climate economy

Recent developments in the United States have changed the global landscape for climate action; we risk losing investments and jobs to our southern neighbour without a robust policy response.

In August, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The legislation will result in dramatic investments to meet U.S. climate change goals through a mix of tax incentives, grants and loan guarantees aimed at boosting clean energy and transportation.

The legislation contains some of the most robust clean energy tax credit programs in North American history – a fact that is not lost on Canadian businesses looking south for expansion.

When she delivered the federal government’s fall economic statement in early November, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland called for a “green industrial transformation comparable in scale only to the Industrial Revolution itself.”

The mini-budget provided more details on several key measures to boost Canada’s competitiveness in these sectors, including business tax credits for clean technology and hydrogen investments and the creation of a $15-billion Canada Growth Fund targeted at domestic businesses that invest in the net-zero economy.

These new initiatives are a start, but more is needed.

The federal budget this spring will need to include measures to materially support key climate economy and advanced manufacturing investments to stem the southward flow of capital because of the Inflation Reduction Act. The budget should enhance tax credits for carbon capture and storage technologies to be more competitive with the new Inflation Reduction Act provisions.

With reputable cleantech innovators, willing businesses and ambitious climate goals, the Toronto region has what it takes to be a North American leader in the climate economy. Toronto-based clean technology developers, such as e-Zinc, ecobee and Li-Cycle, have already proven their capacity for practical, real-world, results-driven innovation. And many organizations such as ArcelorMittal Dofasco, the University of Toronto and Toronto Pearson Airport have already taken impressive steps to green their operations.

Globally, the climate economy has the hallmarks of a new goldrush: the next frontier. With the U.S. now making unprecedented investments in the climate economy, Canadian policymakers, in partnership with the business community, must leverage the “climate economy” narrative to avoid being left behind. Now is the time to seize the opportunity for our country’s growth and competitiveness over the coming decade and beyond.

The post A new goldrush: Canada must seize opportunities of the climate economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The consequences of climate change are far from an abstract concept for island nations in the Pacific Ocean. In Kiribati, rising sea levels are already threatening to displace residents as eroding land has contributed to a worsening housing crisis and overcrowding. Internal relocation isn’t really an option for many on these islands. And yet, the international community has largely failed to address the issue of climate migration in a proactive way, experts say.

Canada and other high-income countries have a moral obligation to develop plans to accept and resettle climate migrants, critics say, since we’re responsible for much of the greenhouse gas that led to the current crisis. Climate-induced displacement is expected to rise in coming years as natural disasters become more destructive and more frequent. The World Bank estimates that climate change could displace up to 216 million people within their own countries by 2050. In 2020, 30 million people were displaced by severe storms, floods and wildfires, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

While most of the current displacement is happening within countries, a growing number of migrants are predicted to seek shelter in other countries, as the situations in their homelands deteriorate further. In sub-Saharan Africa, where rising temperatures are already squeezing farmers, researchers expect most farmland will become unsuitable for growing crops by the end of this century. And drought-induced crop failure is already compounding the migrant crisis in Central America.

High-income nations have a lot to gain economically and socially from being proactive about climate migrants. As birth rates continue to decline and populations age, Western countries such as Canada and the U.S. already lean on immigration to avoid labour shortages. Now that legal advocates say Canada should start officially welcoming climate migrants, some suggest that those fleeing the fallout from the climate crisis could help fill the green growth areas in our economy as the country transitions away from fossil fuels.

We first have to step back and try to stop the displacement before it happens.

—Yvonne Su, York University

Robert McLeman, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, says the federal government could create special programs to settle climate migrants. “At the government level, we need to have an open discussion about how Canada’s migration program fits into a world where things are being increasingly disrupted because of climate change.”

For those from countries that already have large diaspora communities in Canada, McLeman says, such as India and the Philippines, the federal government could widen existing programs that allow people to sponsor immediate family members to include others from their home countries. And it could create special open-ended employment visas for migrants from smaller island nations (with weaker connections to Canada), so they could come to Canada and remit the money they earn back home. Not only would this make it easier for them to settle in Canada if they choose to stay, but these remittances sent from wealthy countries are a key part in building resilience and adaptability in home communities, McLeman says.

Immigration levels have sagged during the pandemic, as the government failed to hit its target for the number of immigrants it aimed to welcome to Canada in 2020. The federal government had planned for 341,000 immigrants in 2020 but saw only 185,000 arrive; it more than doubled its 2021 goal as a result. The 2022 target is 411,000 people, but it isn’t clear how and if climate migrants will factor into this number. A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) did not answer questions about whether climate migrants are being considered in current or future immigration targets but said in an emailed statement that immigration levels for “2022–24 will be tabled in Parliament in due course.”

Currently, around one in 26 workers in Canada is employed in a green job, according to ECO Canada, and that number is expected to rise. The non-profit projects that there will be 173,000 net job openings in the environmental sector by 2025 because of growth and retirement. And analysts expect there will be labour shortages in a variety of green jobs, including senior government managers, public environmental health inspectors and urban planners. “It’s a great sector for them to work in, given what they’re escaping from,” says Yvonne Su, an assistant professor in York University’s Department of Equity Studies and a member of the Centre for Refugee Studies.

A pathway for resettlement

It’s hard to tell how many climate migrants have already come to Canada because there are often multiple interconnected factors, such as conflict and food insecurity, that push people out of their home countries. And someone who is displaced by climate change alone doesn’t fit into the Geneva Convention definition of a conventional refugee that is used in Canadian law. To meet this definition, a migrant must be outside their origin country and unable or unwilling to return “by reason of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.” Aviva Basman, the president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), says these factors can often be secondary impacts of climate change.

The effects of climate change can often lead to scarcity of resources, violence, and persecution of a specific ethnic group. “However, climate migration is much broader than that and is going to impact a lot more people than would fit into the legal definition of ‘convention refugee,’” Basman says.

In November, CARL called on the federal government to implement more proactive policies and guidelines when it comes to climate migration. The organization released a paper outlining proposed changes that include creating what’s called a new “public policy class” for climate migrants that “would permit Canada a great deal of flexibility in adapting to the needs of such migrants.” The group also wants to see the federal government adopt a new “protected persons” status for climate refugees that would exempt them from having to prove “personalized risk,” given the generalized risk they experience from the climate crisis. This would also allow Canada to resettle people displaced by climate change who aren’t in the country yet.

We need to have a discussion about how Canada’s migration program fits into a world increasingly disrupted
by climate change.

—Robert McLeman, Wilfrid Laurier University

“At this point, while there’s still time to create a thoughtful policy response, we think that Canada should show international leadership by creating a comprehensive climate migration policy and specific programs,” says Basman.

Sean Fraser, Canada’s federal immigration minister, declined a request for an interview, and the spokesperson for IRCC did not answer a question on whether the federal government will consider granting protected-persons status to climate migrants. In the emailed statement, the spokesperson said the federal government “recognizes that climate change has broad implications on health, agriculture, economy, trade, infrastructure, displacement of people and migration. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consistently monitors the implications of climate change on migration and displacement patterns and flows, including work by international bodies.”

In its paper, CARL points to a 2020 decision by the UN Human Rights Committee that established an international obligation not to send people back to places where their lives will be at risk because of climate change. The complainant in the case is a man from Kiribati who travelled with his family to New Zealand, where they sought asylum as climate refugees. Ioane Teitiota and his family were deported after a lengthy court battle and were ultimately unsuccessful in gaining asylum, as the committee found Teitiota’s risk wasn’t “imminent” enough. But Basman says the committee’s ruling was a watershed decision that should serve as a wake-up call for Canada.

“Now is really the time for Canada to create a thoughtful and comprehensive policy response,” she says.

Help them at home

In addition to the economic benefits of welcoming climate migrants to settle in Canada, their very presence in the country could help raise awareness of the urgency of the issue, says McLeman. This could increase support for strong climate policies.

“It’s abstract, but when people recognize that their friends, their neighbours, people in their community have lived through these types of experiences, and are able to share those stories, I hope that it draws our attention to it,” he says.

Hundreds of millions of people are expected to be displaced if the planet continues on its current trajectory and warms 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. While it is important for high-income countries to have proactive plans to welcome climate migrants, Su says, those nations should also do more to combat the climate crisis, and prevent disasters. “We first have to take a step back and try to stop the displacement before it happens.”

Strong climate action could blunt the worst impacts of climate change and stop the displacement of climate migrants in the first place, experts say. But in the absence of meaningful action, adaptation (including proactive migration plans) and resilience must be top priorities for the international community.

The post How climate migrants can help power the clean economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Two of Uncle David’s axioms replay in my head on a regular basis:

“It’s a losing battle, but then those are the only ones worth fighting.”

“Never underestimate the ability of powerful people to justify their actions.”

When we look at the past 50 years, from the Vietnam War to our upside-down tax system (where those who have the most often pay the least in terms of their effective rates), it’s hard to argue, on the whole, that he was wrong.

But it’s also fair to say we are no longer living in usual times. The COVID crisis is a reminder of the power of civilization to rapidly address existential challenges when we flex our collective muscle.

The pandemic pause has allowed room to reflect on the kind of society we want. Do we want to continue our zombie-like march toward torching the only home we have? Is it really inevitable that we must continue to prop up the mighty with tax giveaways and handouts while we undervalue the vulnerable people and planet that we need the most?

By 2030, Canada could create more than five million quality job-years of employment by greening the power grid, electrifying transport and upgrading our homes and workplaces to be more comfortable, flood resilient and cheaper to run, saving Canadians $39 billion per year at the pumps and on heating and power bills by 2030 (in today’s dollars). We could also help protect the livelihoods of many others, including by supporting farmers to adopt practices and technologies for restoring the soil while paying them fairly for the ecosystem services they provide, paying young people fairly to plant billions of trees, and supporting Indigenous communities as sustainable economy leaders.

By 2030, we could own large parts of the clean-economy podium. We have all the ingredients to create Canadian champions in fast-growing industries of the future, including lightweight bitumen-based carbon fibres, renewable jet fuels, green hydrogen, batteries and electric vehicles (see our green economy vision board on p. 34).

In the wake of the COVID crisis, this is all within reach if we choose to build back better by making these job-rich themes a priority in the federal government’s stimulus and recovery packages.

The people who control the budgets will ask, how can we afford it? An equally valid question is how can we afford not to do it?

A big part of the explanation is traceable to Uncle David’s two axioms. We cannot afford to listen to the voices that say we just need to get back to doing what we were doing.

There is no going back. Now is the time to move forward.

That, at least, is my hope, but what happens will not be up to me.

It will come down to the human condition and how it responds to the current crisis. Will we be guided by fear or hope?

On this question, I am reminded of Uncle David again. Two of his sons played roles in the 1963 movie Lord of the Flies, based on the dystopian William Golding novel that reveals the rot of fear that dominates the human condition.

Lord of the Flies was fiction. In real life, it was a different story. In 1965, six restless boys set sail from the South Pacific island of Tonga, were hit by a storm and ended up shipwrecked on a desert island for 15 months. When they were finally found, rather than the dystopian situation Golding envisioned, the boys were getting along just fine, having set up a commune with a food garden, gym, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent communally tended fire.

It will also take a community to overcome the forces of the status quo.

Some have been dismissive of the idea of a just green recovery.

But they may be missing the point. The just part of a green recovery is not an add-on, but an essential condition for creating the big-tent coalition required to dislodge the forces of inertia. As a practical matter, it’s hard to see how the current “shecession” (women are bearing the brunt of the recession) gets addressed without some radical improvements in supports for affordable childcare, greatly improved eldercare and a living wage.

The best chance we have for the forces of hope to prevail is by marrying the green and just fires that burn bright in all our bellies, from which hope springs eternal.

Toby Heaps is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Corporate Knights. 

The post Editor’s note: Lighting a path to the world we want appeared first on Corporate Knights.