At almost the same time, thousands of kilometres away, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station failed in ways that still reverberate. Safety systems that were supposed to be independent failed together, leading to fuel melting and hydrogen explosions that destroyed four reactor units and released radioactivity to the air and ocean. It took months to stabilize the damaged reactors and bring them to a cold shutdown, and site remediation will continue for decades. The cascading consequences crippled Japan’s nuclear sector and generated economic, social and environmental damage far beyond the plant fence line. The cost of the accident is incalculable but runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. It ruined the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The contrast is not just about two technologies; it is about two ways of structuring risk. The Rugby turbine failure remained a localized engineering incident, largely managed internally by the project owner and manufacturer. Fukushima produced losses at least five orders of magnitude larger than a single windturbine crash, and it did so in a way that pushed financial burdens across the Japanese state, its taxpayers and future generations.

Energy systems like the one in Fukushima, built around a small number of very large, colocated units, running near full output with critical safety functions sharing common failure modes, and overseen by a regulatory culture that discounts lowprobability, highimpact events, is not just vulnerable. It is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Biomimicry – the practice of learning from and emulating nature’s strategies – offers a vocabulary for understanding why. Nature has had billions of years to experiment under uncertainty. Complex living systems endure not because they avoid shocks, but because they are built to absorb them. In healthy ecosystems, risk is not eliminated; it is distributed, diversified, buffered and constantly managed. Redundancy, modularity, diversity, continuous feedback and slack capacity are not poetic metaphors but survival rules. Those same rules can be applied directly to how energy systems are planned, financed and operated.

Nature has had billions of years to experiment under uncertainty. Complex living systems endure not because they avoid shocks, but because they are built to absorb them. 

For a decarbonized power system, this means grids and portfolios that can lose parts without losing the whole; that can reconfigure under stress; that favour many small, distributed investments over a few gigantic, centralized bets; and that can learn and adapt quickly from minor failures rather than waiting for rare, systemwide disasters. It also means staying within biophysical boundaries – emissions budgets, land and water limits, ecological constraints – that make life and prosperity possible in the first place. In that sense, the distinction between nuclear and renewables is not just about carbon intensity or levellized cost; it is about whether a technology encourages risk to be concentrated or distributed.

Nuclear power, by virtue of its scale, complexity, slow learning curves, security requirements and tailrisk profile (or rare disasters), tends naturally to become centralized. It also has a very low tolerance for failure. Wind and solar, with their modular hardware, high unit counts and rapid learning cycles, tend to embed values of decentralization, resilience and acceptance of small, noncatastrophic failures as a price of innovation.

If the goal is resilience and affordability in an era of climate chaos, then energy systems can no longer be imagined as just a string of independent megaprojects. Nature shows us how to structure risk so that failures are local, bounded and recoverable. Yet our most sophisticated infrastructures still concentrate risk in a handful of giant nodes. Energy technologies can be more or less safe, but the deeper question is whether the systems we build behave more like living ecosystems or more like brittle machines.

A living system is diversified, adaptive, repairable and resilient. That is the kind of grid we need now, and it is the one that becomes possible when engineers, planners, regulators and investors start taking their cues from nature.

Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights. 

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I’ve never bought a Canadian flag before. But I surprised myself when the daily Trump “51st state” insults ignited a desire in me to fly our country’s colours. Given how long the flag and flagpole I wanted were out of stock at Canadian Tire, it seems that many other Canadians felt the same.

This month’s avalanche of “year in review” articles on the Trump presidency (one down, three to go!) was a reminder of just how unprecedented this past year has been. And judging by the reaction to the prime minister’s speech in Davos, much of the Western world has had similar feelings.

Twelve months ago, would any of us have guessed that the very existence of our country would be regularly belittled by our alleged closest ally – our national sovereignty threatened by a late-night social media post? Or that some of our key industries, like steel and cars, would be fighting for their survival because of crushing Trump-imposed tariffs, or that European countries – NATO members – would be moving troops to Greenland in a not-so-subtle attempt to dissuade a U.S. invasion, with Canada under pressure to join too?

In 2026, there is every indication that Trump’s unhinged behaviour will get worse, not better.

He’s already referring to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA) – the renegotiation of which kicks off this year – as “irrelevant” to the United States and has targeted the Canadian automobile industry for extinction. He seems deadly serious about undermining the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve and using his politicized Department of Justice to silence any criticisms.

Nothing about this is “business as usual.” And it has prompted an unprecedented degree of anxiety: roughly three-quarters of Canadians now believe the United States poses an economic threat, and 53% say it poses a national security threat as well.

Climate change policy is caught right in the middle of all of this.

As he explained at length in a speech at the United Nations in September of last year, Trump believes that climate change is a “con job” and that renewable energy, such as wind and solar, is a “scam” that should be eliminated. Instead, he is focused on dramatically expanding oil and gas production and recently demonstrated he is even prepared to forcibly depose foreign leaders to achieve this.

2025 was defined by uncertainty on climate policy in Canada that needs quick resolution

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, decarbonization is accelerating, not slowing down. We’ve seen it with electric vehicles, with renewable power, with global investment in clean technologies and with carbon border tariffs, to name just a few. And these trends are accelerating in the countries Canada needs to diversify its trade and strengthen its economic prospects.

Bottom line: things powered with fossil fuels are the technologies of the past. (And I mean this literally: sales of gasoline-powered cars peaked globally in 2018.) Things powered by electricity are the technologies of the future. Those countries that produce the building blocks of a decarbonized economy – including critical minerals, batteries, clean electricity, and electrical machines like heat pumps and EVs – will prosper. Those that don’t will be left behind.

The challenge for Canada is to escape the evil tractor beam of Trump’s bad ideas. To set a course of our own for the benefit of all Canadians.

Doing everything we can to decarbonize Canada isn’t just something we’re doing to reduce emissions. It’s a contribution to a better future for our country.

Yes, we need to deal with the clear threats posed by Trump in the short term, but at the same time we need to lay track for a decarbonized economy that is rapidly gaining momentum.

Decarbonization is an act of patriotism.

In amongst the recent “Trump year in review” media this month was a healthy dose of polling. Trump’s popularity is down. Way down. It turns out a U.S. electorate that supported him in hopes that he’d make their lives more affordable isn’t warming to his quixotic and destabilizing foreign policy interventions.

I don’t know exactly when, but sometime in the next few years – at this rate, starting with November’s U.S. midterm elections – the forces of MAGA are going to start losing. At that point, the damage from climate change will be more evident than ever, and the economic gravity of cheaper solar, batteries and EVs will be impossible to resist. Climate action will ramp up even stronger than before.

Canada needs strong climate policy to be competitive in countries beyond the U.S.

Our goal has to be to ensure that we have leapfrogged the United States by then to ensure that our economy is positioned to prosper.

We see the first inklings of what’s possible in this regard with recent news that the Trump administration’s unlawful quashing of New England offshore wind projects is increasing investment interest in Canadian projects. And the recent deal with China on EV tariffs is being positioned by our federal government as the first move in a strategy for Canada to build North American leadership in electric vehicles: smart.

In 2026, arguments for climate progress need to keep these global dynamics front and centre. The transition to a cleaner economy isn’t just the answer to the atmosphere’s chemical challenges, but to Canada’s economic ones as well.

In short, decarbonization should come wrapped in a Canadian flag.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

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We strive to put sustainability at the heart of everything we do. It starts with our Sustainability Strategy, which focuses our efforts in three areas: Environmental Stewardship, Our People and Communities and Responsible Business.

The framework, which launched in May 2025, is the result of nearly two years of work, led by our Sustainability Team with the collective feedback of operational and subject matter experts across our business units. The integrated strategy drives all of our operations and commitments as we continue our work as a leading manufacturer of diversified forest products under the ownership of investor Jackson Wijaya.

“I’m tremendously proud of the strategy we’ve created,” says Domtar Chief Sustainability Officer Sabrina de Branco. “Considering the strong history of all our legacy companies, I can say with confidence that Domtar is moving onward and upward while being firmly rooted in sustainability.”

In this article, we’re exploring the first pillar in our strategy: Environmental Stewardship. Upcoming articles will explore the other two pillars and their key objectives.

What Is Environmental Stewardship?

Environmental Stewardship encompasses our efforts to steward the planet’s resources responsibly by reducing the environmental footprint of our everyday operations and setting actionable objectives that positively impact nature and the environment.

“In today’s world, our stakeholders and partners across all sectors are rightfully focused on environmental impact,” says Luc Thériault, president of Domtar’s Wood Products business unit. “For a company like ours that depends on renewable natural resources like wood fiber, this scrutiny isn’t just expected—it’s essential. Our environmental performance must be exemplary, which is why this pillar is fundamental to our strategy.”

This pillar includes four key objectives.

Sustainable Forest Management and Fiber Sourcing

Sustainable forest management and fiber sourcing are critical to our supply chain and the health of forests. We will advance our long-standing commitment to sustainable forest management across Domtar’s value chain for all wood and fiber. By 2030, we are committed to:

• Sourcing 100 percent of our wood and fiber from responsibly managed forests;
• Increasing landowner engagement from seed to harvest, compared to 2025, on practices that deliver social, environmental and economic value; and
• Ensuring Domtar is recognized as a collaborative partner in advancing the status of critical habitat for threatened species.

Positive Biodiversity Impacts

The health of our forests depends on having a healthy level of biodiversity, with an abundance and variety of life existing within the forest ecosystem. Maintaining or improving biodiversity requires an ongoing commitment to sustainable forestry practices and proactive measures to rehabilitate land when the opportunity arises. We will positively impact biodiversity through our forests, fiber supply chain and operational footprint.

By 2030, we will ensure that 100 percent of our operations with risks in high-value areas have action plans in place within one year of their completed assessments.

Decarbonization

Decarbonization—the reduction or removal of carbon dioxide emissions—is a critical pillar of global climate action and a key element of Domtar’s sustainability strategy. At Domtar, we are building on existing good practices and operational strengths to drive meaningful emission reductions across our value chain. This includes identifying and advancing strategic projects at our mills that lower our carbon footprint while safeguarding the long-term viability and competitiveness of our assets.

We’ve already reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by about 1/3 since 2015. We will continue to decarbonize our operations, products and value chain by leveraging renewable, sustainable, fossil-free resources and efficient manufacturing processes. We will achieve our greenhouse gas emission reduction target—to be established by 2026—for target year 2035 or sooner.

Water Resilience

Water is essential to the production of pulp, paper and wood products, and many of our facilities are located near rivers, lakes and watersheds to ensure access to this vital resource. Recognizing that water is a shared and precious natural resource, our goal is to reduce water-related risks and minimize our impact on local ecosystems by optimizing water use, improving treatment processes and collaborating with stakeholders to support watershed health.

Our 2030 targets for this objective include:

• Reducing water use intensity by 20 percent over 2020 baseline in the Paper and Packaging business unit.
• Ensuring 100 percent of our pulp, paper and tissue mills have risk mitigation plans in place within one year of completing assessments.

The Future of Our Environmental Stewardship

As we implement our sustainability strategy and work toward achieving our Environmental Stewardship objectives, we’re simply continuing the sustainability journey we started many years ago.

“We’re already engaged in several high-impact projects that we’re pursuing jointly with environmental non-governmental organizations and others. Certainly, our legacy companies had a strong track record of this type, and we’ve been moving further down this path as the new Domtar,” says Paige Goff, Domtar’s vice president of Sustainability, Strategic Partnerships and Engagement. “We’re looking to grow the number of partnerships and projects that we will engage in over time. And there’s perhaps no better overarching measure of the success of our strategy as a whole than the degree of trust we earn.”

Visit Domtar.com for a full overview of Domtar’s sustainability strategy and recent sustainability report, including objectives and performance targets that define the roadmap for our company’s efforts in the years ahead.

Domtar is of the “Private 25 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World” named by Corporate Knights in 2025.

 

The post Domtar’s Sustainability Strategy: A commitment to environmental stewardship appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Aviation is responsible for 13.9% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from transport and 2.5% of emissions from all human activity. Between 2000 and 2019, emissions from the aviation sector have risen faster than those from rail, road or shipping – in 2024 alone, GHGs jumped by 5% – while efforts to decarbonize the aviation industry have made little progress.

Recently, however, there have been indications that this may change. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) set a target for international aviation to be 5% less carbon-intensive by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This will primarily be through the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), which are typically made from used cooking oil and agricultural waste and mitigate the lion’s share of emissions produced by conventional jet fuel. Canada’s Aviation Climate Action Plan targets net-zero emissions for the aviation industry by 2050 and a goal of 10% use of low-emission aviation fuel by 2030.

Given the sluggish pace at which airlines are replacing jet fuel with SAFs, not to mention the projected growth of air travel, reaching these milestones appears unlikely. Passenger air travel is expected to double by 2050. “Even the most ambitious jurisdictions are falling short of tracking to net-zero,” says Nikita Pavlenko, director of aviation and fuels at the International Council on Clean Transportation’s Washington, D.C., office. “In aviation, there are no silver bullets to decarbonization. In the auto sector, there’s electrification. In the power sector, there’s renewables. In the aviation sector, there are not the same kind of easy answers.”

Others have struck a more hopeful note. Geoff Tauvette, executive director of the Canadian Council for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (C-SAF), a non-profit representing more than 100 industry members, writes in an email that “Canada has all the right ingredients from start to finish to build a leading and made-in-Canada SAF production market.”

While developing a healthy market for SAFs will require a long-term regulatory framework and investment strategy, the smart money is on cleaner fuels, more than initiatives to increase efficiencies, to drive aviation decarbonization in the decades ahead.

Air travel takes off

Between 2013 and 2019, global demand for air travel increased by 50%, jumping another 10% in 2024 – 4% above pre-pandemic levels, an all-time high, according to figures released by IATA in January. IATA expects air travel to climb 6% this year, causing another surge in emissions.

In addition to carbon dioxide, airplanes emit pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and soot and form heat-trapping contrails. Scientists estimate that the net warming effect of these may be up to three times as great as the warming caused by the carbon dioxide emitted.

To realize the 2030 target, airlines would need to boost consumption of SAFs more than 30-fold. Some fear, however, that even if airlines replace 10% of their fuel with low-carbon alternatives by the end of the decade, the climate benefits would be erased by the anticipated growth in the aviation business.

Bending the curve

Reducing the carbon footprint of the aviation sector is one of the most difficult pieces of the energy transition, largely because it requires multiple solutions and the technology required is not yet available at scale. Writing in Nature, a science publication, researchers point out that zero-emission aviation demands a holistic approach, which includes increasing efficiencies in propulsion systems, making improvements to aircraft design and using low-carbon materials.

Carbon reductions in the production of conventional fuel, electrifying ground operations and route planning designed to minimize stopovers all represent additional levers to lighten aviation’s climate impact.

While such efforts are worthwhile, the resulting emission reductions are marginal. Numerous experts have concluded that replacing diesel with SAFs is the most viable near-term pathway for meaningful decarbonization. SAFs are liquid fuels derived from sustainable sources, versus conventional jet fuel that comes from crude oil. The cleaner fuels can mitigate as much as 80% of carbon dioxide in life-cycle emissions compared to conventional fuel. Moreover, “SAF is appealing because you can use it in existing aircraft,” Pavlenko says, noting that the European Union is leading the pack in the deployment of sustainable fuels.

Says Tauvette in an email, “It is critical that government and industry work together to properly assess the impacts and develop an SAF policy that helps reduce actual aviation emissions, supports creating value from Canadian feedstocks by producing SAF in Canada and enhances the competitiveness of the sector.”

A flight path to net-zero

The European Union aims for a 55% reduction in aviation emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2050, leveraging SAFs and emission trading systems. China plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, focusing on green airports and SAFs. Japan and the United Kingdom also target net-zero by 2050 and have drafted strategies that emphasize sustainable fuel, hydrogen-powered aircraft, and optimized air traffic management.

In Canada, British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in North America to require the use of SAFs in 2023, when the province released its revised low-carbon-fuels program.

The regulations now require renewable fuel to comprise at least 1% of jet fuel starting in 2028, increasing to 2% in 2029 and 3% in 2030 and subsequent compliance periods. The regulations also require a carbon-intensity reduction for conventional jet fuel. (The federal Clean Fuel Regulations set life-cycle carbon-intensity-reduction requirements for gasoline and diesel but does not have a reduction requirement for jet fuel.)

Currently, the high cost of low-emission aviation fuels – often far exceeding that of conventional jet fuels – has prevented widespread adoption. “The reality is that there is going to be a significant cost premium for SAF in the foreseeable future. It’s just going to be more expensive than fossil fuel,” Pavlenko says.

In its 2023 road map, C-SAF put forward an optimistic target of one billion litres of SAF production by 2030. Uptake would result in a 50% reduction, or more, in life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions relative to fossil fuel, which translates into the elimination of approximately 1.6 million tonnes of GHG emissions.

Earlier this year, Boeing announced that it will invest $17.48 million to promote the production of SAF in Canada, an encouraging signal that some investors see a long-term future for decarbonization. “Just getting a handful of commercial scale projects built to produce those second-generation technologies comprises a significant step forward for the industry and would help achieve some of those longer-term targets,” Pavelenko says. Anything less, and “we’re going to fail to achieve our 2050 goals.”

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

The post As air travel booms, can the aviation industry decarbonize for real? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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The news cycle out of the United States can feel particularly chaotic and overwhelming lately. Almost daily, Canadians are faced with an onslaught of concerning developments south of the border on a variety of important issues. And when it comes to climate change, this news can seem uniformly grim (it’s not, and we’ll come back to this).

But it’s worth reminding ourselves of the important progress that’s happening on climate and clean energy around the world as an antidote to pessimism that can paralyze us right at the moment when action is needed most.

Take Europe, for example: the continent’s nations have seen massive progress in cutting emissions. The latest data show that European Union countries slashed emissions by more than 8% in a single year in 2023, the largest drop in decades outside the COVID-19 years. That left its collective emissions 37% lower than 1990 levels, all while the economy grew nearly 70% bigger. The EU remains on track to cut emissions 55% below where they were in 1990 by 2030.

The vast majority of major economies of the world remain deadly serious about decarbonization. We need to keep pace.

– Rick Smith, President, Canadian Climate Institute

In the United Kingdom, the country has already seen emissions fall by more than half since the same baseline year. A big driver of that success has been the stunning transformation of its electricity sector, where emissions fell by a full three-quarters in just 12 years. Over that same period, the country used its last pound of coal to power its grid, ending a long legacy that stretched back almost 150 years. Coal went from powering 40% of the nation’s electricity in 2012 to nothing in October of last year.

That’s incredible progress, but the U.K. isn’t resting on its laurels. It recently announced it will cut its emissions by more than 80% by 2035.

But what about China? That familiar refrain is becoming ever more absurd as the world’s largest country puts its foot on the accelerator for clean technologies. When it comes to electric vehicles, for example, more than half the vehicles in China – the world’s largest auto market – are expected to come with a plug-in this year. The remarkable growth in EVs in China helped make 2024 another record year for EV sales globally.

On wind and solar, China continues to break its own records. Clean power installations soared last year, as the country hit its 2030 renewable target six years ahead of schedule. That helped stall growth in China’s national emissions.

Climate progress is picking up speed

There is more good news in other parts of the globe. Major polluting nations like Indonesia, for example, have committed to phasing out coal by 2040, which will require a huge ramp-up in renewables. We’ve also seen huge progress across Latin America and the Caribbean as countries including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay add new clean electricity to their grids.

Brazil is hosting the United Nations climate conference in Belém this year, the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, and has made major progress in bringing Amazon deforestation to its lowest level since 2015.

Let’s come back to the United States. Yes, Donald Trump is eviscerating much of what the Biden administration tried to accomplish. But the last time Trump was in office, this simply shifted action to the state level.

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10 good-news stories on climate and clean energy in 2024

Many of the most durable climate policies that started or continued under the previous Trump and George W. Bush eras are still with us today. That includes two cap-and-trade systems and a basket of state renewable-energy mandates. Currently, 12 states that make up a third of the U.S. economy and more than a quarter of its population have carbon-pricing programs on the books. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia now have requirements for renewable or clean electricity, including many that are Republican-led.

So let’s not lose hope. And let’s make sure that we redouble our efforts to make progress here in Canada. The vast majority of major economies of the world remain deadly serious about decarbonization. We need to keep pace.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute and the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health.

The post The facts of climate progress are the antidote to pessimism appeared first on Corporate Knights.

There was a lot to choose from – something that may not be immediately apparent in the aftermath of the U.S. election and news that 2024 will almost certainly be the hottest on record.   

But it’s true: Canada and the world made enormous strides addressing climate change and building a cleaner economy. Here are the top 10 stories from 2024:  

Electric vehicle sales in Canada continued to rise 

You may not know it from news coverage, but sales of electric vehicles in Canada are at their highest level ever. And they keep rising: market share for EVs in Canada has roughly tripled over the past three years, with the latest quarterly data showing sales at 16.5% nationally. In fact, gas vehicle sales in Canada peaked in 2017 and have been falling ever since.  

The question ahead is one of pace, with Quebec rapidly taking the North American crown for EV adoption. More than one in three vehicle sales in la belle province were electric last quarter –substantially higher than runner-up California.  

Globally, it was the same story: EVs rising  

The trend is even more pronounced globally, where EV sales are set for another record year. A big part of the story is China – the world’s largest auto-market – where the latest data show EVs taking more than half the market. That has contributed to a peak in oil consumption in the country last year, according to the latest official estimates. 

Taken together, the rise of EVs is expected to cut global oil demand by six million barrels per day by 2030, according to the International Energy Association (IEA). 

Peak fossil fuels by 2030

On a related note: the IEA projected that global demand for fossil fuels will peak before 2030, thanks largely to the rapid electrification of the economy. Other forecasts, including those from oil and gas companies, have come to a similar conclusion. Global declines in the demand for fossil fuels will have important implications for Canada and the long-term competitiveness of the oil and gas sector.  

Clean electricity continued to soar 

As fossil fuels decline, they’re quickly being replaced by an age of clean electricity. The IEA expects roughly $2 trillion in clean energy investments in 2024, nearly double the amount invested in fossil fuels. More than 40% of electricity worldwide was non-emitting in 2023, and more than 90% of the growth in net power capacity came from wind and solar. 

Provinces and territories made big moves on clean electricity 

In Canada, we saw big progress on clean electricity across the country, despite some more high-profile disputes. Ontario is ramping up electrification with a goal to become a clean energy superpower. Hydro-Québec is investing up to $185 billion over the next decade to expand clean energy and electrify the province. Quebec inked a deal with Newfoundland and Labrador last week that would see a massive amount of new clean electricity come online in future years. British Columbia is charging ahead with enough new wind projects to increase power supply by 8% – with more to come in future years. The federal government recently committed up to $1 billion in Indigenous-led wind power in New Brunswick, on top of other clean energy investments. And in Saskatchewan, the federal government is investing more than $265 million in clean electricity, including Indigenous-led renewable projects.  

The cost of clean energy continued to drop

The cost of clean energy continued to drop worldwide, especially in solar and battery technologies. In the first half of this year alone, for example, solar photovoltaic prices dropped 20%, according to the IEA. Solar module prices were cut in half over the past year. And grid-scale battery storage prices declined by nearly 10%.  

That can’t help but have positive impacts on affordability here at home. On that front, new research released this year showed that the transition to clean electricity can save people money: most households in Canada can expect to save up to $1,100 each year by switching to more efficient technologies such as EVs and heat pumps by mid-century. That echoes earlier research from the Canadian Climate Institute that found that the switch off fossil fuels can save people money on energy costs over time.  

Indigenous nations led on clean energy 

Indigenous Peoples continued to lead the way on climate and clean energy in 2024. The Oneida battery storage plant – the largest facility of its kind in the country and a 50/50 partnership with the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario – is set to power up next summer. Likewise, an energy storage project led by the Malahat First Nation on Vancouver Island will produce enough battery power for tens of thousands of homes and support hundreds of local jobs. Indigenous Peoples are partners or beneficiaries in nearly one-fifth of Canada’s electricity generation – and almost all of that is renewables.   

This year also brought important new policy research on an Indigenous electrification strategy, Indigenous participation in clean energy, and Indigenous housing and clean technologies.  

Canada has made progress cutting emissions 

The latest estimates from the Canadian Climate Institute show that Canada’s emissions saw a modest drop in 2023 and now sit around 8% below where they were in 2005. Climate policies are working – with industrial carbon pricing leading the pack. Canada’s emissions would be higher today without the actions taken to date by all levels of government since 2015. By 2030, existing climate policies are expected to prevent 226 megatons of emissions – the same amount as current emissions from Quebec and Ontario combined. But getting closer to Canada’s emission targets still requires more action. Governments can deliver even deeper emission cuts by following through and finalizing developing and announced policies.  

Big progress electrifying buildings 

This year also saw Quebec committing to 100% renewable energy to heat all buildings, except in the industrial sector, which will mean a big transition away from fossil fuels to highly efficient electric heat pumps. This type of planned transition in the building sector is necessary to protect consumers from higher costs and stranded assets. Likewise, Vancouver avoided a reversal of its nation-leading rules that effectively banned gas for heating most buildings.    

Oil and gas sector makes progress cutting methane 

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector remain a critical challenge for climate policy, making up more than 30% of national emissions. But one area that has seen progress is methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Cutting methane is a no-brainer and widely considered to be the cheapest and easiest way to slash emissions from the sector. This fall, British Columbia announced it had already cut methane emissions in half from the sector, exceeding its mandated 2025 target, and Alberta has done the same. The federal government has drafted regulations that would reduce oil and gas methane 75% by 2030. There are important caveats, with recent research finding higher estimates of methane than previously thought, but progress has generally been encouraging.    

Taken together, it’s been a year of surprisingly good news in the realm of climate and clean energy. That’s not to diminish the challenges ahead – but let’s not lose sight of the progress that’s been made. And let’s redouble our efforts in 2025. 

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute. 

The post 10 good-news stories on climate and clean energy in 2024 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2018, Chisholm was appointed to the federal government’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance to make recommendations on how Canada could meet the enormous challenge of raising capital to fight climate change and build a low-carbon economy. The panel called for sector-by-sector decarbonization plans, corporate climate-disclosure rules and investment incentives for clean energy and fossil-fuel-emission reductions, among other recommendations.

Time is running short to create needed investment flows, said Chisholm, a Royal Bank of Canada board member who served 30 years in New York and London as a senior executive with global banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs. The Finance Department estimates that Canada will need between $125 billion and $140 billion a year of investment to meet its net-zero targets, far more than the $15 billion to $25 billion invested now.

“Emissions are nowhere near what we want them to be,” Chisholm said. “They’re nowhere near what we hope they would be, and they’re nowhere near what we need them to be. Conditions are probably, in some ways, getting worse rather than better.”

Losing race for sustainable economy

Canada’s greenhouse gas emission targets aren’t the only thing at stake, Chisholm said. Much bigger investments are needed to keep up in the global sprint to decarbonize the economy. Canada desperately needs to raise its ambition to play in the “game” of the global sustainable economy of electric vehicles and clean energy, sectors dominated by China and the United States. “We’re not winning this game, and we need to be a lot more aggressive.”

The government has failed to act on a key recommendation in the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance’s 2019 report to work “deeply hand-in-hand” with Canada’s largest companies on decarbonization plans for their sectors, Chisholm said. “We’re not very far along that path,” he said, adding that government-to-business, government-to-government and business-to-business relationships need to be intensified.

Canada is also lagging behind in planning for the increased electrification of its economy, a key recommendation in the report, which has become more urgent with rising data-centre power demand. “We’re nowhere near the intensification and clarity we need.”

Chisholm was appointed to the expert panel along with three other financial industry heavyweights: Tiff Macklem, now governor of the Bank of Canada; Kim Thomassin, senior executive of the $400-billion Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec; and Barbara Zvan, now CEO and president of Ontario’s $12-billion University Pension Plan.

After two years of inaction, partly due to the COVID pandemic, the government appointed the Sustainable Finance Action Council (SFAC) in 2021 to implement the expert panel’s recommendations. But the range of activity narrowed over the years. Work on a taxonomy that would provide an official green and transition investment standard for banks, funds and asset managers progressed slowly, bogged down by disagreement over whether to include oil and gas decarbonization projects.

A working group was able to forge a consensus on the taxonomy recommendations in March 2023, and the SFAC wrapped up its work in March 2024. But it wasn’t until just this past October that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the taxonomy would go ahead, although even now it is not expected to be fully operational for another year.

Political realities loom over conference

The two-day Sustainable Finance Forum, the third in an annual gathering pulled together by social innovation consultant turned Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull, attracted about 700 consultants, community economic-development organizers, policymakers, climate campaigners, think tank staffers and financiers.

Despite the bleak picture he painted, Chisholm’s remarks were well received by participants in the conference, where Donald Trump’s re-election and the prospect of a Pierre Poilievre government in Canada cast a shadow over the country’s prospects for sustainable finance.

Sustainable-investment incentive programs could be on the chopping block under a Poilievre government, including the $15-billion Canada Growth Fund, carbon-pricing policies and a cap on oil and gas emissions.

In an armchair discussion with Turnbull at the opening of the conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to recognize the frustrations of Canadians who do not support these policies. “It’s understandable – and right now when people are squeezed every single day at the grocery store, in paying the rent, in thinking about whether their job is going to hold them to retirement, what their kids are going to do, it’s really easy to scare people into being even more anxious,” Trudeau said.

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Sustainable finance and social innovation can help Canadians “get over this funk,” the prime minister said, arguing that they can help finance businesses that are meeting people’s daily needs while protecting the climate and the economy.

The policies are necessary to help Canadians prosper in a more crisis-ridden future, even though they may seem out of sync with the current funk felt by millions of people, Turnbull says. He serves as parliamentary secretary to both the finance minister and to the innovation and industry minister, an indication of his influence in the Trudeau administration. He has been a dogged advocate of sustainable finance in the government and has built a base of support for it through the annual forum. “I spent two years of my life rallying this forum and using the momentum built in these conversations to get things done,” he says. The delays that Chisholm spoke of were caused by the need to avoid “a quagmire of different kinds of standards and disclosure requirements across Canada,” he says.

“What we’re talking about is creating a resilient economy that can absorb the shocks of other crises that are coming,” Turnbull says, speaking of the strain on Canadians and the limited support for sustainable finance policies. “We need to raise our ambition, which is the exact opposite of what you would think we should do at a moment when Canadians just want us to meet their immediate needs.”

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

The post Finance leader warns that Canada is losing the race for a sustainable economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Investors are shopping for rental buildings

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

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

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

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

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

What it takes to green a retrofit

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

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

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

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

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

—Tom Wainwright, London’s Royal Holloway University

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

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

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

Scaling low-carbon rentals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much of the new investment will depend on comparatively small public spending on electric vehicle infrastructure that must increase 23-fold by 2050 to enable the rest, the Corporate Knights research department concludes in a presentation delivered at an electric mobility conference earlier this month.

“To decarbonize road transportation in Canada by 2050, it will take up to $666 billion in capital investments,” states the May 2 presentation by Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps and Research Director Ralph Torrie to EV & Charging Expo 2024 in Toronto, hosted by Electric Autonomy Canada. Some 60% of that total will come from households.

But current trends are running far behind the target, Heaps and Torrie warned. Today’s levels of incremental investment—the added dollars Canadians would put into electrifying their vehicles—extrapolate to only $59 billion by mid-century, including $48 billion from households and $8.5 billion from commercial fleets.

The analysis is the latest output from Corporate Knights’ Climate Dollars project, which reported last month that actual federal investment in green technologies and infrastructure has fallen $14 billion behind what the government promised, for a 30% shortfall since 2015. Climate Dollars is now addressing the decarbonization gap sector by sector, beginning with the 18% of greenhouse gas emissions that come from the tailpipes of the country’s 22.5 million personal and 5.9 million commercial vehicles.

“The road transportation system is 10% of GDP and the other 90% depends on it,” the presentation declares. “In the 5% of the year when their cars are not parked, Canadians drive more than 400 billion kilometres—over 2,500 times the distance to the sun.”

Decarbonizing that activity will shift the investments Canadians are already on track to make in the vehicles they buy. In Corporate Knights’ decarbonization scenario, household investments in EVs grow eight-fold by 2050, while electrification extends to 85% of light, 80% of medium, and 70% of heavy trucks.

Despite the added up-front cost, Canadian drivers stand to save more than $1 trillion on the cost of energy, maintenance, and the carbon their vehicles they would otherwise emit—not including the gargantuan health costs of tailpipe emissions.

Those savings are “electrifying,” Torrie told The Energy Mix. “The transportation savings are more than enough to pay for the whole transition in that sector. There are logistical and financing challenges, but the fundamental economics of doing this are sound.”

But all of that depends on the “relatively small contribution” from public charging that only accounts for about 5% of the total spending, but has to increase 23-fold by 2050, producing peak investment of $1.4 billion in 2035 and a total of 563,000 public charges by 2050, one for every 50 EVs.

EV infrastructure investment in Canada is currently on track for 100,000 chargers by 2050 and peak investment of $108 million in 2035.

“The public charging network is a relatively small contribution to the total investment requirements for electrifying the transportation sector,” Torrie said. “The vehicles are a much bigger deal.”

But “the public charging network is critically important for the success of the entire enterprise. It has to stay ahead of the curve so that a lack of confidence in the charging network doesn’t become a barrier to accelerated EV purchases.”

All told, the Corporate Knights calculations have Canadian households and businesses spending an average $26 billion per year on electrification. But “Canadian households and firms already spend more than $225 billion per year for the road transportation system, including the vehicles, the fuel, the insurance, the parking, and the roads and other related infrastructure,” Torrie said. So the “electrification premium” is only about 10% of the total—and that cost comes down as the process of electrification proceeds.

“If we accelerate the pace at which we’re moving, the unit costs will come down for the electric vehicles, for the housing retrofits, for the changes in the electricity grid that we need to support the distributed renewable system that is coming, and so on throughout the system,” he explained. “So to bring down the cost of decarbonizing our economy, we need to speed up the pace at which we do it.”

Torrie added that Canada will see a “very steep acceleration” in EV market share once vehicle prices come down.

“You can sense the pent-up demand for them in the explosion in inexpensive electric bicycles, scooters, and other small conveyances that provide affordable, convenient, electric transportation in our cities,” he said. “Fundamentally, electric vehicles are less complicated, have many fewer parts, and cost less to fuel and maintain than the combustion vehicles they are replacing.”

Today’s EV prices shut out lower- and middle-income households, but “electric vehicles do not have to cost this much, and in fact that they do not cost this much in many parts of the world,” as China in particular has shown.

“When the dam that is holding back these less expensive vehicles finally bursts, it will unleash a flood of affordable EVs in the North American market,” Torrie said.

This article first appeared in The Energy Mix. Read the original story here. 

The post Electrifying driving in Canada will cost just 10% more than what we already spend appeared first on Corporate Knights.