Throughout it all, speculation abounds that an EV tipping point approaches.

New battery-electric vehicle (BEV) registrations in Europe took off in the first quarter of 2026, rising by nearly 30% from a year ago, as the U.S.-Israel war in Iran spiked gas pump prices to levels not seen in years, Reuters reports. BEV registrations (a proxy for sales) jumped more than 50% in March alone.

Pedal to the metal on EV sales

Estimates are that more than 21% of all new cars registered in March in the European Union and EFTA (the European Free Trade Association, whose member countries are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) were ⁠electric.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s BEV market grew 12.8% in the first three months of 2026, with BEVs accounting for 22.5% of new car sales.

While high gas prices have been a major driver of BEV sales, new  and pre-existing – policy supports also played a role. “Generous government incentives” spurred the 50% year-on-year uptake of EVs in France, The Guardian reports.

That Nordic countries continue to outstrip their southern neighbours in BEV uptake – 98% of all new cars sold in Norway in March were BEVs, “followed by Denmark at 76% and Finland at almost 50%” – owes in part to “higher wages, generous subsidies, and extensive [public] charging infrastructure.”

Gas pump prices appear to be behind Italy’s full-throttle acceleration into the EV market, with that country experiencing a 65% year-on-year increase in EV sales in March.

Gas price concerns are also fuelling EV demand across Asia, with Japan – or rather, Toyota – offering a case in point. Toyota sold almost 3,500 EVs in March, “an increase of 4,117%” over the same month last year, Electrek writes.

EV tipping point ahead

“Rapid innovation, decline in cost and a rise in popularity” are all driving EV sales toward a tipping point “where uptake becomes self-propelling” and EVs “irreversibly replace internal combustion engine vehicles,” write the authors of a study published in early December in Nature Communications.

A combined effort by researchers from the University of Exeter, the University of Macao and the World Bank, the study found that even as the sale of gas-fuelled vehicles began to decline in 2019 (the study period ran 2016 to 2023), EV plus hybrid sales increased exponentially, with the global fleet doubling every 1.5 years. Sales in the European Union doubled every 1.3 years, while China saw EV plus hybrid sales double every year. “Our data and analysis provide evidence that several European markets and China have begun tipping towards EV dominance, although this is not convincingly the case for the U.S.,” the research team writes.

But a degree of uncertainty about the timing of the shift remains, even for strong EV markets. “Once investment is sunk into converting production lines, a return to [internal combustion vehicles] becomes comparatively expensive, irrespective of the oil price,” they write. The “imposition of new tariffs” remains the wildcard, they warn.

All eyes on China

Your average EV battery contains four basic components: the cathode (some combination of metals, often including lithium), the anode (typically graphite), the separator that keeps cathode and anode from touching explosively, and an electrolyte solution. As Bloomberg explains, China corners the market on all four.

It is also leading the charge on battery innovation. China’s latest iteration of its lithium ion phosphate battery now rivals its far more expensive kin, the nickel manganese cobalt battery, in energy density. According to its makers, the lithium ion phosphate battery can recharge “in about the same amount of time as it takes to refuel a gas car.”

China’s battery innovations extend far beyond improving the lithium ion phosphate one, however. Chinese battery-manufacturing giant CATL has just made public “six stunning new battery technology innovations, including an electric vehicle battery with driving range of up to 1,500 kilometres and the third generation of its Shenxing Superfast Charging Battery that it says can charge from 10% to 90% in six minutes and 27 seconds,” Zecar reports.

And China’s pre-eminence doesn’t end with batteries: Momenta (autonomous driving), Huawei (super-rapid-charging EV systems, among other things) and Alibaba (“intelligent cockpits”) are all headquartered there.

Meet the 2026/2027 BMW iX3

Western automakers have lost huge amounts of ground in China as new domestic highfliers like BYD seize market share. Western brands like BMW and Volkswagen held just 32% of the market this year, down from 64% in 2020, the Financial Times reports.

BMW is among those seeking to regain traction in the huge Chinese market, and it is doing so through direct collaboration with its hosts. Enter its BMW iX3, an electric sport-utility vehicle equipped with a CATL battery and the latest technology from Momenta, Huawei and Alibaba.

While Germany’s second-largest auto manufacturer intends to sell the iX3 abroad, it is also laser-focused on the domestic Chinese market. “Developed ‘in China, for China, and with China,’” the iX3 “has been deeply localized for China,” BMW states in a January release.

“Tailored to local traffic conditions and usage scenarios, the system is designed to deliver highly capable driver-assistance functions optimized for complex urban environments, highways, and long-distance travel in China, further enhancing safety, comfort, and driving confidence,” the car manufacturer adds.

Volkswagen – Germany’s largest car manufacturer – is also looking to collaborate with China. VW “plans to launch 50 plug-in hybrid and EV models in China by the end of the decade to rejig its petrol-heavy lineup with vehicles designed and engineered locally as part of its ‘in China for China’ strategy,” the Financial Times reports.

This story was originally published by The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original story here. 

Gaye Taylor is a staff writer for The Energy Mix. She is passionate about showcasing what individuals and communities are doing to advance climate solutions, in Canada and around the world. 

The post EV sales in Europe and Asia soared following the start of the war in Iran appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In a January analysis, the London-based think tank Ember compared the energy makeup of China and India at similar personal income levels and uncovered a massive difference. At $11,000, India’s current level and China’s 2012 level when purchasing-power parity is accounted for, India generates only 40% as much coal power as China did. Solar makes up 9% of its energy, compared to “negligible” amounts for 2012 China. India is the world’s most populous country, with almost 1.45 billion people, and China is second, with 1.4 billion.

But solar isn’t the only reason India is on a different trajectory: Ember is one of several global energy watchers drawing attention to the role of zero-emission bikes and tuk-tuks — three-wheeled motorized rickshaws — in the country’s accelerating green shift.

India remains the world’s second-largest net oil importer, half of which is used for vehicles. But Ember suggests that use has nearly peaked, compared to China at the same economic stage. “Road transport oil demand per capita is significantly lower, thanks first to smaller, lighter vehicles and now to the rise of electric vehicles,” write Kingsmill Bond and Sumant Sinha. Altogether, India is using cheap electric technology to “industrialise without the long fossil detour taken by China and the West.” With the country eyeing zero emissions by 2070, further electrifying road vehicles through policies designed to boost ease of use and adoption will play a critical role.

India can’t follow the same net-zero pathways that Western nations have embraced by encouraging EV adoption – only 7.5% of Indians own four-wheel passenger cars. By 2030, the Indian government’s policy think tank NITI Aayog and the Colorado-headquartered Rocky Mountain Institute have projected that 80% of two- and three-wheeled vehicles sold in India could be electric, compared to 30% of private automobiles. The IEA calls electric two- and three-wheelers “the most affordable and accessible entry point into electric mobility.” Not only do they not require significant charging infrastructure, but many of these smaller EVs can easily charge using standard sockets.

Navigating roadblocks

But there are speed bumps. Public charging and battery-swap infrastructure lags in India, especially outside of major cities like Delhi. With only about 25,000 public charging stations and 2,600 battery-swapping kiosks nationwide as of last April, rapid development is needed to reach zero-emission-vehicle goals.

Last year, Cardiff University professor Peter Wells told Polytechnique Insights that India was “lagging behind its ambitions.” Sales figures tell only part of the story. For instance, though nearly 60% of new two-wheelers sold are electric, their overall share was still only 5% in 2024. (Electric three-wheelers are more prevalent, at 50%.) EV performance in India is also still new enough to leave unsettled questions that could affect widespread adoption. “Long charging times, high ownership costs, and limited range can increase the risks for business owners investing in this new technology,” Wells said.

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In an International Council on Clean Transportation report on electric two-wheelers, Zifei Yang writes that buyers “are generally highly price-sensitive and upfront cost is often the main factor in purchase decisions,” since two- and three-wheeled EVs still cost more than gasoline models. But, Yang adds, the five-year total cost of EV ownership is less in India than for their fossil-fuel-powered cousins thanks to “battery capacity-based subsidies provided by the central and some state governments” and lower sales tax on EVs.

Competition is lowering prices, and if manufacturer announcements play out, domestic production capacity will increase by 70%. If India keeps on track with its goals, these small electrified vehicles will help it leave peak oil in the rearview mirror.

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

The post India’s many e-bikes and tuk-tuks are putting peak oil in sight appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Honda is being whipsawed by a decreasing emphasis on electric vehicles in the United States and a rapid shift to electric vehicles in China. The two markets are moving in opposite directions, with companies regretting EV investments in the United States and facing intense competition from upstart EV manufacturers in China.

Honda is not a company that expresses public frustration, but there was a sense of disappointment in its announcement last week about cancelling plans for three models of U.S.-made electric vehicles.

The U.S. government indicated just a few years ago that it would provide policy support for a transition to EVs and encouraged automakers to invest. Honda did just that, including a new battery plant in Ohio in partnership with LG Energy Solution. Then voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House and he dismantled this industrial strategy within months. Honda and other automakers were left exposed. Financial losses and job cuts followed.

That’s infuriating. But here is how Honda describes what happened, filtered through the language of corporate communication: “Previously, with stringent environmental regulations fully implemented in the U.S. and other countries, Honda pursued EV adoption with strong determination that striving for carbon neutrality is a responsibility Honda, as a manufacturer of mobility products, must fulfill for the future,” the company said in a news release. “However, in the U.S., the expansion of the EV market has slowed down due to several factors including the easing of fossil fuel regulations and revisions to EV incentives.”

I live in Columbus, Ohio, and I wrote about Honda for nine years while covering manufacturing and energy for The Columbus Dispatch. The company’s main North American manufacturing campus is less than an hour from Columbus, with factories in Marysville and East Liberty, Ohio.

While Honda is based in Japan, it produces more cars and light trucks in the United States than its home country and also has a major presence in China.

Honda’s announcement included disclosure of a US$15.7 billion charge related to restructuring its operations, which means the company is poised to post its first annual loss in about 70 years.

Previously, Honda had said it would manufacture three electric models in Ohio: the Honda 0 – that’s a zero – SUV, the Honda 0 Saloon and the Acura RSX. Now, all three are cancelled for production or sale in North America. They join other U.S. models that were cut, including those that made it to production, such as the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup and those halted before mass production, such as the all-electric Ram 1500 pickup.

It’s not clear what Honda’s decision means for the Honda-LG battery plant that began production late last year in Jeffersonville, Ohio. That plant, which has about 600 employees, was going to provide batteries for the RSX and other models. “As our company assesses the impact of Honda’s announcement on our operations, we are in discussions with our parent companies regarding related future business opportunities that align with the technology and expertise we have developed,” says Caroline Ramsey, a spokeswoman for the battery plant, in an email.

Honda’s other plants in the state will use the capacity that was slated for EVs to produce gasoline models, including gas-electric hybrids.

The company has struggled with its EV strategy over the last decade. Its greatest success has been the Honda Prologue SUV, introduced in 2024, which is part of a partnership with General Motors and shares components with the Chevrolet Blazer.

The now-scrapped models, headlined by the Honda 0 series, were part of the company’s attempt to signal a new beginning, with fresh designs and new technology.

There’s just so much uncertainty broadly in the U.S. economy right now.

— Hannah Hess, director of energy and climate practice at Rhodium

Honda is a major reason Ohio is a leader in automobile manufacturing employment, trailing only Michigan and Indiana. These next EVs were going to be Honda’s statement about how it intended to compete in the market of the near future.

Now, Honda and other automakers in the U.S. market are left to watch and wait.

Rhodium Group, a research firm, issued a report this week that gives a sense of the scale of investment that took place in recent years and the cancellation of some of that investment.

In 2025, companies said they were cancelling US$22 billion in previously announced EV or battery manufacturing projects in the United States, the report said. This exceeded the $17 billion in new EV or battery manufacturing announcements made last year.

To get a better sense of what’s happening, I looked at the indispensable database of project announcements from Rhodium and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. It shows a spike in investment in 2022, the year President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a law with incentives for EV manufacturing and purchases. Companies announced $80 billion in U.S. investment that year, and another $47 billion in 2023.

About half of last year’s cancellations by dollar value, or $11 billion, involved projects announced in 2022. The largest was a $4.3-billion EV manufacturing project from General Motors in Orion, Michigan. That’s a lot of investment going up in smoke, but I also urge observers to note that most of those 2022 projects are still active, either operational or under construction.

What we don’t know is if the cancellations to date are just the start of a larger wave. “The outlook looks cloudier than it did a year ago,” says Hannah Hess, director of Rhodium’s energy and climate practice. The next steps, she says, will be determined by many factors, including consumer demand for EVs and automakers’ assessment of where the market is heading. “There’s just so much uncertainty broadly in the U.S. economy right now.”

One thing the Rhodium report doesn’t capture are layoffs at plants that remain open, and that’s something else to watch.

SK On, the South Korean battery manufacturer, said last week that it is laying off 958 people at a plant in Commerce, Georgia, that had 2,566 workers before the reduction. The company cited a decline in demand for EV batteries.

Some jobs and investment could come back. The United States could reassert itself as a place where the cars of the future are built.

But gyrations in policies have a cumulative effect, reducing confidence in the staying power of any one policy. The next time a U.S. president says it’s time to invest, automakers are likely going to react more carefully.

The post EV manufacturing is collapsing in the U.S. thanks to Trump appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Of course we need to achieve net-zero by 2050: it’s a chemical necessity for the atmosphere. But this is hardly a goal that your average person can see and touch and wrap their arms around.

Compounding the difficulty is that 2050 is a quarter century away. What do the signposts of success look like between now and then? How do we make sure we’re on track? Where do we course-correct if we’re not?

One way that countries have tried to define progress is by measuring the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The landmark Paris Agreement, signed a decade ago, aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Countries determine themselves what contributions they should make to achieve the aims of the agreement. These plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are required to be “ambitious efforts” toward “achieving the purpose of this Agreement” and to “represent a progression over time.” The contributions are to be set every five years and registered with the United Nations.

Similar to many other nations, Canada has enshrined its Paris Agreement commitments in a national law, the Canada Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, adopted by Parliament in 2021. Under this act, the federal government has rolled out its Emissions Reduction Plan that it regularly updates.

For Canadians, decarbonization is a patriotic act

Unsurprisingly, given that the global community has consciously structured the climate change issue around these yearly measurements of emissions reduction, that’s the primary lens through which the public now views the discussion. A significant proportion of climate change media headlines relate to emissions targets being met, or not met.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this Paris Agreement approach has been useful. Like Canada, most countries in the world have methodically catalogued every scrap of carbon emissions and created policy architectures to start knocking them back. That’s led to a substantial reduction in projected future warming – close to one full degree Celsius by century’s end.

But a decade on from the Paris Agreement, I don’t think that communicating to the public the success or failure of climate progress in terms of megatonnes of carbon reduced – putting this in the metaphorical window every chance we get – is the best we can do.

For one thing, and as I’ve already observed above, it’s not really comprehensible or tangible for most people.

For another, there are better, more compelling stories of success or failure to tell. Let’s take electric vehicles as one example. When the Paris Agreement was signed, electric vehicles were less than 1% of new vehicle sales around the world. Today, they are more than 25% and rising fast. The boom in electric vehicles is actually resulting in less demand for oil and less greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency, for example, pegged the total number of barrels of oil displaced by EV adoption at more than 1.3 million barrels per day in 2024. The agency expects that number to rise to more than five million barrels per day by 2030.

Most compelling of all, EVs are just better machines than gasoline-powered cars. Anyone who drives one loves them and saves money in the long term (especially when the price of oil skyrockets because of the type of international conflicts we’re seeing at the moment).

Heat pumps are another example. In 2015, globally, heat pumps were generally a marginal technology. Now: heat pumps outsell gas furnaces in the United States and in many markets. And because they are more efficient than natural gas furnaces, and run by electricity, they are starting to measurably reduce carbon emissions.

A fork in the road for the Canadian climate change discussion

The rate of uptake of electric vehicles and heat pumps is an extremely important measure of climate change progress. As opposed to emission reductions, they are visible, tangible things.

So as a way of refocusing the climate change discussion in a positive direction, the Canadian Climate Institute is going to start tracking these indicators of progress such as EV and heat pump sales data in the months ahead.

This is also a way of holding governments to account. The recent announcement by Prime Minister Mark Carney that the federal government is aiming for 75% of new cars sold by 2035 to be EVs is a clear commitment. And it’s an opportunity to ensure that the package of policies he has released will get us to that goal.

As I’ve said before in this space, the climate change discussion is a marathon, not a sprint. It has evolved over decades and will continue to do so. The way we talk about the issue in order to ensure that it gets the attention it needs in a volatile world requires constant reinvention to ensure that we’re connecting with our audiences.

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.

The post What does climate change progress look like? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But a Quebec green-tech investor thinks he can break the mould and go mainstream.

This winter, François Boutin-Dufresne, a serial entrepreneur based in Montreal, is launching ShareCharge, an app that connects drivers with private EV chargers. In doing so, he hopes to solve the most pernicious challenge limiting EV adoption: range anxiety.

A 2024 J.D. Power study found that nearly three-quarters of Canadians described themselves as unlikely to buy an EV, with most citing limited range as the main obstacle. Surveys in Quebec, the leader in Canada when it comes to EV adoption, show that two-thirds of respondents also felt the charging network needs expansion, especially in rural areas, although data suggest range anxiety decreases over time for EV owners. In Quebec, some 80% of charging is done at home, making the jurisdiction a prime spot for ShareCharge’s proposition.

Boutin-Dufresne, a former economist for the Government of Canada and the International Monetary Fund, draws inspiration from Uber. ShareCharge would allow users to adjust prices according to supply and demand, with rates fluctuating up or down. For example, more expensive and efficient charging equipment would cost more to rent. He predicts that increased demand during holidays or major events will create hot spots where people can earn more from their chargers. Remote locations will also enable rural owners to charge a premium.

Boutin-Dufresne believes that civil society cannot sit by and wait for the government to build out the necessary EV infrastructure. “People need to take matters into their own hands,” he says.

Filling the infrastructure gap

Quebec launched Canada’s first public charging network for electric vehicles in 2011, before the technology really took off, and now has around 6,500 public stations in Montreal and nearly 30,000 across the province.

But its reach has remained too limited, Boutin-Dufresne argues. The impetus for ShareCharge came from his own struggles as an EV owner. He was tired of what he calls EV charging deserts where he has to travel three kilometres or more to replenish his car.

Boutin-Dufresne’s brash, fast-talking demeanour is reflected in his company. Prior to its planned official rollout in December, ShareCharge already purports to be “the world’s largest EV charging network” on its website, even though it had only 150 registered providers. But Boutin-Dufresne believes the network can quickly attract 10% of Quebec EV drivers and owners of home-charging stations, representing 40,000 new places to power up an EV.

New supply-chain ‘passports’ pave the way for more recycling of EV batteries

“Chargers on the side of the road cost the city of Montreal $50,000 each; ours cost the government nothing to improve access,” Boutin-Dufresne says.

ShareCharge is planning to expand across North America, though Quebec’s abundant, low-cost hydroelectricity will make the service more affordable there than in most other regions. Boutin-Dufresne is betting that Quebec’s fierce winters increase the appeal for drivers to have access to a large private network of EV chargers.

He aims to develop partnerships with Communauto, Quebec’s popular car-sharing service, and other vehicle rental companies. He believes the charging stations will attract Uber drivers, as well as more people who are not property owners, do not have private charging stations, and park their EVs on the street.

Lack of charging stations in high-rise buildings is cutting off access to EVs

But users who want to earn passive income from their EV chargers also have to shoulder the risk of things going wrong. ShareCharge takes care of quality control and validation for those who wish to rent out their charging stations, and individuals rely on the five-star rating system to avoid renting to users with undesirable behaviour, as is done on Uber or Airbnb. The company does not, however, cover risks that may arise from its use. If someone’s charging station is located in their garage and a customer’s car catches fire, it is up to the owner of the charging station to assume the risk.

Public versus private

The company’s plans also raise questions about government subsidies for private chargers. “It’s a public policy failure that the government, which invested massively in this infrastructure, did not think ahead and come up with this idea themselves,” says Thomas Hundal, an automotive journalist in Toronto.

Critics argue that the public sector should retain control of the charging economy to make it more accessible. “Across the world, governments are following the same modus operandi: they invest public funds to build a basic charging infrastructure so that, in a second phase, it becomes attractive for the private sector,” says Colin Pratte, a transport researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques, a Quebec-based non-profit. He argues that instead of ceding the race for better charging infrastructure to private companies that “parasitize the sharing economy under the guise of enabling it,” it would be better to optimize public networks and keep prices low. Pratte believes EV charging is headed toward a repeat of the mistakes that led to the oil shock, where gas prices became unaffordable.

The Quebec government is preparing to invest nearly a billion dollars in its EV transition by 2028. According to its 2023 projections, there will be two million EV drivers in the province by 2030, though EV sales have been losing momentum since late 2024.

Ophélie Dénommée-Marchand is a Quebec-based independent journalist with a focus on fact-checking and investigation. She’s also an encyclopedist for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

The post This Montreal start-up has a solution for range anxiety appeared first on Corporate Knights.

A pillar of the EU economy, the automotive sector’s value chain accounts for more than 13 million direct and indirect jobs and 7% of the EU’s gross domestic product. As recently as 2019, the EU dominated the global auto market. 

Even so, the sector has lost some of its competitiveness, declining by 13 percentage points in market share since 2017. At the same time, Europe’s automakers are investing big in the electrification of their products as China’s low-cost, battery-powered vehicles gain a foothold in the European market. 

Replacing internal-combustion cars with battery-electric ones is essential to fighting climate change. But the transition is also a challenge for automakers facing down a possible slide in demand due to the Trump administration’s barrage of auto-related tariffs. 

“Social leasing,” as the strategy is often called, could be the key to unlocking a policy hat trick by providing low-income or otherwise marginalized consumers with access to zero-emission cars, creating demand certainty for automakers producing EVs, and reducing the carbon imprint of one of the planet’s most polluting sectors. 

Recent initiatives show big demand for social leasing

Simply put, social leasing schemes offer electric vehicles to low- and middle-income households at subsidized lease rates while creating new markets for the automotive industry by ensuring that the vehicles leased are made domestically. 

According to Transport & Environment, an advocacy organization for clean transportation and energy, millions of Europeans, particularly those living in rural areas, are car-dependent and vulnerable to volatile fuel prices. People driving older, less efficient gas cars are hit especially hard when fuel prices spike. 

France initiated a social leasing program that ran for less than two months at the beginning of 2024. The subsidy targeted commuters, and eligibility was based on income and the number of individuals in a household. The brevity of the program stemmed not from failure but from its success. Some 90,000 applications were submitted, out of which 50,000 orders of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) were approved. It was so popular that funds were exhausted within six weeks of the program’s launch.

Washington State in the United States ran a similar program last year through its EV Instant Rebate Program. As in France, uptake was enthusiastic. More than 4,000 residents took advantage of the leasing option. Over the course of three months in 2024, Washington’s Department of Commerce offered $45 million (all figues in U.S. dollars) in rebates to lower-income residents to help them buy or lease zero-emission vehicles. Eligible recipients could receive $9,000 to lease a new EV for three years, $5,000 to buy a new EV, or $2,500 to buy or lease a used EV.

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Ryan Bird, a director at Energy Solutions, which played a central role in implementing the Washington rebate initiative, says that “the goal was really focused on accelerating equitable adoption of EVs. We wanted a program design that would lower as many barriers as possible.”

The funding was dispersed to 6,200 Washingtonians, and the average rebate was $7,400. Based on the Commerce Department’s calculations, the switch from gas to electric vehicles reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 16,783 metric tons and nitrogen oxides by approximately 5,700 kilograms. The department estimated that more than $18 million was saved in avoided costs associated with air pollutants.

Car dealers saw a welcome bounce in sales during the program’s short life. EV sales rose by 30% for an annual increase of 7% over the prior year. “We’re very pleased with the program’s reception and success,” says Amelia Lamb, a spokesperson with the Department of Commerce, via email. “The funds ran out months before we thought they would, which shows that the demand is clearly there for clean transportation and EVs, if people can get help with starting costs.”

Questions raised over who benefits from social leasing

An investigation by PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) into the Washington rebate program found that the initiative was not entirely trouble-free. The Washington effort struggled to meet its targeted number of vulnerable populations and overburdened communities, according to the PBS account, and some beneficiaries failed to meet the low-income criteria.

Nevertheless, preliminary results from an audit show that more than 90% of recipients were genuinely eligible for the program, which was conducted on a self-reporting assessment system.

Bird notes that there was “incredibly high demand at every incentive level, and particularly among low-income customers,” adding that uptake was “a huge validation of the market potential for EVs throughout the entire market. EVs are not just for rich people; everyone wants to have an EV. Everyone wants to reduce their transportation emissions, wants to have clean air.”

Another knock on the program was that it did not foster long-term access to an electric vehicle among the program recipients. Because the rebate’s largest incentive of $9,000 could be used only to lease a new EV, compared to $5,000 to purchase one, rebates made leasing a more affordable option. But after three years the lease would expire, and the car had to be either purchased or returned.

Bird counters that when vehicles are not purchased by the customer once the lease has ended, the EVs enter the secondary market. “There’s a lot of really great data out there that shows that more vehicles on the secondary market are going to lower the prices for everyone,” he adds. (A fact sheet put out by the Commerce Department notes that vehicles coming off leases are a key source of used car inventory.)

EU drives forward with lease subsidies, while U.S. stalls

In an op-ed published in Euronews, Krzysztof Bolesta, Poland’s deputy minister of environment, and Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, a member of the European Parliament, argue that, over a 10-year period, a social leasing scheme could benefit up to 10 million European families while also increasing the automotive sector’s competitiveness. Furthermore, such a program would stimulate the market for used battery-electric cars. 

By pooling demand among member states, the authors note, as many as one million EVs could be sold in the EU every year for the next decade. The surge in volume would cause unit costs to go down, making the social leasing schemes cheaper.

But while enthusiasm grows in Europe, the future of Washington’s EV rebate program is murky, despite its success as measured by every applicable metric. “It’s an unfortunate situation,” Bird says. “Like other states, Washington is facing a challenging budget situation. A lot of actions at the federal level are creating a lot of chaos for state legislatures and the economy at state level.” 

Bird reports that funding for the rebate effort has been reallocated and there are currently no plans to relaunch the program. “The actions taken by the federal government right now are only increasing barriers to EV adoption, especially for low-income residents. We’ll have to wait and see what’s next. We’re certainly very proud of our partnership with Department of Commerce. It’s just been a really exciting program to be a part of.”

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

The post How subsidized leasing can drive EV adoption appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That’s true across the globe, as the climate emergency becomes an ever-present danger. And it’s true here, in Canada, as we grapple with setting a path to net-zero that has widespread buy-in because it makes sense and is necessary. 

It’s a problem that Corporate Knights has devoted the better part of a year trying to solve. The fruits of that labour are contained in an extensive new analysis from our Climate Dollars project, which lays out the capital investments that will be needed to shift nearly all of Canada’s energy use to electricity and set a realistic path to a zero-emission economy by 2050.

Climate Dollars shows that we can well afford to confront and solve the climate emergency, at less than it would cost to perpetuate the obsolete, polluting, 20th-century energy system that we have today. We can still get it done by the middle of this century. And the solutions on offer will keep us safer in the local climate disasters on the horizon while making Canada stronger and more self-reliant against threats to our sovereignty.

With its extensive modelling of the country’s electricity, buildings and transportation sectors, Climate Dollars represents the next inflection point in the response to the global climate emergency. The analysis asks two basic questions:

• What do we have to do to quickly and effectively address one of the most urgent crises facing humanity?

• What is the gap between the capital investments required to decarbonize Canada’s economy and the dollars now being devoted to that task?

Climate Dollars is an ambitious but achievable road map to transform Canada to a zero-emission economy over the next 25 years, at a cost that is comparable to what households, businesses and financial institutions already devote to capital expenditures each year. 

The supply scenario includes upgrading hydroelectric facilities, installing millions of new solar panels, and completing the commitments already made to rebuilding old nuclear plants. But wind energy emerges as the workhorse in any feasible pathway to a zero-emission electricity system in a decarbonized Canada by 2050.

Electricity: Building out the Trans-Canada Transmission Link

The vision of a decarbonized, interconnected, resilient national power system is at the heart of the Climate Dollars analysis. It requires capital investments in solar, wind and storage technologies that average $34.8 billion per year over the next 25 years, in addition to the roughly equal amount of capital needed to electrify the buildings and vehicles.

“The level of investment required is well within the capability of Canadian investors,” says Ralph Torrie, director of research at Corporate Knights, who led the modelling effort. “In fact, in the power sector, capital expenditures have been growing in recent years and are already where we need them to be for decarbonization. The challenge is to shift priorities for that spending to align with the technologies of the new grid.”

The scenario shows Canada nearly doubling its electricity consumption by 2050, from less than 600 to more than 1,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year, and meeting that demand with existing hydroelectric resources plus 178 gigawatts of wind power and 50 GW of solar – including 36 GW from utility-scale solar farms and 14 GW from rooftop arrays. Without a national grid, the necessary wind capacity jumps to 261 GW.

This is our fire drill moment, and it will require the motivational equivalent of war.

—Ralph Torrie, director of research, Corporate Knights

The system is brought together by the Trans-Canada Transmission Link, a coast-to-coast, high-voltage DC line that will foster interprovincial trade in electricity to bring down the cost of decarbonization. The link will cost $30 to $40 billion to build, including converter stations in each province, and deliver three to four times that much in cost savings.

The interprovincial transactions along the Trans-Canada Transmission Link will be a win for all provinces, whether they’re buying or selling electricity. The prospect of stable domestic markets will increase the incentive for hydropower-rich Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia to develop their wind resources. And the easy availability of electrons will help out provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario that will be hard pressed to independently develop all the renewable generation they’ll need to decarbonize their economies by 2050.

Buildings: Heat pumps lead the way

In an electrified energy system, the building stock is converted to use heat pumps for space heating. It will take an all-in effort to phase out fossil-fuel-powered heating and cooling by mid-century in Canada’s residential and commercial buildings, but the required average investment of $14.8 billion per year is just 11.5% of the $129 billion Canadian households and businesses already invest in the existing building stock every year.

Even with the efficiency of heat pumps, all this electricity use for heating creates an annual peak in electricity consumption in early January. It is this winter peak that determines the amount of generating capacity needed, and therefore the amount of capital required to build the system out. An aggressive program of deep energy retrofits could reduce the capital needed to provide for the winter peak by $100 billion, but with current industry costs and business practices, the retrofits would cost five times that much. With its focus on heat pumps, the Climate Dollars modelling defaults to the simplest, least expensive path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the midst of a global climate emergency.

Transport: The battery under your hood

Canada’s shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles is already well under way. EV sales are growing exponentially, and drivers can look forward to a clean energy dividend from fuel and maintenance savings of up to $1.2 trillion through 2050, after subtracting the cost of the electricity to run the vehicles.

The Climate Dollars modelling also reveals a powerful opportunity that places the battery under the hood (or maybe the floor) of your electric car at the centre of the plan to bring Canada’s emissions to zero by 2050.

Short-term energy storage is the key to the renewable grid, delivering the flexibility to match the peaks and valleys of intermittent electricity supply with constantly fluctuating demand. In the Climate Dollars scenario, the most affordable way to deliver that reliability is with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems that allow EVs to charge when solar and wind are abundant and cheap, then release part of that charge to the grid when demand is highest.

The Climate Dollars modelling places the extra cost to electrify all cars and trucks and build the V2G-supporting charging network at $306 billion, an average of $12 billion per year. The challenge will be to get those cars and trucks on the road soon enough to support a 2050 decarbonization deadline, and to build out the charging network fast enough that it doesn’t become a barrier to EV adoption. The average vehicle stays on the road for 15 years or more, so there is no time to lose in scaling up EVs in Canada. The Climate Dollars decarbonization scenario includes annual investment in this sector that peaks at $17.5 billion in 2035 and then begins to decline as EVs reach and surpass price parity with combustion vehicles.

By mid-century, transportation will become a major electricity-using sector, consuming 150 TWh a year, as much electricity as all of Ontario consumes now. V2G cuts the cost of grid decarbonization in half, power companies save $10,000 per vehicle compared to the higher cost of utility-scale storage, and drivers receive a steady flow of V2G revenue if they choose to share part of their battery capacity with the grid.

The bottom line

The in-depth modelling behind Climate Dollars shows that we can renew local and provincial economies and strengthen the Canadian federation while delivering reliable, affordable energy, every hour of every day of the year. The cost of an effective, comprehensive energy transition is far less than what we are already beginning to pay for the impacts of climate change, across Canada and around the world.

And there’s every reason to believe that taking action at the pace and scale we need will drive down the cost of the energy transition itself as solutions scale up, efficiencies accumulate and unit costs are reduced.

The bottom line? The modelling shows that we can bring the economy to zero emissions at a cost of about $1.5 trillion, or $60 billion per year, largely by reallocating some of the more than $640 billion that private and public investors already pour into capital expenditures every year. Or we can drive that cost up by $100 billion or more if we fail to build the Trans-Canada Transmission Link, choose a more expensive option for electricity storage, or build new nuclear generating capacity that costs $45 to $65 billion more than competing renewable-energy options.

“This is our fire drill moment, and it will require the motivational equivalent of war,” Torrie stresses. “We need to get to the point where we are responding to climate change as an emergency. We need to make smart choices and we need to build quickly, not only to respond to climate change but to secure Canada’s position in the emerging sustainable economy.” 

The scenario analysis shows that the cost of the transition can vary by hundreds of billions of dollars depending on whether we make smart choices about east–west connections and how we provide the storage the renewable grid requires. It also shows that expensive, slow measures like new nuclear builds, deep residential retrofits and transit megaprojects drive up the cost of the transition and are less effective than electrification and an integrated, renewables-based grid.

What’s next

As Prime Minister Carney said, speed and imagination are two must-have ingredients for Canada. We won’t succeed by tinkering around the edges of an existing system that needs to be reimagined and rebuilt from the ground up. 

That’s why the decisions we make today will determine our path to success or failure – and to succeed, we’ll need to think bigger and more ambitiously than we have in a very long time.

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon.

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Case in point: electric bus adoption. The Toronto Transit Commission has 400 in operation – a fifth of its fleet – and claims to be North America’s leader. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has about 500 – less than a 10th of its fleet – and aims to complete the transition by 2040. Metrolinx, which operates hundreds of GO buses in the Greater Toronto region, is still plodding through a six-stage procurement initiative.

But the pace of conversion isn’t slow everywhere. Transport for London (TfL), for instance, now has 1,900 e-buses, while Santiago, Chile, has 1,800, up from just two in 2017. The agency, known formally as Red Metropolitana de Movilidad (RMM), says it will have 4,400 e-buses by next year – 68% of its total fleet – and asserts that it has become the second-largest e-bus operator in the world, outside China. (RMM runs 391 bus lines that carry 3.3 million passengers per day across Greater Santiago, which has a population of almost seven million people.)

China, in fact, is the telling detail in this decarbonization narrative. TfL’s new e-buses, including new double-deckers, are made by Shenzhen-based BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles. Santiago’s are also sourced from Chinese manufacturers. The unit prices have fallen from about US$400,000, when the agency secured its first pilot vehicles, to about US$260,000 today, according to Alejandro Schmidt, chief technology officer.

“The buses we have in operation are from China,” he adds. “They have been very aggressive in terms of the pricing of the product, but now we are seeing also competition from European OEMs like Volvo, Scania and Daimler, with their bodies built in Brazil.” Even more relevant: the Chinese bus makers can deliver vehicles in six to nine months, which is considerably faster than what’s on offer among other manufacturers.

As Chile’s transportation minister, Juan Carlos Muñoz, an academic specializing in transit and logistics, put it at an international forum in Leipzig on May 21, “We do not close the door to technologies coming from any country, and that has been very good in terms of finding competition. It has been key for us to allow every charging system in the world to be open for operators to provide.” A former board member of Santiago’s Metro system, Muñoz has been one of the driving forces behind the electrification of the city’s far-flung transit agency.

Santiago’s transformation isn’t only about going after low-cost suppliers, and as such serves as an interesting model for transit operators looking to, well, accelerate.

The national government in Chile provides transit subsidies and has also agreed to backstop private-sector investment in the new fleets. (The Canadian government in 2023 kicked in $700 million for the TTC’s e-bus fleet.) Early on, Schmidt explains, the first external investors were actually Chilean electrical utilities, which had a commercial interest in fleet electrification. But the financing now also comes from private equity firms, which ink leasing deals with the local operators (several municipal bus companies operate within Metro Santiago).

Hastening the changeover is a law banning the purchase of diesel buses and an open procurement approach that sets out the performance specifications. However, the agency’s e-bus procurement policy doesn’t include pre-conditions stipulating locally manufactured content – a reflection of Chile’s long-standing and at times controversial neo-liberal political outlook in the post-Pinochet era. “We are a very open economy,” Schmidt says, adding that there’s no vehicle production in Chile, and thus no incumbent that needs to be protected, as is the case in Brazil as well as North America (New Flyer Industries is the dominant supplier).

Energy, of course, is the final piece of this puzzle. According to Schmidt, Chile’s electricity mix includes hydro, fossil fuels and a rapidly expanding portfolio of solar, in the country’s north, and offshore wind, in the south. “We’re reaching 75% green energy,” he says. For the e-bus fleet operators, the trick has been to ensure that they’re not overly exposed to high spot market rates for green energy. The agency is also looking at using hydrogen to round out the supply of low-carbon electricity. “We’re trying to figure out the best way to solve these challenges,” Schmidt says.

Public response has been, unsurprisingly, positive. Electric buses are quieter and provide a smoother ride, and there are predictable air-quality improvements.

With RMM’s e-bus transition now irreversible, Schmidt explains that Santiago’s remarkable pivot was the result, initially, of some political risk-taking at the national level, plus a totally open approach to technology procurement, the involvement of private capital and the willingness of the local bus operators to make the shift. “We weren’t able to do it by ourselves.”

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The road to vehicular electrification seems to be paved with both great ambition and serious bumps. A heady optimism surrounded EVs after Tesla launched its first highway-legal roadster in 2008. In the decade to follow, manufacturers rushed to introduce their own models as the market took off. 

But global sales have slowed in recent years. The exuberance of early adopters has been replaced by the more rational, cost-conscious calculations of mainstream buyers. In some places, incentivizing subsidies have been dropped and charging infrastructure has lagged. Meanwhile, the massive Chinese market has shown more interest in its own brands than Western imports. 

All of this volatility has led many brands – Volvo, GM, Ford, Tesla and Mercedes among them – to walk back on their ambitions: retracted promises of all-electric fleets, reduced capital investment in their EV lines and resurrected conventional models.

But not Jaguar. The British luxury brand is moving in the other direction. As of 2026, it will sell nothing but electric cars. The bold move is part of a complete rebrand by parent company Jaguar Land Rover, which is ditching its emblematic leaping feline, diversifying its portfolio to four brands (Jaguar, Range Rover, Defender and Discovery) and moving Jaguar from the premium segment into the even more rarefied territory of super-luxury. 

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Rawdon Glover, managing director at Jaguar since March 2023, is addressing the company’s sagging sales with a complete reboot. All of Jaguar’s existent models (including its EV, the I-Pace) are being discontinued while it enters a kind of one-year dormancy, with no new sales this year. In 2026, it intends to re-emerge with three entirely new, all-electric models: a four-door grand tourer called the Type OO, which made its real-world debut in Paris in March, and two SUVs, none of which will cost less than US$155,000.

All three are expected to offer all-wheel drive, fast charging (10% to 80% in roughly 13 minutes) and ranges around 700 kilometres. The company will also be offering its EV clients a suite of services, including memberships in supercharging-station clubs, designer wallbox chargers for their homes and an exclusive drive-share program.

Glover’s strategy for rescuing the Jaguar brand seems to be more about profitability than sustainability, but there’s nothing wrong with that. “Luxury brands create irrational need,” Glover told Britain’s Top Gear magazine last year. “No one needs a Hermès work bag.” Nor does anybody need an ultra-luxury car, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the EV marketed as an object of desire.

Time will tell if Jaguar’s wager pays off. Industry insiders believe that by narrowing its portfolio and targeting a very select clientele, Jaguar will reap higher returns. If it does, it will have paved at least one viable path to an EV-only future. 

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer who focuses on the issues that will most impact the next generation: sustainability and education. 

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Extensive new modelling by Corporate Knights’ Climate Dollars project reveals that the rapid transformation we need is within our grasp. But the buildings and transport sectors each hold an essential piece of the solution.

• Any successful effort to bring Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 must shift the entire building stock to use heat pumps for space heating and cooling, while striking the best balance in each province between the cost and benefits of deep energy-efficiency retrofits.
• The Climate Dollars modelling places the batteries in electric vehicles at the centre of the decarbonization effort. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems allow EVs to charge when solar and wind are abundant and cheap, then release part of that charge to the grid when demand is highest, reducing the cost of decarbonizing by $8,000 per vehicle – as long as those millions of EVs are on the road in time to make a difference.

The analysis shows that decarbonizing our energy system by mid-century will be a big, bold nation-building project in which every sector plays an essential part. We can meet that target faster and at less cost by looking at the electricity system, buildings and road transport as an integrated whole, rather than trying to shift each sector on its own.

Climate Dollars modelling points to a realistic path to eliminate Canada’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s achievable and affordable, requiring a manageable share of the capital dollars the country already invests each year. It delivers hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs in the rapidly emerging new energy economy.

The capital expenditure gap in buildings and transport

Corporate Knights set up the Climate Dollars project to measure the gap between current climate-related capital investments and the funding required to meet the country’s climate goals. Much of that investment will be for the renewable electricity supply and a project we’re calling the Trans-Canada Transmission Link that deliver the renewable energy to power Canada’s buildings, vehicles, industry and agriculture.

The other key pillars of any decarbonization plan are to make each of those sectors as energy-efficient as possible and shift their consumption from fossil fuels to clean electricity. The Climate Dollars modelling shows those changes increasing electricity demand from less than 600 to nearly 1,000 terawatt-hours per year, including 490 TWh in homes and commercial buildings and 150 TWh from road transport.

The other key pillars of any decarbonization plan are to make each of those sectors as energy-efficient as possible and shift their consumption from fossil fuels to clean electricity. The Climate Dollars modelling shows those changes increasing electricity demand from less than 600 to more than 1,000 terawatt-hours per year, including about 335 TWh in homes and commercial buildings and up to 290 TWh from road transport.

Both of these sectors can make it easier and less expensive for the grid to decarbonize. But only if they can clear a large gap between current capital expenditures and the levels that will be needed to get the job done.

For Canada’s nine million residential buildings and one million commercial buildings, the two decarbonization scenarios in the Climate Dollars analysis require additional capital expenditures between $14 billion and $35 billion per year through 2050. The more ambitious scenario, combining heat pump conversions with deep energy retrofits in the residential sector, reduces electricity consumption in all provinces but Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Heat pump conversions without the efficiency upgrades cost far less but increase the investment needed to ensure a renewable electricity supply through the winter months.

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In response to the affordable housing crisis, Canada will also see construction of hundreds of thousands of new residential buildings by 2030, the majority of them multi-family structures. They’ll all have to be built to the highest possible energy-efficiency standard and equipped with air-source or ground-source heat pumps, not fossil-fuelled heating or cooling.

In transport, additional capital investment of $270 to $300 billion over the next 25 years will be needed to complete the shift to electric vehicles and install 555,000 new public charging stations, with V2G technology turning the batteries in those cars into a valuable grid resource. Annual investment peaks at $17.5 billion in 2032 and then starts falling as the cost premium for personal EVs declines throughout the 2030s.

Decarbonizing buildings means investing in ourselves

Every aspect of the Climate Dollars modelling points to the investments that will make Canadians’ lives safer, healthier and more affordable. The buildings sector is where the response to climate change literally comes home. Our buildings must be electrified and prepared for the extreme weather that is already locked and loaded in the atmosphere as a result of past and present greenhouse gas emissions. Heat pumps and efficiency improvements in our building stock are also essential enabling investments for the electricity supply sector to be able to make the transition to a renewables-based grid. In a cascading, global climate emergency, the simplest, cheapest path to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from building energy use is to replace fossil-fuelled heating and cooling with heat pumps at a cost of $370 billion through 2050, or about $13.6 billion per year.

More extensive building retrofits deliver benefits far beyond energy savings and emission reductions. They help protect our homes and businesses from storms and flooding, wildfires, heat waves and power outages that will become more severe and frequent as the years go by. A national energy-retrofit mission would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in a thriving, new business sector, helping to build stronger communities and avert the worst impacts of climate change.

Every aspect of the Climate Dollars modelling points to the investments that will make Canadians’ lives safer, healthier and more affordable.

Even assuming that economies of scale bring down the cost of building retrofits by 50% by 2035, it would take an additional $500 billion over the next 25 years, an average of $20 billion per year, to recondition the entire building stock. Canadians actually invest much more than that in existing buildings; in 2024 alone capital expenditures on building renovations totalled $101 billion in the residential sector and $28 billion in the commercial sector.

But while those improvements included some energy-efficiency upgrading, the priorities for building upgrades are generally directed more toward interior redecoration and refitting. This is a recurring theme in the analysis of decarbonization – it is not so much an increase in the total capital that is required but rather shifts in the way capital is allocated, projects are planned and organized, a new work force is trained and deployed, and government incentives are designed for building retrofits.

Road transport is already decarbonizing

In road transport, the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles is already well under way. Electric vehicle sales in Canada are growing exponentially. And with the price gap expected to narrow through 2035, drivers can look forward to a clean-energy dividend on fuel of up to $1.2 trillion through 2050, after subtracting the cost of the electricity to run the vehicles.

But we’ll have to move quickly to seize the moment. The average car or light truck stays on the road for 15 years, and some commercial trucks even longer, so getting to a zero-emission fleet by 2050 means phasing out new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2035.

Climate Dollars calculates a capital expenditure gap of $300 billion to fully electrify road transportation, including the cost of a V2G-enabled charging infrastructure. But that’s based on the assumption that the price difference between internal combustion and electric vehicles will gradually decline, reaching parity in the 2030s, with EVs then becoming less expensive than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. If there were no price difference today, the capital cost of electrifying the entire road transport sector would tumble to just $57 billion between 2025 and 2050.

Decarbonizing car culture

Cars and trucks have shaped the urban form of our communities and the supply chains that sustain them for the last century. Canadians travelled an average 12,000 kilometres per person per year in 2022, not counting long-distance trips, and made 82% of those trips in cars and light trucks.

Given this heavy reliance on private vehicles, the Climate Dollars analysis shows only one viable path to decarbonizing transportation by 2050.

The sector can and should achieve some emission reductions by cutting down on the number and distance of car and truck trips, boosting public transit, moving more freight by rail, and over the short term, making internal combustion vehicles more fuel-efficient. Those are all worthy and important steps to take.

But bringing every part of the transportation system to zero emissions by 2050 must begin with rapid electrification for a fleet of cars, pickups, SUVs and commercial trucks. Along the way, vehicle-to-grid technology will dramatically reduce the cost of delivering a decarbonized electricity grid.

* * *

Corporate Knights will soon be releasing the full Climate Dollars analysis to drive discussion on the opportunities ahead, and how Canada can align with the investment strategies that allies in the European Union and elsewhere are already pursuing.

Corporate Knights is able to carry out this research thanks to support from the McConnell Foundation, the Trottier Family Foundation, the Chisholm Thomson Family Foundation and the Graham Boeckh Foundation.

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