In her keynote speech at the flagship event, Diana Fox Carney called climate change “the biggest challenge of our lifetime” and said the movement’s task is to convince people “that a more climate-friendly future is not only possible, it’s the one everyone wants” – safer, more inclusive and more just. But subsequent speakers charged that Canada is backsliding on climate performance, weakening standards and putting its own zero-emission targets beyond reach.

Fox Carney is a well-known economist, policy expert and adviser on climate issues to global investors – and her husband is Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has faced criticism from environmental groups on his climate agenda thus far. The former central banker has been a powerful proponent of sustainable finance, but his response to growing global protectionism has been, in part, to unleash Canada’s fossil-fuel industries, roll back emissions caps and support new pipelines.

In her opening remarks, Fox Carney did note that economic concerns such as “security and affordability” have been edging out climate concerns. Nonetheless, she added, “we need a shared sense of purpose around these issues.” Climate champions need to act fast, she said, and offer “solutions that are affordable, practical and able to improve people’s lives now.”

“It’s hard to overthrow legacy systems,” Fox Carney observed. Even so, “the question is not ‘Is change coming?’ The question is ‘Will Canada lead this change?’” she concluded, to loud applause.

Canada’s climate crawl

Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, received even more applause for calling out Canadian complacency. Why, he asked, is Canada ignoring the climate threat? Forget the United Nations’ 1.5°C target for global warming, he said: Canada has already warmed by 2.5°C over previous levels, and the wildfire summers of 2023 and 2025 demonstrated the urgent need to prevent even greater destruction.

Smith noted that only one-third of recent media stories about flooding in Canada refer to the longer-term climate trends. He also challenged the country’s overarching focus on the costs of climate action, rather than the true costs of inaction. In the past decade, forest fires have caused $37 billion in insured damage, two and a half times more than in the previous 10-year period. And uninsured losses, Smith said, are usually double those of insured properties.

Canadians are also falling behind on electric vehicles, Smith said. “Globally, 30% of cars being sold today are EVs. But the story of gasoline-car decline is not something we absorb as Canadians.” In the last quarter of 2025, just 11% of the cars sold in Canada were electric.

Between the past and the future

While Canadians line up at the gas pumps, the electric future is already here. According to Smith, 75% of new demand for electricity last year was met by solar sources. Battery storage in 2025 grew faster than ever. Last year, China exported $22 billion in green and solar technologies.

With the United States’ energy transition struggling under Trump, Canadian innovators have a chance to stand out on world markets. But that advantage may not last long. Smith predicted that a Democratic win in the midterm elections in November will rekindle the U.S. sustainability economy: “The North American focus on climate change is about to kick into gear, again.”

But some speakers pointed out that climate inaction is not an incidental failure of Canadians not paying attention, but a deliberate result of lobbying campaigns run by the resource-extraction industries. “Fossil-fuel disinformation is driving a lot of these rollbacks,” said Laura Tozer, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Toronto. While many other countries are racing ahead on climate issues, she said, in Canada and the United States, “fossil-fuel owners are using these times of turmoil to double down.”

Signs of progress

How to get beyond this impasse? One of the most effective messages came from Joannah Lawson, a principal of the Brian + Joannah Lawson Family Foundation, the platinum sponsor of Toronto Climate Week. A former business consultant, Lawson’s opening remarks offered clarity. Beneath an image of the earth hanging alone in space, she said, “The atmosphere is the only thing keeping us alive.” But now, she says, “we’re putting too much carbon into the atmosphere.”

In response to this crisis, Lawson offered four reasons why she remains hopeful:

1) Climate change is caused by humans, which means humans can also fix it.

2) The transition to clean energy is well underway. (In fact, she said, renewables production has tripled in the last 20 years.)

3) Regenerative agriculture, or holistic farming that focuses on soil health, is a powerful lever to reverse climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

4) Canada has huge nature resources to preserve – and we’re doing it! Last month, for instance, the Carney government released Canada’s first national strategy for protecting nature, which came with $3.8 billion for conservation and protection.

Transforming climate change from existential crisis to solvable problem could be key to creating consensus and investing in the future. With Canada falling behind, Fox Carney noted, “We must stop arguing amongst ourselves.” The current struggle, she said, “will shape the economic prospects of our country for years to come.”

The post At Toronto Climate Week, experts call out Canada’s climate complacency appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Here’s a look at how protectionist measures are pushing countries into walled markets that limit the flow of low-cost clean technologies:

Since 2020, countries around the world have implemented nearly 200 trade policies targeting clean energy, compared to only 40 in the five years before.

Close to 40% of those trade measures were protectionist, and 70% targeted three technologies: solar power, batteries and electric vehicles.

China dominates all three of those sectors, and almost half of its vehicle exports are now electric.

The United States has imposed a 100% tariff on those EVs and raised its tariff on Chinese solar to 50%.

Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization says that non-tariff restrictions are on the rise and they can be up to 10 times more restrictive than tariffs.

All these barriers are changing the flow of green goods: 31% of China’s cleantech exports now go to emerging markets, up from 23% in 2022.

To circumvent trade restrictions and tap new markets, Chinese firms have pledged more than US$210 billion for overseas green manufacturing since 2022.

From the spring 2026 edition of the magazine

Sources: Net Zero Policy Lab, International Energy Association, OECD, WTO, BloombergNEF

The post A surge in protectionism is reshaping global markets for green technologies appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Rather, the new strategy is to ask companies – often in private – to address the financial risks of short-term profit-seeking in oil and gas while long-term forecasts point to the success of cheaper, cleaner energy alternatives. This puts the focus on corporate transition plans, especially in utilities, oil and gas, and banking, three sectors at the front lines of climate risk.

“Those who are filing shareholder resolutions are keen that the company actually takes a holistic approach to decarbonization and starts undertaking activities that are on a pathway to reducing emissions,” says Felix Nagrawala, senior research manager at U.K.–based non-profit ShareAction.

In an April webinar hosted by the non-profit shareholder action group As You Sow, Annie Sanders, director of shareholder advocacy for U.S.-based sustainable fund company Green Century, said that climate-oriented shareholder proposals are increasingly focused on how companies operationalize credible, science-based transition plans. “The goal here is to create a road map, adjust as you go and be transparent about it for greenhouse gas reduction.”

In the last three years, Green Century has negotiated agreements with five semiconductor companies, including Intel and Nvidia, to disclose key elements of their climate transition strategies. The company has ramped up its work this year, engaging with nine companies on climate and securing two commitments to publish transition plans.

Shareholder campaigns at BP and Shell this spring illustrate this new strategy. Dutch-based shareholder advocate Follow This and 23 investors managing €1.5 trillion filed proposals calling on the London-based fossil fuel giants to publish their plans for managing capital expenditures, oil and gas production, and cash flows under International Energy Agency scenarios of declining fossil fuel demand in the 2030s.

Resistance backfires on BP

BP decided to reject the Follow This resolution from its April 23 annual meeting agenda, saying it didn’t meet legal standards for inclusion. The decision, along with management proposals to scrap existing climate-change reporting requirements and to move from in-person to virtual annual meetings, backfired badly on the company.

Shareholders voted more than 50% against the management proposals in what The Guardian called a climate rebellion by investors. As a result, Follow This was able to preserve valuable climate reporting and in-person meetings and bring considerable attention to BP’s lack of public transition planning.

In marked contrast with BP, investor response to climate issues at the Shell meeting on May 19 was lukewarm as discussion was dominated by the Iran war oil crisis. The climate transition resolution attracted only 13% support, lower than previous years’ proposals from Follow This. Investors “should not be distracted by temporary war profits and lose sight of the medium and long-term,” Follow This founder Mark van Baal said.

In Canada, shareholder attention on climate issues is focused on Canadian banks, which are major lenders and underwriters to the country’s large oil and gas sector. This spring, Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest, and third-ranked Scotiabank cancelled their financed emission-reduction targets in a sign of the banking industry’s retreat from climate issues.

In the last two years, the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) and a coalition of investors including the large Danish PFA pension fund, shifted their attention, filing resolutions and engaging privately to encourage the banks to publish their energy finance ratios (EFRs). The EFR is a metric comparing each bank’s lending and underwriting in low-carbon and high-carbon energy sources.

This year, Scotiabank became the first Canadian bank to release its ratio, and National Bank said it would disclose its ratio starting next year. At 0.65:1 low-carbon to fossil-fuel financing, Scotiabank’s ratio is a far cry from what’s needed. BloombergNEF estimates that a ratio of 4:1 is needed worldwide to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

SHARE associate director Amanda Carr says disclosure of the EFR can be a useful tool to focus bank management on its role in financing the energy transition. “We know that for many of the banks we are engaging with, this ratio is now reported to the C-suite quarterly,” she says in an email. “It puts the energy transition into dollars and cents, something that all financial institutions work with every day.”

A split between U.S. and European investors

In Europe, support for environmental and social resolutions is still quite strong (about 91% on average in 2025), according to Morningstar. In the United States, average support for ESG resolutions by large investors was 31% on average, down from 42% in 2023.

The number of social and environmental resolutions has also dropped sharply in the United States. According to As You Sow’s recent Proxy Preview report, 184 environmental, social and sustainable-governance-related shareholder resolutions were filed in the United States in 2026, 47% lower than last year.

The drop is due to continued hostility for sustainable investing in the United States created by Republican-led states, members of Congress and right-wing social media celebrities. In 2024, ExxonMobil further intensified the chill on shareholder activism by filing a punishing lawsuit against As You Sow and Arjuna Capital, challenging their right to file ESG proposals.

The Securities and Exchange Commission under the second Trump administration has also made it easier for companies to exclude proposals from their annual meetings. In November, the SEC announced it would no longer rule on the admissibility of shareholder proposals submitted to annual meetings, giving companies the right to reject any proposals except on very narrow grounds.

But this doesn’t mean that shareholders have become powerless. Some shareholders have sued companies for their right to be heard after companies rejected their proposals. Other companies have decided to hear shareholders out in private, rather than assume the reputational risk of the courts and a poisonous social media environment.

The future is murky. Forecasters are saying the protracted Iran war means that oil and gas prices will stay higher for longer, creating fossil-fuel-industry demands on government to support expansion of liquefied natural gas projects and oil pipelines, particularly in North America. At the same time, higher prices are also expected to erode global fossil fuel consumption, especially in China and India. This raises long-term risks for investors in fossil fuel companies just as short-term gains appear to be rising.

For Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, the shareholder process will become even more important, although in a behind-the-scenes kind of way to escape growing polarization over fossil fuels and climate.

Shareholder engagement will be conducted “increasingly through private dialogues to avoid the toxicity and unpredictability of the public square,” Behar told the As You Sow webinar in April. “Trust that’s built on long-term relationships serves both parties to get the work done and not be distracted by trolls seeking to inject politics into good business practices.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly described PFA as a Dutch pension fund. It is a Danish pension fund. The article has been updated to reflect this.

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 Shareholder activists are changing tactics for promoting sustainability appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As an industrial powerhouse, it has more recently turned into an example of Chinese green transformation, boasting the world’s first smart and zero-carbon port that is 100% electricity driven and green-energy backed. Onsite industrial-scale wind turbines and solar panels ensure renewable-energy self-sufficiency in the 10th-busiest port in the world, handling more than 20 million shipping containers annually.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that China chose to host last year’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, on the banks of the Bohai Sea, in yet one more show of growing influence from Beijing. With twice the number of world leaders in attendance since the summit launch in 2001, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Indian head of state Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping called for an end to the “Cold War mentality” that was triggering “turbulence and transformation” and called for “equal and orderly multipolarization” of the world that could pave the way to a “more just and equitable global governance system.”

The group pledged increased cooperation in energy, infrastructure, green industry, AI and innovation. These are the economic pillars of the present and the future that is being built. And they are the architecture for a new kind of cold war, one over our ecological future, propelled by a growing geopolitical rivalry between the giants of the 21st century.

Great power rivalry

In an article last year in Foreign Policy magazine, the influential historian and futurist Nils Gilman argued that the advent of the “ecological cold war” is upon us, driven by a struggle “over the metabolic basis of modern industrial society.”

“Call it a Green Entente vs an Axis of Petrostates,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

In the wider transition to a low-carbon economy, China needs no introduction. Its influence in the green transition – through supply chain routes and cheap hardware – is plain to see. It has installed more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, the United Nations has said. Its capacity to drive down the cost of clean technologies has been a boon for reining in the growth of carbon emissions, giving vast swaths of the planet the tools to shift to renewables.

It has also played at least some role in the U.S. decision to retreat from climate policies, with a Trump administration that has made a U-turn to a fossil fuel agenda and adopted protectionist measures in an “America first” attempt to decouple from Chinese economic might. At the same time, the United States has signalled a sharp interest in ridding itself of dependency on China for critical minerals, which are not just key to green tech but intrinsic to military hardware. This year, Trump launched “Project Vault,” which includes loans for domestic mining and a bid to stockpile reserves.

Europe has responded to growing national backlash to climate policies by cooling them down and doubling down on its own protectionist measures. In the midst of all this, emerging economies that could help accelerate the energy transition are running up against roadblocks.

A piece of the green pie

While some observers take issue with Cold War framing, others are mapping out the ripple effects of these geopolitical tensions when it comes to the race to slow down planetary warming. “We are in the midst of a green cold war,” agrees economist Jorge Arbache, a professor at the University of Brasília. “The implications are that China, which is already leading, will probably lead even more because China will keep investing in green production.”

For Arbache, the heart of the struggle has to do with the amount of money that is at stake. Suffice to say, it’s a lot. One 2025 estimate from the Boston Consulting Group pegs the opportunities embedded in four key sectors – critical minerals, green tech manufacturing, green industrial material and green services – as US$11 trillion by 2040. “We are talking about an extremely big business agenda, and of course there is a competition in terms of who will eat what size of the cake,” Arbache says.

Although many developed countries are well positioned to participate in that agenda, it is also true that they do not necessarily have the key elements, such as critical minerals, available clean energy, carbon markets, abundant water and biodiversity. “Geography is back,” Arbache says. That means that developing economies that do have those assets could find themselves better positioned than before. “It gives those economies a bargaining power that they did not have very recently,” he says.

Chaos vs. foresight

But the name of the game, lately at least, has been chaos, driven by its number-one agent, U.S. President Donald Trump. “If I could sum it up, it’s better to govern chaos, because order is too costly,” observes Sabino Vaca Narvaja, a political scientist and former Argentine ambassador to China. “A fragmented society is easier to manipulate.”

China, of course, is steeped in contradiction, pouring money into coal projects, and facing accusations of human rights violations. It also has a different logic to its movements, Vaca Narvaja notes, one that bets on the long term. And so far, it has paid off.

The Chinese incursion into the green market was not about business at the outset, Arbache notes; it was about domestic security. Beijing registered, decades ago, the vulnerability it could face when it came to power supply. A desire to become energy self-sufficient shifted it into green-tech development, which has positioned it as a leader in renewables development. It now has a stranglehold on a huge chunk of the critical-minerals market, controlling 50% of global production and 87% of processing and refining.

China’s formula also relies on the rest of the world, Vaca Narvaja notes. It needs the world to buy its products. And it is. “China’s cleantech products are going basically everywhere in the world,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, in a conversation held last year on China’s climate path amid trade tensions.

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For all major cleantech products except batteries, “the Global South, broadly understood, has overtaken the old developed world as the larger destination,” Myllyvirta said. There are countries with impressive uptake in solar, such as Pakistan, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, but it’s the broad-based nature of the boom that’s sending the biggest signal. “From one side, there is the cost competitiveness of Chinese supply, and from the other side, there is a massive diversity of drivers,” he said.

Electrification is everywhere. Cities are turning to electric buses. Drivers are turning to electric vehicles. Governments and individuals alike are turning to solar power in the Middle East and Africa. Clean-energy sectors continued to drive growth in China in 2025, doubling in value from 2022 to US$2.1 trillion – which is equal to the economies of Brazil or Canada, according to an analysis from the think tank Carbon Brief.

At the same time, a glut in solar panel production is leading to uncertainty. Beijing set its 2026 growth target between 4.5% and 5%, the lowest level in 35 years, noting a “grave and complex” landscape.

“I don’t think we will be talking about renewable energy the way we are if it wasn’t for what China has been able to accomplish in the last decade,” says Jai Asundi, executive director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, in Bangalore, India. “Taking a technology that has been developed somewhere else, and driving the price down. A classic capitalistic efficiency market. That is, if you are more efficient in the way you use a resource, then the capital flows to you.”

Emerging economies demand protagonism

The flip side of that efficient flow of capital, of course, is that it can make it difficult for other economies to compete. Take a place like India, where attempts to jump-start domestic green-energy device production have stalled. “Energy prices are very high in India. So to produce something is already very costly. And some of these technologies are very energy intensive,” Asundi says.

India, which represents 17% of the world’s population, is a prescient case study for wide swaths of the world that are trying to shrink a yawning inequality gap by raising gross domestic product, without contributing to global warming. The developed world built its industrialized wealth at the expense of the environment. That is no longer an option.

“What we are struggling with is this notion of how we work as an ecosystem,” Asundi says. “How do we work as a global society as opposed to a country-driven society? Because after all, climate change is not a country phenomenon; it is a global phenomenon.”

Chen Yu, senior policy officer at the non-profit Global Witness, agrees. “U.S.–China competition may continue, and the global energy landscape seems to be becoming more regionalized and multipolar, but this does not necessarily mean inevitable confrontation,” she says. “The key question is whether competition preserves space for cooperation and allows for fairer rules and resource distribution, rather than creating exclusive blocs.”

Whatever the mix, what matters, she stresses, is that the process of reducing emissions is not delayed.

The rise of ‘powershoring’

Unfortunately, the current moves and countermoves of nations trying to bolster national economies, and respond to electorate demands, is proving detrimental. Arbache says there are alliances available now using today’s technology that could speed up decarbonization, but they are being squandered. The Brazilian economist, who is also the former vice president of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, coined the term “powershoring” to describe the strategic relocation of energy-intensive industries to countries that have clean, abundant and secure energy. To produce one tonne of aluminum using coal-fired electricity results in 20 to 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide, Arbache says. But if you produce that same aluminum in Iceland, which runs on nearly 100% renewable power, the carbon output drops to 2 to 3.5 tonnes.

Countries like Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay also offer abundant green grids for manufacturing. But they are not attracting as many powershoring projects as anticipated from places like Europe, Arbache says. “Although they need new allies and friends to solve their problems, they are still very skeptical because of this very notion of protectionism,” he says. “In the end, they are harming their own economies and they are also harming our economies.”

Canada’s balancing act

Canada, with three-quarters of its exports going to the United States, is also navigating tricky terrain. The shifting sands of Trump tariffs has led the government to overhaul how it approaches trade and put it in hot pursuit of new partners – or increasing the strength of existing ones.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said as much in his headline-grabbing speech at Davos this year, where he warned middle powers that if “we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The phrase carried added weight because it came on the heels of an announcement to expand trade with China, and, crucially, allow at first up to 24,500 Chinese EVs annually into the Canadian market. Carney has since signed agreements with India to export uranium for its fleet of nuclear reactors, critical minerals, and oil and gas. The government also announced a split from the United States over auto policy, revitalizing incentives for EV production and purchase, and the intention of customizing new tailpipe emissions rules, rather than defaulting to the U.S. ones.

The divergence from U.S. policy is significant, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute. “All we get from the Trump administration is this drumbeat that fossil fuels are the future. It’s very easy to let that overwhelm us as Canadians – to assume that that’s correct, and it’s not,” he says. “The actual economic opportunity is in decarbonization.”

While there are inherent challenges to decarbonization for an oil- and gas-producing country that other nations do not have, Smith says Canada is in a privileged position to move in on the booming battery market. “We’ve got all the elements of a very significant battery supply chain in Canada. And very few countries can say that,” he says. “In a grand contest between China and the United States, should we just be happy that China’s winning on the decarbonization front? No. We should also be getting our elbows up and trying to compete.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor of Corporate Knights.

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Every shock to global oil markets reverberates here through higher costs, capital outflows and a stark reminder that much of the province’s economy still depends on energy Quebecers do not control.

Yet despite being a major exporter of clean electricity, Quebec still runs an international energy trade deficit of roughly $14 billion each year, which ties consumers and businesses directly to volatile and geopolitically unstable markets.

The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically.

– Catherine McKenna and Marine Thomas

This is precisely the vulnerability the clean-energy transition is beginning to resolve. Investment in clean energy reached US$2.3 trillion globally in 2025.

In this context, Quebec stands out. More than 90% of its electricity is renewable: primarily hydroelectric, with growing wind capacity. Forty-two percent of total energy consumption comes from local renewable sources. Few jurisdictions can match this combination of low-carbon, reliable, domestically controlled power.

But advantage is not the same as leadership. Despite its strengths, Quebec is falling behind in the new electric revolution. The share of electricity in its energy mix has been stagnant for 35 years. Oil still accounts for roughly 35% of energy use, with natural gas adding another 17%.

And even with broad consensus across opposition parties, experts, industry and environmental groups, the Quebec government has delayed its emissions-reduction target by five years, pushing it to 2035. Even more concerning, after committing in 2022 to end fossil fuel exploration and production, some politicians are reopening the door to natural gas fracking. This would increase emissions, harm the environment and human health, further expose Quebec to volatile energy prices, and run counter to the economic opportunity of the clean-energy transition.

Quebec should instead invest to fully electrify its economy and lock in its clean-power advantage to deliver real energy autonomy. With clean, affordable electricity that belongs to Quebecers, the province can cut reliance on imported fossil fuels, decarbonize key sectors, grow batteries and green aluminum, and export clean power while generating revenue at home.

At the same time, expanding clean power is not straightforward. Building new hydro and wind capacity will require sustained partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities – not just consultation, but shared ownership and benefits. It will require major investment, faster permitting, new transmission infrastructure and potentially deeper interprovincial collaboration, including offshore wind development in Atlantic Canada linked to Quebec’s grid. These are complex challenges, but they are now the central constraints on growth.

Montreal already offers a glimpse of what a more strategic approach could look like. It is emerging as a hub for climate, technology and finance, with strengths in low-emission aluminum, batteries and electrification, but these pieces are not yet fully aligned.

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The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically. Quebec has everything needed to become a global clean-energy superpower.

Recent events in the Middle East are a reminder of the costs of the old system. These include geopolitical shocks, volatile prices and external dependence. The new system offers something different: affordability, stability, sovereignty and enduring economic advantage. But it is also competitive. Jurisdictions that move decisively will capture investment, talent and supply chains. Those that hesitate will import the industries others build.

Quebec is unusually well positioned for this shift. It has abundant renewable electricity, critical minerals and industrial capacity and a strong research ecosystem. What it lacks is not public support or natural advantage, but ambition, strategic clarity and speed.

The window is open. But not for long.

Catherine McKenna is the CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, the founder of Women Leading on Climate, and a former federal minister of environment and climate change and minister of infrastructure.

Marine Thomas is directrice générale at Partenariat Climate Montréal. 

The post Quebec must move fast to retain its clean-power advantage appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Affordable.

Onshore wind and utility‑scale solar photovoltaic installations are now substantially cheaper than new fossil fuel plants almost everywhere in the world. With voters broadly ranking economic concerns and energy costs above climate, cost is a key part of the new low-carbon lexicon.

Secure.

Renewables rely on international supply chains for set-up, but once installed they use freely available local resources like sunlight, wind and ground-source heat, which makes them less vulnerable to the sorts of market volatility that afflict fossil fuels.

Resilient.

A grid that is dependent on a mix of renewable sources, rather than exclusively on fossil fuels, can better withstand shocks. That’s why Ukraine, for example, has pivoted to wind and solar rather than large power plants to avoid major outages from Russian attacks.

Advanced.

Rather than positioning renewables as climate-positive, the sector is increasingly describing its products as modern, high-tech and cutting edge. Worldwide, renewables have received twice as much investment as other power sources, which increases competition and strengthens.

Efficient.

Combustion technologies also lose most of their fuel energy as heat, converting only about 35% to 60% into electricity. By contrast, electric motors commonly achieve 80% to 95% efficiency.

Illustrations by Drew Shannon

The post The new language of clean power appeared first on Corporate Knights.

She was new to the issues herself, she said. But the long-time social worker kept at her new job doing outreach for Community Action Network, a local non-profit dedicated to serving under-resourced communities. She slowly started getting people in her neighbourhood to take part first in home energy assessments, then a city program to swap out appliances, make structural fixes and more.

“In the beginning it was kind of hard – a lot of people were reluctant. If someone is knocking on your door and telling you they can fix up your home for free, most people don’t believe that,” Steward says. But, she adds, “Once one person tried it out, they’d tell their neighbours, and others would jump on board.”

Now the neighbourhood, Bryant, is set to pilot a first-in-the-country program that officials hope will speed the city’s transition to renewables – and offer a new model for how local governments can control their energy future.

A tandem system

The idea is technical but has sparked enthusiasm across Bryant and Ann Arbor: a new city-created Sustainable Energy Utility, known colloquially as the SEU. Rather than replacing the privately owned utility that serves Ann Arbor, the plan is for this city agency to run in tandem, offering a supplemental service that residents can opt into.

If they do, they’ll stay connected to the regular grid but will be outfitted with solar panels, battery backup systems or other infrastructure, drawing on that power for their home use and opening up the prospect of selling any excess. The city, meanwhile, would pay for the installation and maintenance of these systems, which Ann Arbor would continue to own – a vision of energy generation and storage distributed across the city.

The plan begins in the coming months in Bryant, a 1970s-era community with about 260 homes, many of which are officially considered “energy burdened.” A quarter of residents spend more than a third of their incomes on utilities, in a neighbourhood that is one of Ann Arbor’s only areas of unsubsidized affordable housing, according to Derrick Miller, Community Action Network’s executive director.

The SEU is a major step in a years-long process to address Bryant’s energy affordability and sustainability concerns – and then expand the approach across the city.

“When we started having a conversation about how to decarbonize the neighbourhood about four years ago, it felt outlandish. Now, it doesn’t feel like anyone can stop us,” Miller says.

A welcome solution

The appeal of the SEU became clear in November 2024, when a ballot measure on the proposal was approved by nearly 80% of Ann Arbor voters. A little over a year later, city officials are ready to implement the vision, SEU executive director Shoshannah Lenski says.

In late February, the city announced that it was accepting expressions of interest from residents and businesses to take part, accompanied by a flurry of community meetings, animated videos and ads in local theatre playbills.

Customers who opt in will get two utility bills – one for the power supplied by these new city-owned clean-energy systems and one for any power they’re still drawing from the regular grid – which Lenski and her colleagues say will add up to less than they currently pay.

“Just like customers don’t own a power plant, the city owns and finances the system upfront, and they pay for that electricity through a monthly bill,” Lenski says. She notes that the model could prove particularly helpful for renters, who are often left out of green energy incentives.  Signing up large multifamily buildings will be important to quickly expand the SEU’s size, she says.

In addition to installing clean-energy systems at participants’ homes, the SEU could build its own microgrids, something that would set it apart from other municipal clean-energy programs. For instance, the agency could install solar panels on a school to supply power when students and teachers are in the building, and that power could go to other SEU customers when classes are out.

Backers say the strategy allows Ann Arbor to build out its green energy system with lower financial risk – and lower potential for political or industry pushback.

“When coupled with DTE’s planned investments in clean energy, these voluntary, fee-based programs help accelerate economy-wide decarbonization while maintaining reliability and affordability,” Ryan Lowry, a spokesperson for DTE Energy, which currently supplies energy to the city, says in an email.

It might seem surprising that DTE, Michigan’s largest electric utility, is supportive of the SEU. But industry experts note that many investor-owned utilities are struggling under the unprecedented new demands for power. Having a local government try to help manage power needs could be seen as an asset, they suggest – though DTE will have no formal role in the SEU.

So far, more than 1,500 people across Ann Arbor have indicated that they want to sign up. The SEU plans to serve around 100 to 150 customers in Bryant this year, expand out to reach 1,000 next year, and then grow by several thousand annually after that.

Embracing ambition

The approach answers a question prompted when Ann Arbor adopted an ambitious climate plan in 2020.

That framework included an electrical grid powered completely by renewable energy within a decade, but a city analysis in 2023 warned it was likely to miss that goal by more than 40%. To reach it, the city would need to push DTE to accelerate its renewable-energy buildout, or lean on state officials to do so – or detach from DTE entirely and create a separate city-owned utility, an idea that does have some support in Ann Arbor.

But from the city’s perspective, these options seemed too risky or uncertain, Lenski says – until officials realized that the Michigan constitution allows municipalities to create and run their own utility, even if there’s another present. “That’s where the idea of the SEU was born,” she says.

When University of Michigan researchers compared the four options, they found that the SEU model had the greatest potential to lower energy prices and emissions, boost reliability and help low-income communities.

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“Overall, it came down to having some benefits of local control without some of the costs,” says Mike Shriberg, a professor who led the research, noting a similar model should be possible in every state.

Still, some worry the strategy does not go far enough. Advocates who want the city to break with DTE and replace its services with a utility fully owned by Ann Arbor are seeking a November ballot measure to set that process in motion. (Organizers are currently collecting signatures.)

Brian Geiringer, executive director of the advocacy group Ann Arbor for Public Power, says the SEU plan still leaves too much responsibility for the city’s energy transition with DTE. But if voters do approve creating a fully public utility, he says, it would not mean an end to the SEU: the two approaches could work together, with the SEU focused on generation within Ann Arbor, and a publicly owned utility able to make its own decisions on purchasing power.

“If you draw a circle around Ann Arbor, the SEU is doing stuff inside the circle,” Geiringer says. “And we’re interested in having the city control what comes in from outside of the circle.”

Cities take control

Like Ann Arbor, hundreds of cities are working to implement climate goals – and running into similar gaps between ambition and practicality, especially when it comes to control over energy sources.

“Cities have set these goals, and the utilities aren’t obligated to follow those,” says Matthew Popkin, manager for U.S. cities and communities at RMI, an energy think tank. “So Ann Arbor’s SEU is an example of cities taking more control of their future without dismantling or acquiring existing utility systems,” he says. “That’s a really interesting model.”

Other models also exist. In Washington, D.C., for instance, a program called the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility has been operating for 15 years, overseeing the city’s efforts to help residents use less energy. The initiative is far narrower than the Ann Arbor vision, functioning not as a utility but rather as an organization contracted by the city to boost energy efficiency and increase access to clean energy through subsidies and rebates.

The program is a central part of the city’s goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, managing director Benjamin Burdick says, and has helped cut some 10 million metric tons of emissions while saving residents more than US$2 billion from reduced energy use. Nationally, “the conversation that we’re hearing is around how do you continue to talk about climate with affordability,” he says. “Programs like the D.C. SEU are going to continue to be the way that we double down.”

The work in Ann Arbor is now receiving its own attention across the country. “What caught my eye about Ann Arbor’s efforts were the references to citizen involvement and co-investment in their own grid,” says Jim Gilbert, a retired medical product designer in Boulder, Colorado, who is now helping the city assess the Ann Arbor model.

Boulder has dealt with recent power outages due to worsening climate impacts and aging infrastructure, and Gilbert says an SEU could offer a way forward.

Back in Ann Arbor, as the city prepares to launch the initial pilot of its SEU, the plan is to reach half of the Bryant neighbourhood by the end of the year – and local residents are “all in,” says Krystal Steward.

Older members of the community are particularly excited, Steward says, noting that many are on fixed incomes and will particularly benefit from lower energy bills. “It’s hard for me to keep up,” she says. “Now it’s not me reaching out to residents to sign up – they’re blowing up my phone.”

Carey L. Biron reports on sustainable cities, inclusive development and local solutions. He is based in Washington, D.C. 

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.

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Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

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Corporate Knights trained its lens on a wide universe of corporations to produce its first-ever Latin America–specific ranking. Using the Global 100 benchmarks of sustainable-economy performance indicators, it assessed 55 companies based in the region with more than US$1 billion in annual revenue.

Corporate Knights’ director of rankings Michael Yow said Brazilian companies are more forthcoming than other companies in the region with their disclosure, which helps explain why so many made the top 10 list.

1. Alupar Investimento

One of the largest energy companies in Brazil, Alupar’s transmission lines extend across Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Peru and generate roughly 800 megawatts from power plants it operates. The company has adopted various policies that bolster its environmental bona fides, such as “replacement and recovery of native forest vegetation” and “maintenance of biodiversity of fauna and flora” in areas where Alupar has lines or power plants. Alupar also “conducts periodic assessments of water quality downstream and upstream” of its assets and offers certified carbon credits for buyers of emissions offsets.

2. Neoenergia

Wind is a key component of energy production in Brazil, accounting for 20% of the country’s needs. Neoenergia, which provides electricity to some 37 million Brazilians, has leaned into the renewable resource, with 44 wind farms across seven states. In 2023, it launched its first wind and solar hybrid project, capable of producing up to 600 megawatts in the northeastern state of Paraíba – enough to power more than one million homes. Also, the Neoenergía Institute develops community-based programs that include funding environmental research and cultural activities.

3. Energisa

Brazilian electricity company Energisa is actively decarbonizing its operations and putting its energy transition in practice. The company claims to have avoided the production of 539,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2024 by closing diesel- and oil-fuelled thermal power plants in the Amazon region. The company has contributed to the restoration of Usina Maurício Reserve, a 300-hectare private reserve in the Minas Gerais state, with tree planting.

4. Enel Américas

Based in Chile but belonging to Italy’s Enel Group, Enel Américas is one of Latin America’s main energy producers and distributors. In 2023/2024, the company increased its renewable-energy capacity to 12,600 megawatts – around 98% of its portfolio. In 2023, the company reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by around one-third compared to the previous year thanks to more renewable-energy production and less fossil fuel generation. Enel also subscribes to a biodiversity policy of “no net loss,” with a mandate that aims to avoid having a negative impact on the environment where the company operates.

5. CEMIG

Brazilian CEMIG operates around 5,000 kilometres of transmission lines across the country and a massive distribution network spanning more than 500,000 kilometres of lines, mostly in the state of Minas Gerais. It generates electricity through dozens of power stations, mainly hydroelectric but also wind and solar. CEMIG has significantly increased its internal use of renewable energy and decreased non-renewables over recent years. It has pledged to cut non‑renewable energy consumption by 40% by 2027 while increasing the share of renewables in its own energy use.

6. Engie

Engie’s gas network is Brazil’s largest, crossing about 4,600 kilometres of territory, but almost 100% of the energy the company generates itself comes from renewable sources like wind, hydro and solar. The company has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 41% since 2017 and also reduced its waste generation and water use. The company touts multiple sustainability awards, including placing 21st on the 2025 Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking.

7. Sabesp

The Company of Basic Sanitation of the State of São Paulo (Sabesp) provides comprehensive sanitation services, including drinking water supply, sewerage and final disposal of wastewater for nearly 30 million people. Last year, Sabesp took part in IntegraTietê, a sanitation program centred in São Paulo city’s Tietê River. Among some 50 initiatives is its Partners for Impact program, which includes environmental management policies around waste and emissions, along with inclusion and social development with communities, such as job creation and education partnerships.

8. Telefônica Brasil

Through its subsidiary Vivo, Brazil’s largest telecommunications company has launched a long‑term forest‑restoration project in the Amazon that will, over 30 years, restore and protect about 800 hectares of degraded land, with the planting, regeneration and conservation of more than 900,000 native trees in one of the most deforested areas of the forest. The company uses 100% renewable energy in its operations and has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2035.

9. Paranaense Energy Company

Brazilian Paranaense Energy Company (Copel) is the main electricity distributor in Paraná state and operates in nine other states in Brazil. It was the first Brazilian electricity company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, in 1997. Copel has committed to reaching carbon neutrality among its Scope 1 emissions by 2030 and, after divesting from coal‑ and oil‑fired thermal plants, now generates 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly hydroelectric power. It has tapped into Paraná’s major chicken-producing industry with pioneering biogas projects that repurpose poultry waste into electricity, and others that convert biogas into renewable hydrogen.

10. Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM)

Chilean Chemical and Mining Society is a major producer of lithium, potassium nitrate, iodine and industrial chemicals, with most of its resources and plants in the northern Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a region rich in minerals. In early 2026, it entered into a major partnership with Ivanhoe Electric for a copper exploration project. The company has come under significant scrutiny for its water usage in a highly arid region, in particular from local Indigenous communities and environmental groups. The company says it is committed to responsible practices and in 2024 invested US$33 million in areas such as environmental evaluations, environmental monitoring and mitigation measures, industrial waste management, and hazardous substance management. That year, according to its last report, the company did not receive fines or sanctions from environmental law enforcement.

Latin America Top 10 Ranking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.  

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