By setting ambitious sustainability targets, Canada’s largest companies have created a massive clean-energy opportunity worth billions in investment for wind and solar projects, thousands of new jobs and millions in municipal tax revenues. The catch is that these gains will materialize only in provinces that allow companies to source the renewable power they’ve pledged to use.

We’ve looked into the numbers, and the demand is going to be massive. Canada’s 100 largest publicly traded companies alone will need 7.7 gigawatts of renewable electricity to meet their climate targets between now and 2040. While that may sound like a distant horizon, more than half of that, 3.9. gigawatts, must be secured within the next five years.

These targets are not aspirational slogans; they are tied to audited disclosures and investor expectations, not just public relations. Businesses are securing clean electricity because it makes economic sense. While the demand isn’t spread evenly, it is national in scope, with companies in every region looking for ways to buy renewable power.

If provinces enable corporate PPAs, they won’t just be helping companies check a sustainability box. They’ll be attracting investment, jobs and a wave of new clean-energy projects into their provinces that would otherwise flow elsewhere.

  – Jorden Dye, director, Business Renewables Centre-Canada

The scale of corporate clean-power demand goes far beyond these top 100 companies. Hundreds of other companies across Canada have sustainability commitments coming due, and they face ongoing pressure to drive down emissions. But here’s where Canada’s potential hits a wall: most provinces don’t have the policy frameworks to enable this demand. The mechanism that unlocks corporate renewable-energy investment, power purchase agreements (PPAs), remains unavailable or severely restricted across most of the country.

Barriers to long-term purchase agreements

PPAs, particularly virtual PPAs (vPPAs), are long-term contracts that allow corporations to purchase renewable energy directly from developers. These agreements provide price certainty for buyers while giving developers the financial backing needed to build projects. Critically, vPPAs often enable developers to build larger facilities than the corporate contract alone requires, feeding additional clean power into the provincial grid and benefiting all ratepayers.

Currently, only three provinces – Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia – have functional frameworks for corporate renewable-energy procurement, and even these are incomplete.

Alberta, once the country’s renewable-energy success story with 3.7 gigawatts of capacity contracted through vPPAs since 2019 – spurring $7.5 billion in private investment, creating more than 7,000 jobs and generating $54 million in municipal tax revenue in 2024 – has seen its momentum collapse.

Following a seven-month moratorium in 2023 and new restrictive regulations in 2024, only 58 megawatts of new deals have been announced in 2024 and 2025, a 98% drop from previous years. Alberta’s competitiveness has eroded just as other provinces begin to open their markets.

Ontario has launched a small, limited pilot for corporate procurement but lacks the open, competitive framework needed to meet the 4.2 gigawatts of demand identified – more than half of Canada’s total. The remaining provinces and territories offer no practical pathways at all, leaving companies operating there unable to meet their climate goals locally despite a clear willingness to invest.

Better ways to procure power

This self-imposed barrier needs to be broken down, and we have the models to do it. From vPPA options to green choice programs, provinces can look to each other and U.S. jurisdictions that have successfully implemented corporate procurement programs. The models are there, and the success speaks for itself. In the United States, 40% of all new renewable-energy capacity between 2015 and 2025 was developed through corporate procurement.

The takeaway for policymakers is simple: Canada’s businesses are ready to build, and the scale rivals past nation-building projects like railways and pipelines. They want to buy clean electricity in the places where they operate, anchoring long-term investment and jobs in Canadian communities. The only question is whether provincial governments will clear the path or stand in the way. Corporate Canada is already doing the work of nation-building; governments just need to let it happen.

This is not a niche environmental agenda. It is a national economic opportunity. If provinces enable corporate PPAs, they won’t just be helping companies check a sustainability box. They’ll be attracting investment, jobs and a wave of new clean-energy projects into their provinces that would otherwise flow elsewhere. With 7.7 gigawatts of renewable-energy demand over the next 15 years, most of it by 2030, the demand is here, and the clock is ticking.

Jorden Dye is the director of the Business Renewables Centre-Canada, which helps businesses looking to procure renewable energy.

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There’s no denying banks make the biggest impact on the world with how they lend and invest their money. While TD has come out with a $100 billion commitment toward sustainable finance, it has also drawn the ire of environmentalists for being named one of ten largest bank financiers of fossil fuels globally.

Although smaller in scope than its financing activities, we can’t discount the environmental impact that TD (and its 85,000 employees) has throughout its operations. Enter Michelle Albanese, on the 14^th floor of the mostly open concept office. The head of responsible sourcing and supplier diversity is tasked with making sure that the financial services corporation’s supply chain is socially, ethically, and environmentally up to par. Any third-party company that services the bank needs to be cleared by her and her team.

Working with TD’s vendors—22,000 every year—to help them manage and reduce their emissions is a major focus for Albanese. TD’s global business operations became carbon neutral back in 2010. And for the past four years TD has been working with the Climate Disclosure Project—a non-profit group that encourages corporations and cities to disclose their environmental impacts. “We were the first Canadian bank to join the CDP Supply Chain Program and report our own emissions, of course, but we also encourage our key suppliers to report their own.”

Equipped with an environmental toxicology degree, she started out her career in government as a risk assessor at Environment Canada. “It’s always been important for me to contribute to protecting the environment,” says Albanese, who grew up near Oakville, Ontario’s Bronte Creek Provincial Park. Her love for nature was instilled in her as a child during the hikes she took with her family every weekend. “I grew up with a very environmentally conscious father,” she says with a smile.

While Albanese spent some time in the non-profit sector in organizations like The Nature Conservancy of Canada, most of her career has been in sustainability consulting, which gave her background knowledge in a number of sectors. After eight years in consulting, she joined TD as a procurement manager in 2013.

Sounds mundane, but making sure your office paper supplier isn’t cutting old growth forest and your computer manufacturer isn’t linked to toxic e-waste dumping in the developing world has become critical.

Procurement may be a less high-profile aspect of sustainability, but it has been gaining importance in the corporate conversation. The 2019 Sustainable Procurement Barometer—a study released by CSR performance platform EcoVadis and NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business—found that, in the past three years, 81% of the 210 purchasing entities and 400 suppliers surveyed have heightened their dedication to sustainable procurement. Virtually every large corporation and government body, from municipal to federal, has responsible procurement policies in place to make sure any goods and services purchased meet environmental, social and governance standards.

Sounds mundane, but making sure your office paper supplier isn’t cutting old growth forest and your computer manufacturer isn’t linked to toxic e-waste dumping in the developing world has become critical. The public is increasingly aware of just where the companies they support get their goods.

“We had been doing green procurement through our Environmental Procurement Policy since 2009,” says Albanese, “but wanted to expand our scope to include social and ethical criteria in addition to environmental.”

As the manager of TD’s Supplier Diversity Program, Albanese makes sure there’s a more level playing field for certified minority-owned vendors who are interested in providing goods or services to TD Bank Group. In order to participate and register under this program, a supplier must be certified as a majority woman-owned and operated business or a majority LGBTQ-owned and operated one for example.

“We support Aboriginal-owned businesses through this initiative and for a company to be eligible, the supplier must be certified as 51% Aboriginal-owned and operated.”

When I ask about the obstacles she faces, Albanese says her challenge isn’t so much with large vendors. “They’re already doing what we expect of them,” she tells me. But smaller vendors aren’t necessarily educated about what’s involved in corporate social responsibility and meeting the wide cross-section of ethical procurement standards.

“It’s a conversation,” Albanese says. “Everyone can improve, but we need it to be a priority for our suppliers, just as it is for us.”

The post The ins and outs of greening one bank’s supply chain appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Enjoying the spectacle of Jody Wilson-Raybould cleaning the floor with the Prime Minister? Guess what corporate Canada: you’re next. Anybody doubting this needn’t look further than the 275 straight court cases Indigenous peoples have won, stopping many resource projects in their tracks.

The new rule of business in Canada’s resource economy is: No Indigenous buy-in, no dice. Buy-in doesn’t come cheap. It means a radical departure from business as usual practices. That means more than just a few token jobs. The table stakes are meaningful equity ownership, control through executive and governance bodies, employment, involvement in environmental planning and, critically, sourcing. Canadian businesses and governments need to be much better partners and customers of Indigenous businesses.

While there are some inspiring examples of this already at play across the nation, it is a cold reality check that of the 25 largest infrastructure projects under way in Canada with significant Indigenous impact, 22 of them have 0% Indigenous ownership, according to a review by Corporate Knights and ReNew Canada. A major barrier to getting Indigenous equity buy-in is lack of access to financing. One wonders how much further ahead our country would be had our bankers spent as much time finding solutions to the lack of Indigenous access to capital as they have chiding the government over pipeline delays.

Cold reality check is that of the 25 largest infrastructure projects under way in Canada with significant Indigenous impact, 22 of them have 0% Indigenous ownership.

The good news is we are not starting from zero. Indigenous groups already have equity ownership in power projects that provide one-fifth of Canada’s electricity generation. And TD has pegged the Indigenous economy at over $30 billion, or about 1.4% of Canada’s$2 trillion economy. But given that Indigenous people represent 4.9% of the Canadian population and have significant property rights, it is a national scandal that they are sharing in less than one-third of Canada’s economic bounty.

We will know we have made progress when the Indigenous economy is at least in proportion to the Indigenous population, which would be about $100 billion in today’s dollars.

This should be Canada’s number one economic objective, as there is probably nothing else that would boost the broader economy as profoundly. It is heartening to see companies in sectors with traditionally fraught relations with Indigenous peoples now pioneering promising new models of commercial partnership including significant Indigenous equity ownership and procurement. Governments can take note, especially on Indigenous procurement. Total federal procurement spend with Indigenous businesses is just $63 million per year (0.3% of the total $20 billion federal procurement budget) as compared to $1 billion of procurement from Indigenous businesses by just three energy companies.

It will not be easy and it will take time to rebuild the trust, so we cannot afford to rush. But we must begin with the fierce urgency of now.

The post Canadian economy can’t succeed if the Indigenous economy fails appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Growing up Anishinaabe hunting and fishing with his father, a second-generation logger and chief, Gladu had always planned on becoming a conservation officer. His first job out of forestry school involved working with over 40 First Nations communities across Ontario through the federal First Nations Forestry program, and that, says Gladu, “is when I fell in love with my community.”

“It seemed to me there was real opportunity to build economies, build communities, build jobs, build families. It’s just something that’s always been innate for me.”

Gladu spent the next two decades in the natural resource sector, creating businesses for First Nations, negotiating agreements with the wind, mining and forestry sector, and consulting on everything from sawmill development to biofuels and wind power monitoring sites. One executive MBA from Queen’s University later, Gladu was a natural fit to take over the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) as president and CEO six years ago. Building economies, communities and jobs is what this power broker does best – and now he’s mobilizing action on all three fronts at the national level.

CCAB was actually started by Shoppers Drug Mart founder Murray Koffler, along with former prime minister Paul Martin and a number of others over 30 years ago, with the goal of “reintegrating” Indigenous people into the Canadian economy. As Gladu says, “I like to remind Canadians that we were Canada’s first economy – we had an economy even before the newcomers, with trade and commerce.”

Today’s Indigenous economy is estimated to be around $32 billion, with roughly 45,000 Indigenous businesses across virtually every sector. “There’s been extraordinary growth,” says Gladu.

But while Indigenous people make up 5% of Canada’s population, there still hasn’t been much in the way of economic reconciliation. Indigenous businesses only account for 0.3% of Canadian federal procurement contracts, points out Gladu. “That’s $60 to 65 million, which is a pittance.”

His current passion project is CCAB’s new Procurement Champions program, which challenges governments and corporations to do better by connecting with Indigenous businesses from coast, to coast, to coast.

“Our MO these days has been around supply change – the opportunity to supply change [through supply chains].”

Gladu tells Corporate Knights how he and his co-chair and incoming Suncor CEO Mark Little went to the federal government and said, “Listen, Suncor spends 10 times what you do on Indigenous businesses (roughly $700 million last year alone) and look at the economic impact that it’s had.”

They’re encouraging the federal government to commit to a 5% target in five years. That would increase the government spend to about a billion dollars a year on Indigenous businesses. If they get all provincial governments and territories to also target 5% that would contribute over $23 billion to Canada’s Indigenous economies, fuelling hundreds of Certified Aboriginal Businesses from printing, engineering and catering companies to architectural and media firms.

Gladu says one of the biggest challenges he and his colleagues face in government meetings is that a lot of the programs and resources set up to support Indigenous communities have been very reactionary – supplying clean drinking water, decent housing, dealing with sky-high youth suicide rates. “All these really important issues,” notes Gladu. “Then someone like me will come and say, ‘don’t forget about business and supply chain and procurement’ and they say, ‘we don’t have time for that right now, we’ve got these other issues.’”

Switching mindsets and changing the narrative to consider what a “strong economy means for our community” is a struggle sometimes for Gladu. Particularly when, as he points out, too many have a bias – “sometimes unconscious and sometimes conscious” – against Indigenous businesses. “People think that it costs more money to do business with us or we don’t have the capacity when the opposite is in fact real. We did the research.”

Beyond its Aboriginal Procurement Marketplace open to Certified Aboriginal Businesses and Procurement Champions, CCAB also connects Indigenous entrepreneurs to tools, training and financing to scale their businesses, as well as a certification program that confirms corporate performance in Aboriginal relations.

Why is this work so meaningful to Gladu, who also has a 15-year-old daughter?

“Both my grandmothers are residential school survivors. I was very fortunate that both my parents had jobs. The impact that those jobs had on my parents and the impact that had on me pushed me to go beyond high school to college. It’s put me in a place now where I can influence and where I can make a difference for my family, for my community and, quite frankly, for my country as a national Indigenous leader.”

Gladu, who’s also on the board of Ontario Power Generation and was recently appointed chancellor of St. Paul’s University College, Waterloo, adds, “None of this would have been possible without a job or without an education. I want my people to have as many opportunities as they choose and that’s not possible without a strong robust economy.”

The post Meet the man brokering a path to economic reconciliation appeared first on Corporate Knights.