Canada’s Contradiction

Spanish oil and gas giant Repsol SA has dropped its plan to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe from a terminal in New Brunswick, citing high shipping costs.

As the federal government consults about its upcoming legislation capping carbon emissions in the oil and gas sector, no doubt hearing often from industry lobbyists, Canadians are growing more cynical about the government’s ability to bring this powerful industry into line.

The cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has mushroomed to C$30.9 billion, prompting a surprised fossil energy analyst to admit that taxpayers will have to pick up a very large tab as a result.

A Honolulu company is helping low-income families in Hawaii reduce energy costs while contributing to a more sustainable grid—by linking household water heaters to create a virtual power plant, effectively repurposing the ubiquitous appliances into grid batteries.

Canadian courier giant Purolator is pledging to invest C$1 billion over seven years to electrify its network, with the purchase of more than 3,500 electric last-mile delivery vehicles and electrification of more than 60 terminals.

Informed nine months after the fact that its hunting territories may have been poisoned by a leaking oil sands tailings pond, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is accusing the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) and ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial Oil of environmental racism, as experts urge Ottawa to close regulatory holes that fossil companies can exploit.

Bankers will have to disclose but not take action on their exposure to financial risk, and the definition of “transitional” investments leading to a net-zero economy might include new spending on carbon capture and “blue” hydrogen projects, under two new reports from federal agencies over the last several days.

Just days after more than 190 countries agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas—nearly half the planet’s surface—the deal is running into the harsh reality of what it takes to get any major decision out of the United States Senate.

Climate change poses a profound, ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and prosperity, including the possible loss of parts of British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces to rising sea levels, the country’s spy agency warns.

Making it mandatory for Canadian companies to report their largest and most material Scope 3 emissions categories will set them up for success in the global energy transition, the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) concludes in a blog post published last month,.

Canada should focus on exporting “clean” hydrogen to Europe as the continent shifts its fuel sources away from Russia, the head of the European Union said this week, ahead of an upcoming visit to Canada.

Nova Scotia has approved plans for what could be North America’s first commercial-scale green hydrogen facility, amid lingering concerns that powering the plant could cannibalize renewable energy that’s vital to meeting the province’s climate goals.

Alberta’s ability to thrive and attract investment in a world shifting to low-carbon energy will depend on the climate and energy policy choices it makes in the weeks leading into this spring’s provincial election and beyond, the Calgary-based Pembina Institute warns in a 23-page policy roadmap released last week.

Oilpatch support for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s agenda ballooned after she won her party’s leadership and put the so-called RStar program—a plan to give tax breaks to fossil companies for fulfilling cleanup work they are already legally obliged to do—high on the government agenda.

Toronto-based battery recycler Li-Cycle has landed a conditional US$375-million loan from the United States Department of Energy, based on its plans to build a new plant in a suburb of Rochester, New York.

Ontario is exploring the possibility of building new, large-scale nuclear plants in order to meet increasing demand for electricity and phase out natural gas generation.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 2.8% in 2021, and fossil fuels accounted for more than half of the total, according to an “early estimate” released today by the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says there’s “no excuse” for near-record global emissions of methane from fossil fuels, even as new research suggests heavy oil facilities in Saskatchewan are releasing almost four times as much of the climate super-pollutant as they report to government.

Edmonton and Toronto’s bid to become “15-minute cities” is facing pushback from fringe groups—putting them alongside Oxford, England, in a battle against climate denial, COVID-19 misinformation, and hard-right extremism.

Ontario, Quebec, and Nunavut rank among the 10% most vulnerable places worldwide for climate risk, according to an independent analysis released this week that is geared towards investors.

It took Munich Re almost 50 years since, but the world’s largest reinsurance company is taking steps to detach itself not just from coal, oil, and gas. The company announced in October that it will no longer insure new oil and gas projects as of April, 2023.

The public pension plan that manages the retirement savings of 715,000 British Columbians has bought into a natural gas transmission network that is touting a risky scheme to use hydrogen for home heating, despite persistent concerns about the cost, safety, and climate impact of the plan.

By betting it can solve its emissions problem with carbon capture and storage, Canada’s oil and gas industry risks saddling itself with expensive stranded assets, a new report argues.

A clever series of presentation slides at a conference in Ottawa last week placed small communities at the centre of the energy transition and spotlighted Prince Edward Island as Canada’s next source of breakaway climate leadership.

Wind and solar farms with battery backup are both cheaper to build than natural gas power plants in Ontario and Alberta, and the price of the renewable options is expected to fall another 40% by 2035, concludes a report released last week by Clean Energy Canada (CEC).

Swaths of North America are slowly emerging from a bone-chilling first week of February, after a fierce ice storm left 10 people dead and hundreds of thousands without power in some South Central states, and an Arctic blast set a new national wind chill record of -77°C in the Northeast.

Type the word “Nemaska” into a search engine and most results refer to Nemaska Lithium, the company that sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 before being partly bought out by the Quebec government’s investment agency. But Nemaska is above all a Cree community in the heart of the boreal forest that shares its territory with a wide variety of species.

A French transportation titan’s effort to win Canada over on the climate merits of “higher-speed” rail service between Toronto and Quebec City is bearing fruit, with Ottawa recently warming to the idea.

Canada’s wind and solar capacity grew significantly in 2022, but not enough to hit the growth rate needed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, new data shows.

Oil and gas production will fall faster than previously expected, renewable energy will grow more rapidly, and global carbon dioxide emissions will drop as a result, according to a new analysis released yesterday by colossal fossil BP.

An independent federal advisory panel has declared Canada “unlikely to attain its 2030 emission target” without an oil and gas emissions cap, just days after senior oil sands executives insisted they can’t invest any faster in decarbonization.

A new study says virtual power plants (VPPs) and their many benefits for electrical grids are at an “inflection point” as consumer demand and legislation propel a shift to greater electrification.

The federal government might intervene to stop some of the development the Doug Ford government has in store for the Ontario Greenbelt, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told a news conference late last week.

Denmark’s biggest bank has declared an end to fossil fuel financing, after concluding that 99.9% of its carbon footprint comes from financed emissions.

Alberta’s fraught politics around the upcoming federal just transition bill are intensifying, with provincial opposition leader Rachel Notley urging Ottawa to scrap the legislation and a fossil CEO claiming a just transition really means a boom in oilsands extraction.

In early January, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced the federal government would soon be unveiling its highly anticipated legislation for a just transition, including a plan for helping workers and communities in the oil and gas sector shift into renewable energy industries like wind, solar, and energy efficiency.

A nine-month news investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, revealed that more than 90% of forest carbon offsets from the world’s leading provider are bogus. Indigenous and locally-controlled lands in the Amazon were storing carbon, while the rest of the rainforest was emitting greenhouse gases. Brazil’s new government confronted the “scorched earth” left behind by the Bolsonaro regime and launched its first raids against illegal tree-cutters.

Ontario’s “misleading and illegitimate” system of clean energy credits is “little more than greenwashing” and “should not move forward,” a team of three researchers writes for the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

Even at 1.5°C of warming, half of the glaciers on Earth will disappear by 2100, says a groundbreaking study just published in the journal Science.

The U.S. set out to widen more highways, even though traffic planners know it never reduces congestion. Parking lots were falling out of favour, major U.S. subway systems were falling apart, Toronto’s transit plan was falling far short, Toronto’s parking authority fell for the idea of an EV charging network, and urban transit advocates wanted a federal strategy for zero-emission transit, intercity coaches, and rail.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says a new lithium mine in northern Quebec can go ahead with more than 270 conditions to protect wildlife and respect Indigenous use of the lands for traditional purposes.

The Alberta government is refusing to release information on toxic contaminants in snowpacks downwind from mountaintop removal coal mines.

With America’s first youth-led climate lawsuit scheduled to begin in a Montana court this June, a class action case against Australia by Torres Strait islanders, and numerous lawsuits against corporate climate culprits, climate change is very much on the docket for 2023.

Suncor Energy and a subcontractor faced 28 charges for safety violations after a bulldozer crashed through thin ice on a frozen tailings pond in January, 2021, killing 25-year-old operator Patrick Poitras. “Someone didn’t do their job and I lost my son because of that,” his dad told CBC. “My son gave his life for that job.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have “handcuffed” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith by urging her United Conservative Party (UCP) government to invest some of its multi-billion-dollar budget surplus in carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), a Calgary-based political scientist says.

The millions of North Americans who found themselves shivering through late December’s bitter cold snap can surely thank a meandering polar vortex, but whether and how a rapidly warming Arctic might be involved in these intensifying deep freezes remains a subject of fierce scientific debate.

Two of Canada’s biggest pension funds opened the year with new investments in offshore wind and overseas renewable energy projects, after a year of taking sustained criticism for their continuing commitment to fossil fuels. A leading sustainability consultancy profiled Canada’s clean energy powerhouses, Calgary-based ATCO Ltd. bought $713 million worth of solar and wind projects from oilsands operator Suncor Energy, and bids opened for onshore wind projects across nearly 1.7 million hectares of government-owned land in Newfoundland and Labrador.

With investors elsewhere turning up the heat on fossil companies to declare firm climate goals for the end of this decade, the Pathways Alliance is admitting it won’t likely comply with its 2030 emissions cap until 2035 at the earliest.

Canada will see federal just transition legislation early this year that will become a gateway for oil and gas workers to move into green energy jobs, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told CBC this week.

Ontario is staring down an electricity supply crunch and amid a rush to secure more power, it is plunging into the world of energy storage—a collection of technologies that is poised to transform the provincial grid and change the way energy is used, bought, and sold by homes and businesses.

One-fifth of all passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks sold in Canada in 2026 will need to run on electricity under new regulations published just before the holiday by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is signalling a shift away from humanitarian aid toward funding infrastructure projects in developing countries.

At least 91 people died and the eastern United States narrowly averted a massive blackout after a “bomb cyclone” hit much of the continental United States December 21-26. Facing renewed attention to the vulnerability of the Texas power grid, Governor Greg Abbott demanded a probe of fossil gas supplier Atmos Energy, just months after promising the state was ready to withstand the next round of winter storms. A Ford F-150 Lightning still had two-thirds of its battery capacity available after powering its owner through a two-day power outage in southern Ontario, and California utility PG&E distributed home batteries to help some of its customers get through summer blackouts.

Countries attending the COP 15 summit in Montreal have adopted a 2030 deadline to protect 30% of the world’s lands, oceans, coasts, and inland waters, cut subsidies that harm nature by US$500 billion, reduce the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance to near zero, and cut food waste in half, in what some participants and observers have been calling a “Paris moment” for nature.

With all signs pointing to a clean energy “juggernaut” that will leave slow adopters in the dust, Canada needs to plan for a drastic drop in oil demand, say experts from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The federal government should introduce an oil and gas emissions cap that aligns with a 1.5°C limit on average global warming and creates incentives for innovation without favouring any specific technology, the Commons Natural Resources Committee concludes in a report issued last week.

It’s “go time” for wind, solar, and energy storage in Canada—thanks to low costs, abundant resources, climate imperatives, and an estimated C$50-billion investment opportunity, says Vittoria Bellissimo, the Canadian Renewable Energy Association’s new president and CEO.

A municipal climate leader from Halifax came away from this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, with a stronger network of contacts, a wider view of the climate challenges cities face, and a sense that it’s time to “hack the COP” so that participants get more out of the two weeks onsite.

Canada’s climate adaptation strategy is underfunded and does not clearly align its goals with the country’s top climate change risks, a new report says.

News that the fossil-intensive United Arab Emirates will be hosting the COP 28 climate summit is getting mixed reviews.

Three influential Canadian climate activist-scholars died this year. They devoted their professional lives to finding solutions to the climate change crisis in the face of industry and government resistance that has dragged on for decades.

The world’s eighth-largest bank and Europe’s current biggest funder of fossil fuel expansion, HSBC Holdings, has announced it will no longer invest in new oil and gas fields. But its Canadian branch is exempt from the new policy.

Spills from the Keystone pipeline have been increasing in severity in recent years, to the point that the pipeline’s safety record is now worse than the U.S. average, U.S. government data shows.

A peak in global oil demand before 2030, with steady declines afterwards, will make it essential for federal and provincial governments to press the fossil industry for faster decarbonization, the Pembina Institute concludes in a new analysis.

Vietnam will receive US$15.5 billion to help it shift from coal to clean energy under a new Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with the G7, Norway, and Denmark.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is opening another round of consultation on a national sustainable agriculture strategy, aimed at working with industry partners to build a climate-resilient food system.

Europe is close to finalizing the world’s first carbon border adjustment tax, after a marathon negotiating session that ended at 5 AM Tuesday.

A new report details how widespread changes in the Arctic, from warming air temperatures to sea ice loss, have affected animals, plants, and people living there.

Floating solar panels, or “floatovoltaics” are an emerging technology that could open up new space for the renewable energy capacity countries need. But their environmental impacts are still an open question.

A ruptured pipe dumped enough oil late last week into a northeastern Kansas creek to nearly fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, becoming the largest onshore crude pipeline spill in nine years and surpassing all the previous ones on the same pipeline system combined, according to U.S. government data.

A mining watchdog says calls for less robust assessments and quicker permitting in Canada’s new critical minerals strategy will undo protections for environmental and Indigenous rights, which are being threatened across the globe in the rush for critical minerals.

The world won’t succeed in halting biodiversity loss without Indigenous participation and leadership, according to leaders attending a major United Nations conference in Montreal.

Climate denial on Twitter went full-throttle in 2022, leaving a growing number of climate scientists and activists torn between their desire to exit the increasingly toxic media platform and the urgent need to continue speaking about climate change in public forums.

A company based in Watson Lake, Yukon has developed a portable solar+storage system with foldable panels to serve extremely cold remote locations.

Key countries around the world are set to add as much new renewable energy capacity over the next five years as they did over the last 20, as governments look for affordable supplies that can address the overwhelming energy security issues raised by Russia’s war in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its Renewables 2022 report released Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged global consensus on conserving 30% of Earth’s land and waters by 2030 as the United Nations biodiversity conference, COP 15, opened in Montreal, presenting Canada as nature’s champion—despite its sizeable oil and gas investments.

With the United Nations biodiversity summit, COP 15, taking place in Montreal, all eyes are on the host country’s efforts to set binding global targets to protect nature.

Ottawa will spend up to C$800 million to support four major Indigenous-led conservation projects across the country covering nearly one million square kilometres of land and water, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday.

Canada’s first full-scale electric vehicle manufacturing plant officially opened in southern Ontario on Monday, with the prime minister and the province’s premier saying the launch of the facility marked a national milestone.

Ontario could cut projected climate emissions 85% by 2035 and reduce its use of carbon-heavy, gas-fired power plants to less than 3% of power production if its grid met rising electricity demand with energy efficiency, solar, wind, and energy storage, according to an analysis released last week by The Atmospheric Fund (TAF).

TC Energy Corporation is expecting what it calls a “material increase” in the cost of its Coastal GasLink pipeline project.

As liquefied natural gas (LNG) interests press for political support, British Columbia Premier David Eby must double down on his acknowledgement that any further fossil buildout will sink the province’s climate goals, the president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs says, in an op ed co-published with other leading climate advocates.

Canadian officials have greenlit plans for mining at one mid-northern Ontario site but called into question the future of mineral extraction in the Ring of Fire region northeast of Thunder Bay.

Federal Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne was back in Asia last month pitching Canada’s battery supply chain prowess, this time with a new boast in his back pocket.

If global biodiversity—the subject of the huge COP 15 summit in Montreal this week and next—is too much of a mouthful, try thinking instead about the white-throated sparrow.

This year’s devastating floods in Pakistan are one front in our clash with the planetary boundaries that define the rules for everything we do, but the war with nature will come to your doorstep soon, writes Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie.

While a California suburb acts as a model for decarbonizing housing on a large scale, Canadian cities like Guelph, Ontario, are finding ways to make the transition from “car-dependent hellscapes” to green cities.

As Ontario’s newly-minted More Homes Built Faster Act is decried by Indigenous leaders, municipalities, farmers, and health experts alike, elected officials are questioning the “suspicious” link between developer titans buying parcels of protected Greenbelt land and Premier Doug Ford’s push to turn them into housing subdivisions.

Canada’s sixth-oldest family foundation has announced a five-year plan to close its doors after distributing its entire $100-million endowment to help slash the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and build a low-carbon economy.

A Wisconsin judge ordered a Canadian energy giant and a U.S. Indigenous band to water down their wine Monday and come together to avert the “draconian” shutdown of the cross-border Line 5 pipeline.

The way to respond to political attacks on corporate ESG standards is not to drop the whole idea. It’s to make disclosure mandatory.

Canada’s biggest banks receive letter grades of B- to D, and all show increases in their fossil fuel lending and underwriting between 2020 and 2021, in the latest report card issued last week by Investors for Paris Compliance (IPC).

Cities are at the centre of Canada’s five-year, C$1.6-billion climate adaptation and resilience strategy, with Ottawa looking to local governments to deliver supports to Canadians increasingly facing the threat of wildfires, heat waves, and catastrophic storms and flooding.

A watchdog group is praising an Ontario public pension fund manager for promising to phase out new fossil fuel investments, but still accusing it of using “weasel words” for some of the details in the plan.

The organization representing Canada’s oil and gas drilling sector is asking the federal government to create a new tax credit it says it needs to help the industry decarbonize, with one member saying the industry is “finally fun again”..

Doubling down on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to Asia could destroy British Columbia’s chances of meeting its emission reduction targets and make the province vulnerable to a rapid drop in global gas demand, two expert authors argue in a recent op ed for the Vancouver Sun.

The federal government has published details of a new C$250-million grant program that will help families switch from oil to heat pumps, in a bid to drive down home heating costs while reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Municipal politicians in Alberta are troubled by a proposed provincial program that would give oil and gas companies public dollars to clean up abandoned wells, saying the companies owe outstanding taxes and need to clean up after themselves anyway.

All big emitters—including China and Saudi Arabia—must contribute to a new global fund to compensate developing countries for the losses and damages they incur from climate change, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said toward the end of the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

Provincial energy efficiency programs and national energy savings rebounded after the COVID-19 pandemic, but energy savings for low-income households still need a lot more attention, Efficiency Canada concludes in the latest edition of its annual Provincial Energy Efficiency Scorecard.

Buildings, transportation, and industry are all contributing to a rise in emissions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area (GTHA) that is moving the region farther from meeting its emission reduction targets, The Atmospheric Fund warns in a new report.

Fracking is being pegged as the likely cause of several earthquakes over the past two weeks, including two just a kilometre apart in northern British Columbia and one in west Texas that was the largest ever recorded in the region.

Emera Inc., the parent company of Nova Scotia Power, is putting capital spending on clean energy projects in the province on hold as it works through the consequences of a government-imposed rate cap.

The European Union is laying the groundwork to increase reliance on expensive, emissions-intensive fertilizers, a move that will hit hardest for developing countries looking for funds to deal with the impacts of climate change and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

New Alberta government research has found windblown dust from mountaintop removal coal mines has polluted a pristine alpine lake to the point where its waters are as contaminated as lakes downwind from the oilsands.

Canada won’t agree to add language calling for the phaseout of all fossil fuels—including oil and gas—to the final agreement at this year’s United Nations climate talks in Egypt, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Thursday.

The 2015 Paris agreement legally bound the world to keep global warming “well below” 2.0°C. Now its architects say nature needs a similar treaty, arguing that without urgent action to protect ecosystems, there will be no hope of accomplishing the Paris mission.

Canada’s economy faces a stranded asset risk of at least C$100 billion when the fossil fuel era comes to an end, says a new report, with further losses as the global energy transition outpaces the country’s climate policy and clean energy investments.

Canada placed fifth from the bottom, and the top three ranks were left empty for the second year in a row, in the latest edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) released at the COP 27 climate summit Monday.

A cap on greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector will be ready by the end of next year, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Monday.

While negotiations at the COP 27 climate summit lag and fossil interests strive to dominate the conversation, countries are announcing side agreements that point toward emission reductions and energy transition in parts of the world that need them most.

Extensive research conducted in the early 1990s yielded a practical solution to the climate crisis that would have averted the mushrooming environmental havoc the world faces today, says journalist Geoff Dembicki—but it was buried by Imperial Oil, using a canary-in-the-coal mine report to launch a disinformation campaign that effectively blocked early mitigation of the crisis.

The federal government still hasn’t provided First Nations with the support they need to respond to emergencies such as wildfires and floods despite warnings almost a decade ago, says a new report from Canada’s auditor general.

Mainstreaming climate action into city financial systems, applying a climate budget to all decisions, and encouraging private sector investment in climate adaptation are strategies that all municipalities, regardless of their situation, can implement to unlock green financing, says C-40 Cities.

As the federal government moves to tighten regulations on methane emissions, new assessments suggest the amount of the potent greenhouse gas escaping into the atmosphere has been significantly underestimated.

Major energy exporting and importing countries made an ostensibly worthy pledge at the COP 27 climate summit to slash emissions from fossil fuels—but it turns out to be a toothless “paper tiger,” say climate watchdogs, with no legally binding effects and nothing new added to past commitments.

The “opportunistic argument” that the world needs more Canadian oil has been rejected by two international reports, say experts, proving it utterly divorced from the needs of a net-zero world.

The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement ever seen in modern history. As many as a billion could be displaced over the coming decades, as more and more people are forced to leave their homes and communities because of floods, droughts, extreme weather events, wildfires, conflict, and extreme heat.

Even if all the world’s current climate commitments are met “in full and on time,” Canada will lose 5.8% of its GDP by 2100—$145 billion in today’s dollars—due to higher temperatures, increased precipitation, and changing weather patterns, finds a new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).

Just a few years ago, much of the business community viewed climate advocates with indifference or skepticism. Today, companies representing 40% of the stock market have committed to science-based targets around reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

Competition Bureau Canada has opened an investigation into allegations that the Canadian Gas Association is greenwashing fossil methane as clean, following a C$10-million complaint filed in September by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

Alberta’s new energy minister has promised to maintain an order protecting the Rocky Mountains in the province from coal development, for now.

With extreme weather events increasing around the globe, concern about climate change is creeping up, but slowly. Canadians still maintain an emotional or psychological distance in their perceptions of the personal risk of harm posed by climate change, with some exceptions.

European scientists have identified a new and potentially devastating climate hazard: the Arctic wildfire.

Climate science and the depth of the climate emergency demand that industries, financial institutions, cities, and regions commit fully to real net-zero targets, end new fossil fuel investment, stop greenwashing their activities, start lobbying for rather than against ambitious government climate policies, and shift from voluntary climate action to regulated, verified emission reductions, according to a UN expert panel chaired by former Canadian environment and climate minister Catherine McKenna.

With the COP 27 climate summit in full swing in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Canadian climate hawks were in Ottawa yesterday delivering more than 80,000 petition signatures—82,622, to be exact—calling on the Trudeau government to make good on its promise to impose an emissions cap on the country’s oil and gas industry.

A pitch for private investment in emission reduction projects, including tax credits for renewable energy, low-carbon heating, and clean hydrogen, is one of the highlights of the fall economic statement released Thursday by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Canadians are being sold on a future of natural gas exports to Europe just as European countries speed up their exit from all fossil fuels, says a leading energy transition researcher who’s just finished a series two-week fact-finding visits to Ireland, Denmark, and France.

With Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland set to deliver her fall economic statement later today, climate and energy analysts are watching closely to see whether she sweetens the already lavish subsidies the Trudeau government extended to carbon capture and storage (CCS) in its 2022 budget.

The CEO of the pension fund that controls retirement investments for 21 million Canadians has reconfirmed his position that “engagement,” not divestment from fossil fuel companies, is the right way forward during the global energy transition.

Canadian regulators say they were unaware of a methane cloud spotted above Western Canada by a European satellite, revealing a crack in the country’s emissions reporting.

Municipal climate and energy leaders in Ontario are scrambling to protect energy-efficient building standards that may be at risk in the provincial government’s rush to push through its More Homes Built Faster Act, Bill 23.

The federal environment minister is calling out Canada’s oil companies for failing to put cash behind their promises to tackle climate change.

Those who have the most to lose under the Ontario Ford government’s proposed More Homes Built Faster Act—which, if passed, will effectively gut the province’s land conservation and public consultation policies—include neighborhoods and civil society organizations determined to have a say in how development proceeds, municipalities looking to implement sustainable design initiatives, and especially Ontario’s wetlands, early analysis shows.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned two HSBC advertisements for misleading the public about its efforts to tackle climate change, marking the first time the regulator has taken action against a bank for greenwashing.

The Green Municipal Fund (GMF) has identified a half-dozen key steps municipalities can take to tackle the biggest barriers to zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) adoption.

Whether it was pandemic-driven supply chain delays, Russia’s war in Europe driving up grain prices, or flooding in British Columbia disrupting rail lines and highways, the past 2½ years have shone a light on how vulnerable Canada’s food system is to climate change and other global factors.

Nova Scotia Power’s decision to “pause” its participation in the proposed Atlantic Loop megaproject is just a temporary setback in the bid to end the region’s reliance on coal, says the federal cabinet minister charged with moving the electrical grid off fossil fuels.

On October 31, 1977, Vol. 1, No. 1 of Canadian Renewable Energy News hit the stands. “With the head start we had 45 years ago,” writes Energy Mix publisher Mitchell Beer, “the job should have been all but done by now.”

The Royal Bank of Canada is out with a long-awaited net-zero strategy that sets a far softer target than the emerging international standard for financial institutions, while touting its ability to engage with clients in the fossil sector and beyond to drive emission reductions.

The giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) is investing up to US$474 million, or 70 billion Japanese yen, in a company that got its start as a search for energy alternatives in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) is pouring nearly C$970 million into Ontario Power Generation’s plan to build the country’s first small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), a 300-megawatt unit on the site of the existing Darlington nuclear station off Lake Ontario.

For Peggy Savery, the hardest part of the day comes as she leaves work in her Newfoundland community of Port aux Basques and drives to the home she’s been staying in with her husband and son.

A luxury fishing trip has prompted questions about the deep connections between Newfoundland and Labrador’s premier and the company hoping to kick-start a hydrogen energy sector in the province.

The Cedar LNG project in British Columbia received some positive regulatory feedback for its plan to produce and export liquified natural gas to Asia, but campaigners and analysts maintain it will undermine Canada’s climate ambitions.

Coastal GasLink and a former prime contractor with alleged links to organized crime are being sued by four companies, working in partnership with three First Nations communities, for allegedly failing to pay an outstanding C$10 million for services rendered.

Hurricane Fiona caused C$660 million in insured damage, according to an initial estimate by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc.

Analyst chatter about TC Energy considering selling off the controversial Keystone pipeline could raise the risk of a major spill or leak, but still improve the Calgary-based pipeliner’s rating for environmental responsibility, The Energy Mix has learned.

Canada will meet its climate targets and “bend the curve” on emissions, while the United States enacts new incentives to make up for its failure to put a price on carbon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday during a last-minute appearance at a climate conference in downtown Ottawa.

Energy transition support in the federal government’s 2022 budget favoured carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCS) over the best opportunities for rapid decarbonization, Iron & Earth Executive Director Luisa Da Silva told a Parliamentary committee Tuesday.

A new analysis suggests Canada is using questionable methods to dramatically underestimate greenhouse gas emissions from the forestry industry, which it says equal those from Alberta’s oilsands in some years.

With Ontario’s municipal elections around the corner, environmental advocates are urging citizens to use their vote to push for climate action.

Water in all the wrong places due to global heating is leaving communities from Canada to Central Africa hungry, with Prince Edward Island reeling from a severe hurricane while millions of people in Chad face a devastating drought.

Canada is open to supporting “economically feasible” liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects to help countries like Germany reduce reliance on coal in the midst of a global energy crunch, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told media Friday, at the close of annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC.

Canada’s biggest oilsands companies have announced a conditional C$24.1-billion investment in a carbon capture and storage facility and pipeline along with other emissions reduction projects, just a week after an analysis showed them receiving $15 billion in federal subsidies so far this year.

Nearly a million Canadian households live in energy poverty, the David Suzuki Foundation says, in a new report that urges Ottawa to address this social injustice while setting Canada’s path to net-zero electricity by 2035.

The federal government is busy consulting us now, gathering input from Canadians on policy proposals for a just transition to renewables, a carbon emissions cap for the oil and gas sector, a clean electricity grid, and more. But how well informed do Canadians think they are about these potential solutions?

Self-interested and destructive human activity has caused wildlife populations to drop nearly 70% since 1970, says a landmark report from the World Wildlife Fund.

Underfunded and poorly administered, Canada’s C$3.3-billion disaster resilience fund is short on cash—and has become a symptom of Ottawa’s failure to protect small communities from the climate crisis, experts say.

Indigenous involvement is critical to meeting Canada’s ‘30×30’ conservation pledge to protect 30% of its land, freshwater, and oceans by decade’s end, says a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund.

Climate denial will be a stealth candidate in several municipal elections being held in British Columbia this Saturday.

Green economies and global climate action were on the agenda Tuesday when Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland declared a new era in geopolitics brought on by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The federal Competition Bureau’s decision to investigate charges of misleading advertising against the Royal Bank of Canada is a sign that federal regulators are paying closer attention to the climate crisis and its causes, says the environmental law charity that filed the case.

Former Toronto mayor David Miller, now managing director of the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy, talks about cities’ responsibility to take action on the climate emergency.

The federal government is relying on “irrelevant” analysis and a “smokescreen” on public information to justify the $17 billion Canadian taxpayers are likely to pay for the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline, a veteran analyst warns.

Ottawa will invest $222 million to help a Quebec company increase production of critical minerals for goods such as electric cars and batteries while simultaneously cutting emissions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.

The head of the World Food Program is urging countries to follow Canada’s lead in trying to avert a looming famine in East Africa, which he warns could get even worse due to sanctions against Russia.

Lawyers for the British Columbia government have agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit by a couple whose property flooded after a third of the forest in the surrounding watershed was cut down.

The lobby group whose policy paper helped trigger a wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories about a supposed federal “ban” on nitrogen fertilizer is disavowing attempts to connect its research to a “freedom movement 2.0” follow-up to last winter’s convoy occupation in Ottawa.

Suncor Energy Inc. says it is selling its wind and solar assets to Canadian Utilities Limited for $730 million.

A group of 40 climate, energy, and social justice NGOs is urging the Trudeau government to sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT).

British Columbia Premier John Horgan signed a new climate pact with the governors of Washington, Oregon, and California last week that includes investments in cross-border climate infrastructure like electric vehicle charging stations.

As national security experts warn that Canada’s military cannot continue as the country’s first line of defence in domestic disasters, organizations like the Canadian Red Cross are urging greater investment in local civilian emergency preparedness.

A deal to sell 38,000 hectares of Alberta oil and gas lands to a company controlled by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is shining a light on large fossils’ favourite path to decarbonization: rather than shutting down some of their assets, they hand them off to smaller operators that then keep them in production.

Canada’s fossil industry saw its greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of oil extracted grow 3% between 2010 and 2020, even as oil and gas lobbyists insisted they were working to drive down their carbon footprint.

Ontario’s electricity system operator is planning to roll out a voluntary program that pays customers with smart thermostats to have their air conditioning remotely reduced on hot summer days.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced a $300-million fund to help the East Coast recover from the ravages of post-tropical storm Fiona.

A group of Canadian public health professionals and advocates have filed a C$10-million greenwashing complaint against the Canadian Gas Association (CGA) for a recent ad campaign promoting natural gas as a clean, affordable, sustainable energy option.

Canada’s biggest oil sands companies have benefitted to the tune of $4.3 billion since Alberta handed large corporations a ‘job creation’ tax cut three years ago, but those jobs never materialized, a new study has found.

Ten years of aggressive “gentrification by upgrading” has left Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood increasingly unaffordable, forcing lower-income tenants to compromise on basic needs like medicine and food to pay soaring rents, finds a recent study.

Ontario can deliver enough distributed energy resources (DER) to clear a large electricity shortage over the next decade, but a prominent analyst says the provincial government is still pivoting between two equally “catastrophic” options—relying more on methane-heavy gas plants, or extending the life of an aging nuclear station outside Toronto.

Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) latest sale of clean energy credits to Microsoft Corporation raises questions about whether the credits meet the basic criteria for genuine carbon offsets—especially given Ontario’s plan to increase gas plant use and resulting emissions.

Even with Europe scrambling to break its dependence on Russian gas supplies, there’s no reason for Canada to subsidize expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects with questionable long-term prospects, says clean growth economist Rachel Samson, vice president of policy at the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

The CEO of the pension fund for 375,000 public sector workers in Alberta was “misrepresenting” his organization’s policies last month when he spoke out against fossil fuel divestment, a watchdog group says.

Canada will see C$25 billion in losses per from climate damage as early as 2025, with individual households bearing the worst of these costs, finds a new report the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

Some Maritimers who lost power after Hurricane Fiona are asking whether utilities are prepared for the powerful storms they’re facing.

What may be the broadest and longest study to date has found Canada’s Arctic Ocean is growing more acidic up to four times faster than any other sea on the planet.

“To answer a question I am often asked—Yes, we are still happy with the decision, five years ago, to replace our gas furnace with an air-source heat pump,” writes engineer and renewables advocate Bill Nuttle. “It is one of the best decisions we ever made.”

With post-tropical storm Fiona taking its place as one of the biggest catastrophic events in Atlantic Canada history, communities began to pick up the pieces while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau connected the storm to climate-induced mayhem.

Canadian Senators with a shared focus on climate change and the independence to do something about it can help build momentum toward action and solutions, Senate Speaker Pro Tempore Pauline Ringuette told the official launch of Senators for Climate Solutions (SFCS) Wednesday morning.

Even as a growing number of activists urge financial institutions to take action against climate change by reducing funding to the fossil fuel sector, executives with Canada’s largest bank say the country won’t reach its net-zero goals without the oil and gas sector.

The CEO of Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) says divesting from fossil fuels is the opposite of what pension funds should be doing if they want to help solve the climate crisis.

As fossil fuel costs soar, Nova Scotia Power is looking to secure a domestic supply of coal from the recently-reopened Donkin mine in Cape Breton—and pushing to pass the cost on to ratepayers.

Hurricane Fiona has killed one person, destroyed dozens of homes, and left hundreds of thousands in Atlantic Canada without power—after causing five deaths and widespread destruction in the Caribbean. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Canadians that things will only get worse as extreme weather becomes more frequent, linking the devastating post-tropical storm to climate change.

Nova Scotia climate campaigner Tynette Deveaux emailed supporters as post-tropical storm Fiona approached Friday. “I’ll be honest,” she wrote. “I’m scared about this one.”

With a new report expected to reveal a massive increase in global oil pipeline construction, an analyst says Canada is running counter to public opinion and wider international trends by adding to the problem.

Canadian fossils are steadfastly refusing to invest significantly in new decarbonization projects, even though they’re flush with record amounts of cash, the Pembina Institute reports in a scathing analysis released last week.

The effects of climate change are projected to cost Ontario an extra $1.5 billion annually on average in the next few years just to maintain public transportation infrastructure, the province’s financial watchdog said in a report Thursday.

Canada must make an “audacious and hopeful offer” to oil and gas workers communities with a new Climate Emergency Just Transition Transfer to deliver clean economy jobs, the Commons Finance Committee heard yesterday.

A blockbuster, five-gigawatt commitment to offshore wind, announced Tuesday by the Nova Scotia government, will be mostly devoted to producing “green” hydrogen for export, and won’t come online in time to stop a hydrogen and ammonia project in Cape Breton from relying on coal-generated electricity, The Energy Mix and Halifax Examiner have learned.

A September 30 deadline is looming for public comment on a new guideline meant to protect Canada’s finance sector from climate impacts, without addressing finance’s role in driving the climate emergency, an outside analyst warns.

The TC Energy subsidiary building the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline has received more than 50 warnings about environmental violations, CBC reports, citing the British Columbia government.

Quebecers tend to talk big on environmental issues, but they’re not so keen to walk their talk, finds a recent poll, and so politicians across the spectrum—with eyes on the ballot box—are happy to punt meaningful climate action on to future generations.

A ranking of the Toronto Stock Exchange’s top performers released last week shows just how dominant Canadian oil and gas stocks have been in 2022 thanks to surging global energy demand and sky-high commodity prices.

A green hydrogen/ammonia facility planned in Point Tupper, Nova Scotia is being touted as a blessing for the province’s climate goals, even though it will initially be powered by a coal-fired grid—with all the ammonia slated for export overseas.

Proponents of imposing a windfall tax on the Canadian oil and gas industry now have another global power setting precedent for the policy.

Ontario’s climate plan is just a “communications product” and a “glossy brochure” with no legal force, not anything for which citizens or the courts can hold the Doug Ford government accountable, a provincial lawyer told a judge last week.

Many people are focused on repairing and upgrading their homes, neighbourhoods, towns, and cities. And the key decisions about these repairs and upgrades are made at City Hall, says Ontario Greenbelt Alliance Coordinator Franz Hartmann.

Ottawa is promising up to $250 million over four years to help Canadians who currently heat their homes with oil shift to greener—and more affordable—sources like electric heat pumps.

Canada has all the right components to cash in on an electric vehicle battery industry worth C$48 billion per year, but only if governments take ambitious action now to help the sector meet its potential, concludes a new report issued this week.

Chris Severson-Baker is the newly-appointed executive director of the Pembina Institute. In this feature interview, he talks about what it will take to turn climate plans and promises into real investments in faster, deeper carbon cuts.

The BC Wildfire Service says a fire in British Columbia’s Peace region has grown out of control due to high winds, noting temperatures are expected to increase and no precipitation has been forecast for the area.

The salvage of the FSO Safer and its 1.1 million barrels of oil floating on the Red Sea will take place during the most dangerous time of year, after countries and private companies dragged their feet on a United Nations effort to fund the operation.

The Line 5 pipeline has won a stay of execution in Wisconsin, where a federal judge sided with an Indigenous group’s complaint but stopped short of ordering the controversial cross-border energy link shut down entirely.

June 28, 2020: Coutts, the private banker to Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the British royal family, has promised to drop its investments in the tar sands/oil sands, Arctic oil and gas exploration, and thermal coal extraction and generation, and to reduce the carbon intensity of its holdings 25% by the end of next year.

Amid current concerns about the cost of living, the economy, and health care, communicators may not know how to frame their efforts to drum up support for action on climate change and biodiversity loss among receptive audiences, let alone those with a history of hostility to climate action.

A new poll concludes that 74% of Canadians want car manufacturers pushed to increase zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) production, even if it harms their profits. But an industry representative warns that regulations targeting Canadian automakers could disrupt the North American auto market.

A northern Alberta First Nation has filed what experts say is the province’s first lawsuit claiming cumulative effects from industry, agriculture, and settlements are so pervasive that they violate the band’s treaty rights.

Seven youth are in court next week with an “obviously historic” lawsuit challenging Ontario’s climate plan under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Four years after Vancouver pledged to double street tree density in the Downtown Eastside by 2030, lethal summer temperatures and high rates of mental illness among residents show how necessary and challenging it will be to keep its promise.

Vancouver-based Zinc8 Energy Solutions Inc. has confirmed plans to build its first commercial manufacturing plant—not in Canada, but in the Upstate New York, motivated by production credits under the Biden administration’s newly-adopted climate action plan.

The Canadian government is asking the public how best to spend $3 billion per year on transit beginning in 2026.

United Conservative Party leadership hopeful Danielle Smith in Alberta is being accused of sowing misinformation with her unsubstantiated claim that the Trudeau government plans to hire “climate cops” to enforce federal decarbonization policy.

After a half-century of research and development, carbon capture and storage projects are far more likely to fail than to succeed, and nearly three-quarters of the carbon dioxide they manage to capture each year is sold off to fossil companies and used to extract more oil, according to a sweeping industry assessment released today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

As a Canadian deep sea mining company pushes to consummate its 15-year “courtship” of the United Nations agency responsible for overseeing the equitable, ecologically safe extraction of seabed resources, a new investigative report is raising flags about the deal and its impacts.

Six months after the Alberta government admitted its efforts to make the Canadian oilpatch pay C$253 million in outstanding taxes had failed, rural communities that depend on the revenue have been forced to cut staff and suspend critical infrastructure repairs.

Floods, droughts, and major storms that wash out highways, damage buildings and affect power grids could cost Canada’s economy C$139 billion over the next 30 years, a new climate-based analysis predicts.

A new case study from Alberta shows that when regulators force the issue and producers of fossil fuels get serious, the companies can drastically reduce their methane emissions without any immediate reduction in their oil and gas extraction.

Using prefabricated materials to build sustainable homes could catch on as a green building practice for affordable housing across Canada, thanks to a pilot project in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed on to a highly-anticipated but non-binding “hydrogen alliance” during a ceremony Tuesday in Stephenville, Newfoundland, capping three days of meetings that delivered new momentum for green energy development but mixed messages on the two countries’ future interest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) development.

Canada’s East Coast emerged this week as a hotbed of clean energy investment, with a high-profile green hydrogen announcement in Stephenville, Newfoundland by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz augmented—and possibly one-upped—by a new green ammonia project in Nova Scotia and talk of a third production plant in New Brunswick.

British Columbia NDP leadership candidate David Eby is declaring himself “frustrated” after Anjali Appadurai, director of campaigns at the Climate Emergency Unit, entered the race and turned a coronation for provincial premier into a two-candidate contest.

The Edmonton Expo Centre is well under way on a rooftop solar project that will be Canada’s biggest once it’s complete.

A Toronto company described as “one of the world’s last processors of rare earth metals outside China” is buying up mineral rights in Greenland to reduce its dependence on supplies from Russia.

An energy pact between Canada and Germany expected to be signed this week in Newfoundland and Labrador will set aggressive timelines and targets for exporting hydrogen to Germany, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Friday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting Canada this week while his country faces a level of energy supply risk that many Canadians would have trouble imagining.

Wind and green hydrogen projects saw a sudden wave of interest in Nova Scotia last week, with the province approving 372 megawatts of new Indigenous-owned wind capacity and a private developer seeking a permit for a green hydrogen and ammonia plant on Cape Breton Island.

An NDP Member of Parliament is hinting that his party’s continuing support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government might hinge on a “big financial commitment” to a just transition for fossil fuel workers and communities.

The international dispute over Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline belongs in federal court, a Michigan judge declared Thursday, dealing a critical blow to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s bid to shut down the controversial cross-border oil and gas line.

A Gwich’in-owned company in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, is building a one-megawatt solar farm that will reduce the community’s greenhouse gas emissions by 380,000 tonnes per year, cut annual energy costs by $1 million, and improve air quality by replacing local diesel generation.

Conservation advocates and experts are concerned a proposal for a Calgary-to-Banff passenger train is chugging along without addressing some key environmental issues in and around the national park.

With the European Union striving to slash its demand for Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of this year and end all its dependence on Russian fossil fuels by 2027, there’s no path for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada to help the continent meet its short-term energy needs, the International Institute for Sustainable Development concludes in a policy brief released Tuesday.

Releasing treated tar sands/oil sands tailings into the environment isn’t the only solution being considered to clean up the massive toxic ponds in northern Alberta, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says.

As the Toronto Community Housing Corporation embarks on an ambitious retrofit that will benefit its tenants and the climate, residents sweltering in a privately-owned low-income building across town are battling a landlord threatening eviction if they turn on the air-conditioning.

Prospects for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export deal from Canada to Germany are close to evaporating as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz prepares for a visit to Montreal, Toronto, and Stephenville, Newfoundland August 21-23, The Energy Mix has learned.

The 385 wildfires during the Northwest Territories’ “summer of smoke” in 2014 were just the beginning. Researchers are now collecting the first field data on the “zombie fires” that have been smouldering underground and periodically reigniting ever since.

Canada’s four biggest fossil companies took home more than C$12.3 billion in profit between April and June of this year, thanks to an oil price surge driven largely by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As the global push for a hydrogen economy accelerates, researchers are urging policy-makers to address new knowledge and fill in some profound data gaps, with recent studies revealing the considerable global warming potential of a fuel that many fossils see as their industry’s best hope for a second life.

Campaigners and local residents are using photos, video, and drone footage to document a Trans Mountain pipeline work site they say is impeding an early salmon run and leaving dead fish along the Coquihalla River in British Columbia.

This month’s EcoA Tip highlights some useful data showing who Canadians tend to blame for climate change. The research comes from a national survey conducted by EcoAnalytics, a non-profit initiative that provides data, analysis, and guidance to strengthen Canada’s environmental movement.

As the burning of fossil fuels presents us with yet another summer of catastrophic impacts, the pressure is growing for pension funds to either phase out their oil, gas, coal, and pipeline assets or explain how they’re aligned with a safe retirement future for their beneficiaries. And Canada’s seventh-largest fund, the C$121-billion Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (OMERS), may be getting the memo, three of its members write for Corporate Knights.

The reopening of a Newfoundland highway that had been closed for days because of raging wildfires provided hope Tuesday that much-needed supplies would finally arrive in stranded communities along the island’s south coast.

Tesla Inc. may be considering Ontario as the site of a new Canadian manufacturing plant, Electric Autonomy writes in an exclusive report.

Plans to expand the proposed U.S tax credit on electric vehicle purchases to cover North American-made cars are a boon for the auto sector, says Ontario’s economic development minister, but the province still isn’t planning any buyer incentives for local drivers.

Two years after it closed, and as it contemplates reopening, the Donkin coal mine in Cape Breton is still exceeding Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions cap without incurring any penalty, as it has since it began operations five years ago.

Canada’s biggest fossil companies are lining up to dismiss the federal government’s new emissions cap for their sector as “very aggressive” and “almost unrealistic”, even as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault hastens to offer them flexibility and an extended deadline to hit the long-awaited target.

British Columbia and Alberta residents who endured last summer’s lethal heat dome say they feel fear, anger, and guilt in its aftermath, testifying to the urgent need for Canadians to take personal and political responsibility for climate change as extreme weather threatens the vulnerable.

Following a spate of revelations about the climate-wrecking private jet habits of many celebrities, observers are warning of the larger climate consequences of the “influencer economy.”

The projected cost of the contentious Coastal GasLink pipeline spanning northern British Columbia has skyrocketed 70% to C$11.2 billion in the wake of a freshly-inked deal between operator TC Energy Corporation and the group building a liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal on the West Coast.

The Trudeau government has released a proposed frame for new Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) aimed at bringing the grid’s greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2035. Comments on the plan close August 17.

A proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant in the United States will capture far less than the 95% of carbon dioxide emissions its backers claim, concludes a new analysis released this week by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Alberta-based PCL Construction’s 2021 solar construction revenue increased 60% over the previous year, totalling more than half a billion dollars. By the end of 2022, the company expects solar revenue to hit just under $800 million.

Offshore oil and gas activities in Atlantic Canada are a genuine threat to the ocean ecosystem and exacerbate climate change, but the federal government is falling short in its plans to regulate that activity, writes Mark Brooks, senior specialist, oil and gas at WWF-Canada, in a recent post on the WWF blog.

A campaign of misinformation is working to undermine a 30% fertilizer emissions reduction target in Canada’s next Agriculture Policy Framework (APF), says a national farmers’ coalition, contending that recently announced emissions policies actually don’t go far enough.

The outsized presence of American libertarian groups—pushing fossil interests in Canada at the expense of Indigenous energy rights and a free press—has been revealed in two recent reports by one intrepid journalist.

Forecaster Warren Dean recalls feeling helpless as a deadly heat dome hovered over British Columbia last summer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Nova Scotia last Thursday to promise green energy funds for the province, but he also said the idea of upgraded facilities to help ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in the “very short term” is back on the table.

With Canada lagging far behind Europe and the United Kingdom in tackling carbon pollution from aviation, the country’s upcoming 10-year climate plan for the sector must be developed with public input and enforce a 30% emissions reduction target by 2030, climate advocates say.

With the Canada Energy Regulator still months away from completing its next projection of the country’s future oil and gas production, climate policy watchers are cautiously optimistic that the analysis will chart a real course for a low-carbon future—and rooting for the CER to get its modelling right.

When Dutch lawmakers proposed measures to reduce climate-busting nitrogen emissions in agriculture, nearly 40,000 livestock farmers took to the streets. But multiple news reports got the story wrong in ways that amplify myths and delay climate action, and the same problem has been playing out in Canada.

Vancouver City Council voted 6-5 late Wednesday afternoon to help fund a class action lawsuit to hold the world’s biggest fossil companies responsible for their local climate impacts, in what West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) is hailing as a “historic win”.

An initial proposal for an oil and gas emissions cap that is a cornerstone of Canada’s 2030 climate strategy is generating glimmers of hope but early skepticism on all sides, after Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault opened public consultations on the plan earlier this week.

A Canadian Red Cross official in Manitoba estimates close to 2,000 people have been evacuated from a First Nation threatened by a wildfire over the last several days using planes, helicopters, and trains.

Canada’s export development bank is taking fire for what a watchdog group calls a “disappointing” set of 2030 emission reduction targets for its lending activities.

Global reserves of oil available for extraction showed a “sizable drop” of 9% last year, in what an analyst at Rystad Energy is calling “good news for the environment” that could still “deal a major blow to energy security”.

Firefighting crews lost ground Sunday after successfully holding back a blaze threatening the village of Lytton in southern British Columbia—barely one year after it was burned to the ground by a raging wildfire that took two lives and displaced hundreds of residents.

A detailed carbon reduction roadmap for agriculture will have to compete with a menu of other farm sector priorities at a high-level meeting in Saskatoon this week, as federal, provincial, and territorial ministers hash out the details of Canada’s next Agriculture Policy Framework (APF).

Ottawa has signed a memorandum of understanding with global metals refining giant Umicore to build a C$1.5-billion electric vehicle battery plant in eastern Ontario.

An environmental assessment for a one-gigawatt, 164-turbine wind farm/green hydrogen and ammonia park in rural Newfoundland is generating local concern about potential habitat impacts, while picking up some high-powered support for the community benefits the project would bring.

The European Union’s need for natural gas will peak in about three years and begin declining before any new, fixed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals can be brought online, and EU countries are deliberately trying to avoid the kind of long-term supply contracts that Canadian gas producers are looking for, a UK-based fossil fuel specialist says.

Changes in global oil prices and markets will continue to destabilize jobs in Alberta, and declining oil demand due to the shift off carbon will have job impacts far beyond the province’s fossil sector without the right mix of just transition policies, an Oxford University research team concludes in a paper published this morning in the journal Climate Policy.

An organization representing eight Mi’kmaq groups in New Brunswick is joining a court challenge to the federal government’s approval of a new offshore oil project in Newfoundland.

A plan for a massive battery storage system near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, is moving ahead after receiving city council support.

Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian-made solar products will be scrapped, after Canada, the United States and Mexico reached a deal at trade talks in Vancouver last week.

A Michigan regulatory panel said Thursday it needs more information about safety risks before it can rule on Calgary-based Enbridge Energy’s plan to extend the Line 5 pipeline through a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. The state Public Service Commission voted 3-0 to seek further details about the potential for explosions and fires involving […]

With extreme heat continuing to feed an increasing number of wildfires in northern Canada, Yukon authorities say some residents must prepare to evacuate within two hours of notification, while in the Northwest Territories a government with stretched resources has asked locals to do their part to prevent unnecessary fires.

With a disabled oil supertanker in the Red Sea likely just weeks or months away from breaking up or exploding, triggering a $20-billion ecological and humanitarian disaster, countries that could help pay for an emergency salvage plan are saying they can’t find the right budget codes to free up the funds.

Two of Canada’s most influential cities stepped up this week with serious action on the climate emergency, with Calgary adopting a new emissions reduction strategy that includes a 2050 net-zero target and Ottawa endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

There will be no federal financing for two companies vying to export Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe from terminals on the East Coast, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a recent interview with the Globe and Mail.

The first of our EcoA Tips, a new monthly series in The Energy Mix,highlights a surprising bit of data from a major survey by EcoAnalytics, a non-profit market research initiative that uses data and analysis to strengthen Canada’s environmental movement.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has confirmed Montreal as the headquarters for its new Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence, just weeks after a retired Australian military officer published an analysis of the “hyperthreat” humanity faces due to the global climate emergency.

Indoor farming could be a powerful solution for producing food in a volatile climate, but the benefits for the food system will come at the cost of a large carbon footprint as long as those new systems depend on natural gas for heat and power.

As early spring heat, increasingly dry summers, and high demand for water drain rivers and aquifers, municipalities across southern Quebec are sounding the alarm on what they know will be a long-term problem they currently have neither the data nor the tax base to resolve.

A group of 15 trainees will be heading out into the field to begin converting two Alberta oilfield sites into solar farms, after graduating from a rapid upskilling program for fossil industry and Indigenous workers hosted by Iron & Earth and Medicine Hat College.

G7 leaders meeting in Bavaria this week affirmed their rhetorical commitment to climate action but walked back a month-old promise to swiftly end public investment in overseas fossil fuel projects as they sought to grapple with the energy crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The federal government is delaying new greenhouse gas emissions standards on gasoline and diesel by another year but will demand the oil and gas sector make bigger cuts to fuel emissions by 2030 given how much more money the companies are now making.

Less than a year after Petaluma, California, became the first city in the world to ban new gas stations, four others have passed similar policies, and at least six more are working on it, including the infamously car-centric Los Angeles—and the British Columbia town of Comox.

Citing the Ontario government’s poor track record on endangered species protection, as well as the need to address First Nations’ concerns and respond to the imperatives of the climate crisis, Environmental Defence Canada is urging Ottawa to conduct a full environmental impact assessment of Highway 413.

While global spending on agriculture has increased, critical support to help the sector build resilience and reduce emissions has decreased, an international agency concludes, even though effective policies are vital to avert a global disaster as food supplies are threatened by climate disasters and the war in Ukraine.

Public vigilance will be vital to preserving the well-being of the world’s greenbelts, which are needed more than ever but increasingly under threat, says a new report produced by the Ontario-based Greenbelt Foundation.

Hydroponic farms in shipping containers and software poised to turn electric vehicle (EV) owners into well-paid electricity providers are among the ingenious innovations that are signs of a better world to come—despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Toronto Star reports.

Canada has inched closer to passing its first-ever on environmental racism, after a private member’s bill passed second reading in the House of Commons last week.

The sudden rise in fertilizer prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have implications for global emissions by reducing how much of it farmers use in their fields. But experts say there’s more to the picture, with non-monetary variables like human capital making a big impact on farming decisions.

Imperial Oil Ltd. has signed a deal to help advance a lithium recovery project in Alberta’s historic Leduc oilfield.

Ottawa is poised to release a new 10-year action plan to reduce aviation emissions—but the document has been crafted in close consultation with the industry, with zero public input planned, according to a recent op-ed.

A scathing budget analysis and a new lawsuit alleging police harassment produced a day of bad news Wednesday for the Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink pipelines in British Columbia.

The federal government is banning companies from importing or making plastic bags and takeout containers by the end of this year, from selling them by the end of next year, and from exporting them by the end of 2025.

Canadian steel giant Dofasco and United States aluminium titan Alcoa are trying to “green” their notoriously polluting industries, as climate and public health concerns escalate. But with technology and energy gaps are complicating the effort.

With ministers meeting in one month to negotiate Canada’s next Agricultural Policy Framework (APF)—an agreement that will govern agriculture spending for the next five years—a farmer-led coalition has released a roadmap to boost adoption of climate-friendly farming practices from coast to coast.

Nearly 750,000 people around the world are facing a food security “catastrophe,” and a further 49 million risk famine conditions in the coming months, as Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts grain exports, compounding extreme food shortages caused by the climate-driven devastation of harvests in India.

A late winter vote by Toronto’s city council permitting homeowners to build a small secondary residence in their backyards is being received as a positive step to loosen a very tight rental market and reduce the city’s carbon-intensive, resource-gobbling tendency towards “tall and sprawl.”

Montreal will host a long-delayed United Nations nature summit December 5-17 that has been described as the Paris Conference for biodiversity, after Canada and China agreed to relocate the high-stakes negotiating session that was originally meant to take place in Kunming, China in October 2020.

When it comes to sustainable cities, Scandinavia is knocking it out of the park, according to the world’s first-ever crowdsourced urban sustainability index, with Stockholm scoring highest and Oslo, Copenhagen, and Lahti, Finland close behind on a list of 50 high- and middle-income cities.

Countries accounting for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and economic output made new promises on methane controls, clean energy technology demonstrations, zero-emission vehicles, food security and agriculture emissions, and green shipping at a Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate convened by U.S. President Joe Biden June 17.

Wet’suwet’en land defenders are facing the threat of criminal records for their idealistic fight to save precious sacred resources for all of us, writes guest author Susan Tanner.

With the Ford government situated firmly in office for a second term after an election that saw the lowest voter turnout in Ontario’s history, it’s likely that any future climate action will need to be led by the federal government, says Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University, in a recent op ed.

Determined to provide residents and visitors with “an experience of summer comfort in the city,” Montreal has closed two and a half kilometers of a major urban street to vehicle traffic for the summer, opening it up to pedestrians and filling it with art, entertainment, food, and lots of plant-filled spaces to sit.

Ottawa has launched the first phase of its plan to offer interest-free loans to Canadians planning upgrades that will have a significant impact in reducing their homes’ environmental footprint.

An environmental law non-profit in Vancouver is inviting British Columbia municipalities to join a class action lawsuit to hold some of the world’s biggest fossil companies responsible for their share of the climate damages local communities are experiencing.

The first major assessment of the costs of climate change to infrastructure across Northern Canada calls for action from all levels of government to bring about “transformative adaptation” and address the dual crises of climate hazards and infrastructure gaps.

The British Columbia coroner’s report on last year’s 619 extreme-heat-related deaths in the province recommends building codes be updated to require cooling systems, but experts call that measure a “necessary but insufficient action” as Canadian summers grow dangerously hotter.

As Canada’s oilpatch scrambles to fill 2,000+ job openings created by shifting geopolitical and economic winds, new analysis is calling on governments to ensure workers aren’t unduly disrupted by the country’s climate pledges, and that clean energy jobs are available to groups that have been shut out in the past.

Internal analysis by federal officials raises tough questions about whether the Canadian fossil industry can achieve the 81 megatonnes of emissions cuts the Trudeau government has promised by 2030 without cutting production, according to confidential documents obtained by the Globe and Mail.

British colossal fossil BP is exiting the Alberta tar sands/oil sands to focus on offshore oil development instead.