Cities and Sub-Nationals

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.

London has become the biggest city so far to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty—a signal that experts say must be matched by action in the United Kingdom capital, where the London Stock Exchange (LSE) holds gigatonnes of embedded carbon emissions in listed companies.

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.

Carbon storage in the world’s forests is only at 88% of its full potential, finds a new study that aims to inform global climate strategies by pinpointing opportunities for more sequestration.

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 Joe Biden administration in the United States should be pushing for a transit fare holiday—and a windfall profit tax on fossil revenues—not a gas tax holiday, a measure critics are panning as anti-climate action that will do nothing to help consumers cope with inflation.

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

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.

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.

The decision by mammoth California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to report avoided emissions due to its operations could be a progressive step towards climate accountability, but unofficially framing them as “Scope 4 emissions” could open the door to corporate greenwashing, experts warn.

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.

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.

As wealthy jurisdictions, companies, and people increasingly buy into the private weather forecasting market and its derivatives, questions are being asked about where this leaves less well-heeled, and often more climate-vulnerable, households and communities.

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.

The small glaciers of Greenland are shrinking faster than ever. In the first years of this century, they were measured as losing ice at the rate of 27 billion tonnes a year. Between October 2018 to December 2021, that rate grew to more than 42 billion tonnes a year, a 55% increase.

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.

New legislation in Florida gives local governments added support to build resilience against rising sea levels, but stops short of taking direct action to slash state emissions.

Giving birth in 50°C heat, and forced by their circumstances to work very shortly afterwards, young mothers of southern Pakistan and their pregnant peers suffer cruelly from global heating, confirming the gendered nature of the climate crisis, say public health experts.

The countries of the world missed an “historic chance for a clean energy recovery” from the COVID-19 pandemic and saw renewable energy stagnate due to a surge of fossil fuel subsidies last year, the REN 21 Secretariat reports this morning in its Renewables 2022 Global Status Report.

Extreme heat and humidity is inhibiting learning and leaving teachers in the United States anxious for the well-being of their students, as researchers estimate that by 2025, one in four public schools in the country will need to install air conditioning or upgrade their existing ventilation systems.

BlocPower’s Civilian Climate Corps provides paid, on-the-job training to New Yorkers who live in neighbourhoods with high rates of gun violence, aiming to start them on their way to a career in the city’s fast-growing green construction and clean energy trades.

An “unlikely” alliance of rural conservatives, environmentalists, and Indigenous groups is resisting the potential use of the eminent domain doctrine—a legal tool that allows private land to be seized for perceived public good—to build America’s largest carbon dioxide pipeline.

Ukrainian state oil and gas company Naftogaz has announced a deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) and green hydrogen from Quebec, beginning in just five years.

Unprecedented growth in Alberta’s renewable energy sector signifies a vital shift in the province’s energy economy, says the Pembina Institute, but another expert notes that Alberta’s power market also needs to be fixed—so that consumers aren’t overcharged for new grid infrastructure in the renewables boom.

British Columbians should expect their governments to hold fossil fuel companies accountable rather than passing the costs of climate change on to citizens, said Andrew Gage, Staff Lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, in a feature interview just days before WCEL’s unveiling of the new Sue Big Oil campaign this Wednesday.

Regulators around the globe are using monitoring tools, from infrared cameras to satellites, to call out oil and gas companies for methane leaks that are often underreported by fossil producers, with one group of U.S. legislators concluding that fossils are not concerned that the technology could fail—but rather that it might succeed.

Public health doctor, pipeline protester, and renowned tree-sitter Tim Takaro doesn’t deserve four weeks in prison for violating a court injunction against blocking construction of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, climate communicator James Boothroyd writes in an op ed for the Toronto Star.

As a devastating drought threatens to dry up Utah’s Great Salt Lake, scientists warn of environmental apocalypses to ensue: millions of migratory birds will go hungry after losing their feeding grounds, and nearby residents will be exposed to dust clouds filled with arsenic.

Flower power of a different kind—a flower-shaped solar-powered microgrid, to be precise—stands ready to power a Saskatoon high school, and inspire its students.

A consulting report for Enbridge Inc. estimates the closure of the Line 5 pipeline would lead to an increase of one to two cents per litre in gasoline prices for Ontarians and Quebecers, a revelation that has reignited debate on the true economic impacts of shuttering an aging pipeline with very clear environmental risks.

Alberta’s energy minister is warning that anything resembling the United Kingdom’s windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies must not be implemented in Canada, adding that any federal action in that direction would be an “extreme act of aggression”.

Canada’s first federal carbon offset market kicked off Wednesday as the final piece of the puzzle in the carbon price for big industry takes shape. Climate activists say it simply makes it cheaper for big industry to keep polluting.

Canada and California are kindred progressive spirits on climate change, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday, as he and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a new blueprint for working together to stave off the worst consequences of a warming planet.

A new study dispels concerns that new wind farms will harm communities by lowering property values, showing that the facilities actually raise incomes and home prices in the rural United States.

British Columbia has more ground to cover to protect people and communities from heat emergencies, even though the province would be better prepared now to withstand the heat dome that resulted in more than 600 deaths last summer, says the chief medical officer at BC’s Coroners Service.

Canada’s shift to local renewables is in full swing from coast to coast, with Indigenous-owned hydroelectric and heat pump projects afoot in British Columbia, a 21-megawatt solar and storage project under way in Prince Edward Island, and new wind turbines coming to New Brunswick.

Communities near fracking operations and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in the United States are worried that industrial expansion prompted by Russia’s war in Ukraine will bring them increasing and longer-term exposure to health-threatening pollutants. 

Worried about food security and determined to boost resilience while cutting energy costs, traditionally oil-dependent Alaska is looking to develop new microgrids and upgrade existing fossil-fueled ones—with renewables and storage.

Three Cambridge engineers have filed to patent the world’s first emissions-free cement recycling process.

The economic case for climate action might be the line of argument the climate community needs if it hopes to push Ontario toward faster, deeper carbon cuts during the four years of Premier Doug Ford’s second term, Globe and Mail columnist Adam Radwanski suggests in a post-election column.

A transit agency in California is drastically reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, saving money, and creating hundreds of jobs after shifting its entire 87-bus fleet from diesel to electric, 18 years ahead of the state mandate that would have required the new vehicles.

California’s unrelenting drought is straining the state’s resources and inflaming tensions in the legislature, as crucial drought relief policies and action are delayed by competing priorities like the pandemic, homelessness, and wildfires.

A recent study showing that levels of lung-damaging black carbon pollution at the Trudeau International Airport are 400% higher than in downtown Montreal has left those who live nearby anxious about their health, and at least one academic urging a rethink on the airport’s planned expansion.

Tesla has launched a demonstration project in Texas to show that its Powerwall battery owners can create a virtual power plant that would be able to feed energy back to the state grid.

Climate policy analysts and campaigners were looking to next steps last night as they absorbed the results of a provincial election that delivered a second legislative majority for Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, after the climate emergency barely scratched the surface of the campaign agenda.

The British Columbia Prosecution Service said 15 people are being charged with criminal contempt of court following protests last fall over a natural gas pipeline being built near Houston in northern B.C. Those charged are alleged to have breached a B.C. Supreme Court injunction granted to the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline in 2019 that prohibited […]

Calgary city staff have unveiled an $87-billion climate plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, deliver $80 billion in energy savings, and generate $60 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) by mid-century.

With subsidies to make them cost-competitive, electrified medium- and heavy-duty (MHD) trucks are viable and could replace a large number of fossil-fueled freighters on the road today, says the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), contrary to the misconception that electric vehicle technology can’t match truckers’ needs. 

The recently-proposed HEATR Act could accelerate heat pump adoption in the United States, deliver cost savings for consumers, and attract support from both sides of the aisle, say two commentators from opposite sides of the country’s fraught political spectrum.

With long-term care workers and nursing assistants increasingly taking on the role of first responders during climate-driven disasters like wildfires and heat waves, California has launched a pilot project to train them for the new responsibility, while their union pushes for better wages and benefits to match the added work load.

Batten down the hatches for another nasty hurricane season, U.S. forecasters advise. The season that starts today looks like another note in a record-breaking refrain.

A groundbreaking climate lawsuit—filed by a Peruvian farmer who alleges high-emitting German utility RWE knowingly contributed to climate change and the flood threat he faces—entered a decisive phase last week as German court officials travelled to Huarez, Peru, to examine melting glaciers.

With Ontario voters going to the polls tomorrow, the battle is still on to protect the province’s rural communities from urban sprawl, amped up by Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZOs) that have enabled the Ford government to rezone land without a municipal council’s permission.

While British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec all have clear momentum in their preparations for the global transition off carbon, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and especially Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador need to put pedal to the metal, says a new report from the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

California is gaining pace on its clean energy targets, with five leases for a combined 380,000 acres of floating offshore wind development a step closer to being auctioned. The most populous state in the United States could serve as a “guiding light” in the energy transition, with research estimating that California could achieve 85% clean electricity by the end of the decade.

The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the Biden administration to use a higher estimate for calculating damages to people and the environment from greenhouse gas emissions, despite a challenge by Republican-led states.

Nearly 20 years after a summer heat wave took 70,000 lives across Europe, even cities focused on climate action aren’t paying sufficient attention to the deepening peril of urban heat stress, finds a recent study, while cities in the developing world urgently need to develop long-term cooling strategies for their most vulnerable. 

The United Kingdom’s first mayor to declare a climate crisis is feeling the heat after taking a nine-hour flight to deliver a 14-minute talk at a TED conference in Vancouver, now being convened annually to urge city mayors to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The Ontario Energy Board sent minor shock waves through the province’s energy regulatory and municipal energy communities earlier this month with its refusal to approve the final phases of a $123.7-million pipeline replacement project in Ottawa proposed by Enbridge Gas.

With the provincial election just days away, a business group in Windsor is blaming the Ford government’s hostility to renewable energy for the loss of a C$2.5-billion investment from South Korean chemical giant LG Chem.

The Biden administration has become the latest target of the Alberta government’s enduring sense of grievance, after Ambassador David Cohen declared a “return to civility” following the Trump years but expressed skepticism about increasing his country’s imports of Canadian oil and gas.

A South Korean solar panel maker announced last Thursday that it will expand its presence in Georgia, building a new US$171-million plant next to an existing factory in Dalton.

Fourteen years after getting the green light, the £18.9-billion Elizabeth Line is being celebrated as Londoners’ path to an easier, quicker, more accessible commute, as well as something—at long last—to feel optimistic about.

Forty years of largely unregulated growth have left 1.4 trillion litres of toxic tar sands/oil sands tailings sloshing around in “ponds” on the shores of the Athabasca River, devastating ecosystems and First Nations communities with neither plan nor budget for reclamation, says a new report from Environmental Defence.

Canada can achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2035 with an electricity system that prioritizes renewable energy, storage, energy efficiency, and interprovincial transmission and avoids the pitfalls of nuclear generation, fossil gas, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsets, the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) concludes in a modelling study released this week.

Ontario opposition politicians sharpened their focus on climate policy in the dying days of the provincial election campaign after Conservative leader Doug Ford mistakenly called the massive storm that hit Ottawa and parts of Ontario and Quebec on Saturday a “once in a lifetime” event.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil faced three financial and legal setbacks in 48 hours earlier this week, with shareholders demanding a formal audit of the company’s climate-related risk and a Massachusetts court rejecting its bid to dismiss a legal challenge to its climate transparency.

Vancouver’s core-area neighbourhoods are closing in on 15-minute city status, says a new study conducted by Simon Fraser University, largely because a decisive majority of residents can get to their nearest grocery store on foot, and at a relaxed pace.

High River, Alberta says it has become the first municipality to endorse a community-developed policy that calls for a ban on new coal exploration and development in the Rocky Mountains.

An extensive study of thousands of COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals found links between the severity of their infections and the levels of common air pollutants they experience.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power after Saturday’s powerful storm that left at least nine dead and caused extensive damage throughout southern Ontario and Quebec.

British Columbia is changing its decades-old royalty system, the fees it charges companies to extract publicly owned oil and gas, in an effort to align with provincial climate goals, but still maintaining subsidy support for fracking wells.

Invoking economic opportunity while avoiding language that conjures reduced choice or increased regulation—including the polarizing term ‘climate change’—is a key strategy to get renewable power projects approved in Republican states, say the authors of a new study.

Across the globe, peatlands are under threat and their destruction is contributing to climate change. In Canada, Europe, and the tropics, peatlands are being drained for urban, suburban, and infrastructure expansion, converted to dryland agriculture, and mined for fuel and the horticulture industry, researchers Rafael Ziegler, Magali Simard, Rahma Eldeeb write for The Conversation.

Though residents remain traumatized six years after the wildfire known as “The Beast” tore through Fort McMurray, Alberta, their fierce loyalty to Alberta’s fossil energy industry leaves many unwilling to connect the dots between greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and the increasing ferocity of wildfires.

Conservative leader Doug Ford’s promise to build Highway 413, a proposed suburban superhighway ring road to the west and north of Toronto, would lock in a massive increase in climate-changing emissions and other damaging impacts for decades to come, critics say.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s oil industry regulator is releasing its 2022 call for bids on new offshore exploration licences.

Researchers are developing mental health resources for farmers facing more unpredictable farming seasons, as climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.

A business owned by TD Bank’s asset management division is tripling its investment in lithium-ion batteries for the Alberta power grid and bringing its total capacity up to 180 megawatt-hours.

Republicans are coming out swinging against Wall Street’s growing efforts to consider factors like long-term environmental risk in investment decisions, the latest indication that the GOP is willing to damage its relationship with big business to score culture war points.

The glaciers of the Canadian Rockies are “past their tipping point” for meltdown, says a climate and water expert, describing a reality that bodes ill for Prairie freshwater supplies.

After six power plants in Texas unexpectedly failed on Friday, causing a loss of about 2,900 megawatts of electricity—enough to power 580,000 homes—the state’s main grid operator is asking residents to conserve energy as they head into another weekend of record-high temperatures.

By pushing forward Ring of Fire mining and smelting development projects in northern Ontario, experts say federal and provincial governments are failing to recognize the right to free, informed, and prior consent enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), ratified by the Canadian government.

Ontario voters concerned about global heating and other environmental problems will find no champion in Doug Ford, given his track record of catering to developers and heavy industry at the expense of the public good, warns a recent op ed in the Toronto Star.

A floating tidal energy project in the Bay of Fundy has been successfully connected to Nova Scotia’s grid, an undertaking that marks a milestone for Canada’s marine energy ambitions, say proponents, as the bay’s tidal resources could be harnessed for thousands of megawatts of clean energy in the future.

The extreme rainfall that triggered deadly flooding on the eastern coast of South Africa in April was made twice as likely and 4 to 8% more intense by climate change, concludes a new study by the World Weather Attribution Service.

Conservative candidates made gains, the Green Party tripled its popular vote, and climate action emerged as the second-most important issue after rising prices as Germany’s most populous and highest-emitting state held regional elections Sunday.

California’s attorney general subpoenaed ExxonMobil late last month as part of what he called a first-of-its-kind broader investigation into the petroleum industry for its alleged role in causing a global plastic pollution crisis, allegations that the company called meritless.

Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford is promising to install new charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) if his government is returned to office in provincial elections June 2, but has no plans to reinstate the EV rebates it cancelled when he took office in 2018.

With Ontario on the cusp of locking in its reliance on natural gas infrastructure, The Atmospheric Fund says emissions of climate-busting methane due to the province’s existing gas consumption are nearly double the amounts reported in Canada’s latest emissions inventory report.

The current narrative linking international human migration with increased security risks should not be accepted at face value, say experts, and policy-makers must focus on building cohesive strategies and support systems for migration within borders in anticipation of large influxes of climate refugees, a conference audience heard last week.

As distributed solar that put the technology closer to consumers, rather than at a centralized generating station, gains serious ground in the United States, distributed energy resources (DERs) are running into barriers in Canada, especially in Ontario.

The recent collapse of two oceanfront homes on the North Carolina coast in the immediate wake of a slow-moving storm is being received as yet another reminder that climate change is a real and present danger.

Canada’s collective failure to protect endangered boreal caribou herds and the forests on which they depend owes to a longstanding determination to put jobs and profits above the health and well-being of wildlife—a determination on particularly short-sighted display in Quebec, a new analysis concludes.

If the world goes on burning fossil fuels at the present rate, then the numbers of people in South Asia at risk from devastating super-cyclones and catastrophic storm-surge flooding could more than double, according to a new study.

Greenhouse gas emissions from Ontario’s electricity system are set to increase more than 400% over the next two decades after the Doug Ford government cancelled a major wind farm and 758 smaller renewable energy projects, according to a forecast published by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator and reported by the Toronto Star.

Campaigners in Australia’s federal election are caught in a balancing act between appeasing the majority of citizens who want the government to prioritize climate goals—and seducing voters in a handful of constituencies where a major source of livelihood is the world’s dirtiest fuel.

Climate change and social equity were both on the curriculum for the designers and builders of two new purpose-built schools in Washington, DC.

Alberta’s top court said Tuesday the federal government’s environmental impact law is unconstitutional, and Ottawa almost immediately announced its plan to appeal.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario is relying on a “known climate change denier” to defend against a youth-led constitutional challenge to its climate change policies, Toronto-based Environmental Defence Canada contends, citing one of two affidavits filed as part of the province’s response to the case.

Utilities across several states are warning of rolling blackouts caused by electricity shortages, as the United States braces itself for a summer of record-breaking heat waves that will drive up energy demand.

A heavy industry town in British Columbia with an ingrained suspicion of government has decided to say yes to a 100% renewable energy transition by 2050, after a local climate group spent time meeting people where they’re at with curiosity and compassion—a hallmark of the “deep canvassing” technique.

The changing agricultural landscape of Canada’s Northwest Territories is showing how rising global temperatures could affect food production, as growing conditions in the North become increasingly favourable, while heat waves and drought desiccate farmland in other regions.

A gas pipeline in Texas released enough methane in just over an hour in mid-March to equal the climate impact of running 16,000 internal combustion cars for a year.

A Texas state program to allocate federal aid for rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey unfairly overlooks Houston’s Black and Hispanic neighborhoods after it designed a competition-based application process that favoured smaller, predominantly white counties, community advocates say.

Ontario’s first net-zero emissions community centre will include a space for aquatics, a particular point of pride for the firm that designed it since pools are notoriously difficult to heat, dehumidify, and decarbonize.

E-bikes were the big hit at the recent New York International Auto Show, with the arrival of a plethora of start-ups offering more accessible, safer, and child- and cargo-friendly rides.

North Carolina is making a bad bet on biogas and biomass projects that contaminate the environment, raise environmental justice concerns, and “crowd out real clean energy solutions,” Inside Climate News reports in a recent exposé.

A Wisconsin Indigenous band is seeking a permit to immediately evict the Line 5 pipeline from its land, creating a second shutdown risk for a piece of fossil infrastructure that has already faced closure threats from the Michigan government, as well as other Indigenous and environmental groups.

Carbon dioxide pipelines supporting a fast uptick in carbon capture and storage (CCS) could threaten the safety of countless communities across the United States, say experts, due to federal pipeline safety regulations that are woefully inadequate to cover the “flurry of multibillion-dollar CO2 pipeline proposals” now eligible for tax credits.

Even with gasoline prices hitting record levels, and the high cost of living taking centre stage in Ontario’s provincial election, the Doug Ford government was still moving in the wrong direction last month when it opted to roll back gas taxes last month, analysts say.

Steel and mining multinational ArcelorMittal SA conducted a first, successful test of green hydrogen for the direct reduced iron (DRI) process at its plant in Contrecoeur, Quebec, the company announced last week.

A new photovoltaic (PV) system designed by French company Ecovégétal increases energy yields by up to 10% by combining solar power generation with urban agriculture.

Hawai’i is set to become the first state in the United States and the world to ratify the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), a proposed global plan to manage the phaseout of coal, oil and gas.

With the worst of the thick wildfire smoke having blown out of town, residents of this small northern New Mexico city of Las Vegas tried to recapture a sense of normalcy Saturday as their rural neighbours hunkered down amid predictions of extreme fire conditions.

Montreal will mandate a zero-emission standard for all new construction beginning in 2025, Mayor Valérie Plante announced Tuesday.

The murderous heat and wildfires that claimed lives and destroyed property in British Columbia and other parts of North America in June, 2021 has hit the global record books. According to a new statistical study, only five other heat waves worldwide since 1960 have been more extreme.

Canada’s electricity system will have to get bigger, cleaner, and smarter to help power the country’s net-zero transition, the Canadian Climate Institute concludes in a collection of three reports issued Wednesday.

With the Ontario election under way and party platforms rolling out, there aren’t very many dramatic differences among the climate and environment commitments from the three provincial opposition parties, a compendium released by 13 environmental organizations shows.

As statistics show an acute upswing in the number of global conflicts involving water, urban planning experts and alarmed policy-makers are devising ways to protect citizens from the harms of too little water—as well as too much.

Determined to protect their residents from the increasing reality of extreme weather events like wildfire, two towns in Western Canada are starting to build permanent evacuation centres, but need government help to make that happen.

An Ontario seniors’ climate group is channelling two of Canada’s most beloved comedy characters, Mrs. Enid and Mrs. Eulalia of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, in a two-minute YouTube video that takes aim at Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford’s climate policies.

Tokyu Railways in Japan has begun using only renewable power sources for train and station operation along its sprawling route between Tokyo and Yokohama, producing carbon dioxide reductions that it says are equivalent to the annual average emissions of 56,000 Japanese households.

Amid growing climate concerns and the falling price of renewables, Minnesota utility Xcel Energy is planning to replace the state’s largest coal plant—the Sherburne County Generating Station, known as Sherco—with solar arrays.

With a four-week election period in Ontario kicking off today, organizations across the province are hitting high gear in their efforts to push the climate emergency to the top of voters’ list of campaign concerns, while connecting climate solutions with the affordability, housing, and health crises the province is simultaneously facing.

The City of Hamilton’s decision to freeze its urban boundary has become an issue in Ontario’s provincial election, with the incumbent Progressive Conservatives denouncing it as municipal overreach and the opposing New Democrats defending it as local democracy in action.

A massive drought-starved reservoir on the Colorado River has become so depleted that Las Vegas now is pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead where other states downstream don’t have access.

A wholesale switch to electric vehicles in the United States could save more than 100,000 lives and more than US$1.2 trillion in public health costs by 2050, says a new report by the American Lung Association.

The Toronto Transit Commission has ordered 202 hybrid-electric buses from Winnipeg-based New Flyer Industries, to be delivered by the end of 2023.

As an example of what some see as a key piece of the transition to clean energy, a community battery in a Perth, Australia, suburb won over some of the community’s residents by storing electricity from rooftop solar panels to distribute back to the grid.

Etobicoke-based Mitrex Integrated Solar Technology has signed on to install North America’s biggest building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system, at a student residence at St. Mary’s University in Halifax.

BC Hydro is falling short of its obligations to fund habitat conservation under the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program, according to a brief from the B.C. Wildlife Federation and the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre that asks the provincial auditor general to look into the matter.

California generated 97% of its electricity from renewable energy sources on a Sunday afternoon last month.

Most new commercial and large multi-family buildings in Washington must install heat pumps under provisions of a revised energy code.

State, local, and federal emissions policies already stand to cut United States transportation emissions in 2030 by 19% from 2019 levels, but an expanded “all-in” climate strategy could boost the cuts to 34% by the end of the decade, new analysis finds.

A growing body of research published over the past two decades has found that most reservoirs, including those used for hydropower, aren’t emissions-free. Despite the green reputation of hydropower among policy-makers, some reservoirs emit significant amounts of methane, along with much smaller amounts of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

A hundred European Union cities, and 12 non-EU ones, have pledged to achieve climate neutrality by 2030, and will get support from the EU to make it happen.

Done in by e-commerce, the pandemic, and changing consumer values, the traditional cookie-cutter shopping mall is (mostly) dead in Canada. But from the ashes of “de-malling” may come something more vibrant—and environmentally sustainable.

After persuading his colleagues to support free transit for under-19s and low-income seniors, Victoria city councillor Ben Isitt is working hard to push his city to join the 100 or so municipalities around the world that already make public transit free for all riders.

The pilot stage of Edmonton’s Clean Energy Improvement Program was fully subscribed within 48 hours of its launch at the end of March, as homeowners raced to benefit from the promise of low-cost financing for climate-friendly improvements like solar panels and insulation upgrades.

Researchers are citing health risks as a reason to switch to electric stoves, after their measurements of indoor air pollutants linked to gas cooking motivated them to change their own appliance choices.

A private email shows a Conservative MP from Alberta calling an NDP-initiated study into the relationship between resource development and increased violence against Indigenous women and girls “disgraceful.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has unexpectedly vetoed a bill that would have slashed the rates that utilities have to pay rooftop solar owners who sell their surplus power back to the grid, a move that would have devastated the solar industry in the U.S. jurisdiction known as the Sunshine State.

Texas is ground zero for the climate emergency, and 65% of its people are worried. But voter suppression on a broad scale makes it harder for them to have their say and demand action.

South Melbourne, Australia-based Montem Resources has announced plans to pursue a renewable energy project at its Tent Mountain site in Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass instead of its planned coal mine, but some environmental advocates remain suspicious of the company’s plans.

Humans weren’t the only ones affected by last summer’s record heat wave in Western Canada. The high temperatures also put honeybees and other pollinators at risk, Dr. Alison McAfee of the University of British Columbia writes for The Conversation.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator is checking in with stakeholders on a plan to invest US$10.4 billion in new transmission that would enable as much as 53 gigawatts of new wind, solar, hybrid, and stand-alone battery storage capacity.

A group of conservation groups in Wisconsin are asking the state natural resources department to stop work on a US$492-million transmission line and revoke its wetlands and waterway permits until a “lawful” environmental review can be conducted.

In a U.S. state where coal is still king, solar energy is beginning to come on strong, as West Virginia gradually begins to prepare itself for the transition off fossil fuels.

The city of Saskatoon is investing in two battery electric buses (BEBs) instead of four new diesel vehicles, after a pilot program showed the battery-powered units performing well in cold winters.

The southeastern United States is seeing a surge in electric vehicle sales, with an increase of 48% last year despite only a modest 3% rise in the overall auto trade.

Canadian professionals, trades, and labourers will urgently need education and retraining to successfully navigate the transition to a net-zero economy, Royal Bank of Canada economists warned in a report issued last month.

For the younger inhabitants of America’s oil boom towns, “future-proofing” their communities by investing in green energy is a necessary adventure, even if it’s “like staring into the abyss” for older residents.

Disheartened Winnipeg residents wringing out their homes in the wake of last week’s deluge of rain are turning to neighbours and community groups for support as the municipality’s response fall short.

America’s electric power system is undergoing radical change as it transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy. While the first decade of the 2000s saw huge growth in natural gas generation, and the 2010s were the decade of wind and solar, early signs suggest the innovation of the 2020s may be a boom in “hybrid” power plants.

The month of March brought India its highest maximum temperatures in 122 years, April has been scorching, and May is forecast to be even worse for more than a billion people facing ferocious heat waves that have been hammering the subcontinent since early spring.

Binding, science-based climate targets, respect for Indigenous sovereignty, and investment in a “thriving, regenerative, zero-emissions economy” are the top demands from more than 125 organizations that were scheduled to launch the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign at the provincial legislature later today.

Scientific evidence “unequivocally” indicates a need for decisive action to protect Canadians from the adverse health effects of traffic-related air pollution, says a new report prepared by doctors calling for a shift to electric vehicles and greener, more walkable cities.

Alanna Cowan has watched the Nicola River in British Columbia’s Interior turn the colour of chocolate milk and rise every spring, as warm weather melts snow from the surrounding mountains. It is part of an annual cycle that can cause minor flooding, but Cowan said this year feels more uncertain.

The Biden administration is scrapping old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, speeding an ongoing trend toward more efficient lighting that officials say will save households, schools, and businesses billions of dollars a year.

“You’re going to die of old age. We’re going to die of climate change,” chanted a group of Whitehorse, Yukon, high school students who gathered on Earth Day to protest the failure of way too many adults to take the climate crisis seriously.

Canada is on track to add 5.5 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity this year, most of it in Alberta, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Power plant operators in 13 Midwestern and mid-Atlantic U.S. states plus the District of Columbia are hoping to shut down more than 3,200 megawatts of coal capacity this year, on the heels of another 1,024 MW they retired last year.

The vacant strips of land along major highways could unlock a cleaner power grid and promote the uptake of electric vehicles, according to an 81-page feasibility study done for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

U.S. utilities are getting set to invest US$140 billion per year in 2022 and 2023 to upgrade obsolete infrastructure, boost reliability, and get ready for the surge in demand they’ll be seeing with the rise of electric vehicles and other demands on a decarbonized grid.

Quebec will issue two new requests for proposals for 2,300 megawatts of new wind and other renewable energy capacity, Premier François Legault announced last week during a visit to the province’s Gaspé region.

Economic security through a basic income must be at the centre of the just transition off fossil fuels, and Canadians need the wherewithal to build resilience in their own communities, the Green Resilience Project concluded earlier this month, based on a series of 33 local conversations involving more than 900 participants across the country.

The federal and Newfoundland and Labrador governments are in a squabble over who will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties on the Bay du Nord offshore oil development, even as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault declares the controversial megaproject may be the last ever approved in the province.

In an administrative first, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) has announced it will consider the climate impacts of the four-mile (6.5-kilometre) tunnel that Calgary-based Enbridge is proposing to build beneath the Straits of Mackinac to house the controversial Line 5 pipeline.

With pre-election announcements in full swing ahead of a June 2 vote, Ontario has shifted its net metering regulations to make it easier for homeowners, farms, and businesses to generate income from rooftop solar or other renewable energy systems by selling surplus electricity back to the grid.

The largest private land conservation project in Canadian history is unfolding in northern Ontario.

New York State is expected to pitch a ban on natural gas in new construction when Gov. Kathy Hochul issues her 2022 budget.

G20 countries are falling behind on the all-important “say-do gap” between their 2030 emission reduction pledges and the climate action they’re actually taking, and Canada shows up dead last among the 10 wealthiest nations in the group, according to the first annual Earth Index released this week by Corporate Knights.

After South Africa’s deadliest storm on record killed 448 people and left another 63 missing, the country is vowing to get serious about climate adaptation—a pledge that must address the tragic nexus between climate casualties, dangerously inadequate housing, and a sky-high unemployment rate.

A survivor of British Columbia’s catastrophic floods last year is warning others to check their insurance policies after she said she was offered a payout of only $30,000 when her home, assessed at $414,000, was destroyed.

A new liquified natural gas (LNG) project advertised as the “lowest-emission LNG export facility in the world” is set to proceed in British Columbia, but environmental groups say the facility will increase fracking in the northeastern part of the province, with adverse effects on water, climate, wildlife, and human health.

Michigan’s biggest energy supplier will phase out coal in 2025, 15 years ahead of its original schedule, embrace low-carbon electricity options, and donate to a fund for low-income utility customers under a proposed settlement with Attorney General Dana Nessel.

California has unveiled a plan to ban new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a move that is expected to set a bar for the auto industry and propel electric vehicle (EV) policy in the United States.

Thousands of Canada’s most vulnerable citizens risk suffering and death by extreme heat in the next few decades without collectively action to protect them and combat heat, says a new report from the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation.

Less than two months shy of the next provincial election, the Doug Ford government has quietly watered down the climate plan it announced with great fanfare in 2018, while claiming it’s still on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.

As Canadian cities have sprawled, with Ottawa-Gatineau leading the way, density has dropped 6% over the last two decades, driving up tailpipe emissions from residents who rely on cars for transportation, a new study finds.

The Seigneurie de Beaupré region northeast of Quebec City is in line to add three new wind farms totalling 1.2 gigawatts of capacity under a deal announced yesterday by renewable energy developer Boralex, Hydro-Québec, and Énergir, the gas distribution company formerly known as Gaz Métro.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said the Conservatives are lying with allegations of a secret government plan to add a green tax to pickup trucks.

In what campaigners are calling a world first, Quebec’s National Assembly voted Tuesday afternoon to ban new oil and gas exploration and shut down existing drill sites within three years, even as the promoters behind the failed Énergie Saguenay liquefied natural gas (LNG) project try to revive it as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Ontario government’s new hydrogen strategy reflects a “lobbyist feeding frenzy” and lacks “evidence, analysis, and critical thought,” says a climate policy expert.

British Columbia mayors whose communities were devastated by last year’s flooding and wildfires want the federal government to deliver billions of dollars in promised funding as soon as possible.

Canadians strongly believe that new buildings should be accessible, beautiful, sustainable, and reflective of the culture and heritage of the communities in which they stand, according to a new study by the Angus Reid Institute. 

One of the biggest gaps in the federal government’s long-awaited Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) is a reality the Trudeau government has no ability to control: its ability to deliver as promised depends on a provincial government in Ontario that has no intention of playing its part.

Keeping the community onboard and elected councillors informed and involved were two of the most important steps in making Halton Hills, Ontario the first Canadian community to adopt a 2030 net-zero strategy, according to two of the program’s lead developers.

A company hoping to develop coal in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains says it will decide by the end of June whether to convert its open-pit mine proposal into a renewable energy project.

The Alberta government has released recovery plans for two herds of threatened caribou in the province’s north that it says will bring the amount of usable habitat on their ranges up to the level required by a deal signed with Ottawa, The Canadian Press reports.

Major new dollars for affordable and energy-efficient housing, a C$15-billion fund to accelerate clean investment, and a controversial tax credit for carbon capture and storage (CCUS) technology are among the big-ticket items in the federal budget tabled in the House of Commons yesterday by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The federal cabinet administered what one critic called a “slap in the face” to climate science with a decision today to approve the massive Bay du Nord oil and gas megaproject off the Newfoundland coast.

The European Union must shift its farming policies to prioritize regenerative agriculture and expand the practice to a landscape scale, says a new report by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

A price tag in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, and a project scope akin to that of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1800s. That’s the scale of the massive investment in Canada’s electricity grid that experts say will be required in the near future, as the phaseout of fossil-fired power generation combined with a rapid increase in demand for electricity puts never-before-seen demands on this country’s electrical grid.

With the options for holding global warming to 1.5°C quickly closing, countries must immediately phase down fossil fuel production, embrace low-carbon technologies that are already practical and affordable, mobilize citizens around the benefits of decarbonization, and increase low-carbon financing three- to six-fold, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes in a 2,913-page report released yesterday.

The newly-released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summary of emissions trends and drivers cites a harrowing statistic: cumulative net emissions in the past decade were about equal to the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C, considered the maximum possible without severe damage to the environment and humanity. 

The IPCC’s message on mitigation offers encouragement but leaves no room for any possible complacency: the evidence shows that humanity could contain global warming to no more than 1.5°C above the long-term average for most of human history, but only with rapid, deep reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate emergency.

For the first time in the UN agency’s 34-year history, yesterday’s massive report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduces the language of “demand-side” action to the field of climate mitigation, with potential to reduce emissions by 40 to 70% in the places where people live, work, learn, and play.

With “ambitious and immediate” mitigation efforts, there is still time for cities to achieve net-zero consumption-based emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report. But strategies for hitting the target will not be one-size-fits all, and will prove sufficient only if communities can address supply chain emissions that extend beyond their administrative boundaries.

If global warming is to be limited to 1.5°C by 2050, the world’s transport emissions need to fall by 59% from 2020 levels, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), calling for “transformative” changes in the sector in its latest mitigation report.

Provincial and territorial energy efficiency programs are failing to reach the 20% of Canadians who are struggling to cover their home energy costs, but federal investment can stop those households from being left behind in the push for net-zero emissions, Efficiency Canada says in a new report.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) has “solidified its position as a climate leader among Canadian pension funds,” but still isn’t fully heeding its members’ calls to invest in a climate-safe future, according to an independent analysis of its annual report released late last month.

A new multi-state consortium led by New York is forming partnerships with a group of 40 clean power companies, utilities, and universities to curb emissions by developing a regional clean energy hydrogen hub.

Easy to manoeuvre and far less expensive than cars, e-bikes are making urban transportation more inclusive around the world—especially for women, older adults, and the differently abled.

While projections show that the transition to a green economy could affect nearly a quarter of all jobs in Canada, experts say supportive policies and retraining can help workers develop new skills and adapt to new sectors.

When lifetime ownership costs are factored in, electric vehicles (EVs) are often significantly cheaper than their fossil counterparts, according to a new report by Clean Energy Canada.

The federal government’s new emissions reduction plan continues to undercount emissions from forestry, an environmental group says, throwing doubt on Canada’s ability to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

The fossil and transportation sectors get a relatively free ride and electricity producers do the most to decarbonize in the much-anticipated 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan released yesterday by Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault.

The proposed Bay du Nord offshore oil project in Newfoundland is economically and environmentally “impossible to justify,” writes an environmental advocate, calling the venture’s emissions damaging and unnecessary as Canada lags on climate goals.

Canadians of all political stripes and from all regions support greater protection for the country’s forests but are concerned about what that could mean for the economy, according to a new survey.

Canada’s National Research Council has quietly released a new set of national building codes that show how provincial and territorial governments—which actually hold authority for codes and standards—can make new buildings net-zero ready by 2030.

A bankruptcy hearing that could determine whether more than C$200 million in oilpatch environmental liabilities wind up on the public dime will have to go back to court.

The death of an Ottawa cyclist struck by a snow grader turning right at a busy and dangerous four-way intersection has renewed calls for the city to invest in infrastructure that keeps pedestrians and cyclists safe.

A new study points to geothermal energy as an untapped resource that could stabilize energy grids and support decarbonization of the world’s megacities, which are seeing increasing energy needs as urban populations rise.

An agreement by a Michigan public utility to expand its low-income efficiency programs and study how the energy burden of vulnerable households can be reduced is being hailed by environmental justice advocates as a crucial move towards fighting energy inequality.

Weeks away from Canada’s first federal budget announcement following a natural disaster-ridden year, governments and private investors will need to collaborate to fund climate adaptation and prevention at the municipal level, a Globe and Mail op ed asserts.

Though the “tyranny of the immediate” can push crucial climate coverage off the front page—like when the headline-grabbing events of Russia’s Ukraine invasion overshadowed coverage of the latest working group report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—media experts at a recent webinar hosted by The Energy Mix offered journalists a list of promising strategies to keep climate news in the forefront.

The United States Department of Energy has chosen 14 host communities for technical assistance, in a bid to discover how energy storage can increase resilience and reduce costs in underserved communities.

A local resilience project in Tuktoyaktuk that has spent the past four years helping to prepare the NWT hamlet to cope with the climate crisis has won $500,000 as a recipient of the Arctic Inspiration Prize.

Bitcoin miners claim they can help stabilize Texas’s vulnerable electricity grid, but they can also be a drain on utilities as they cash in on the state’s cheap energy.

Canada’s long-awaited 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) must set legally-binding limits for the oil and gas industry that are “coherent with national targets”, since “other sectors would be required to do even more for Canada to achieve its target” if fossils failed to pull their weight, the country’s Net-Zero Advisory Body said in its official advice to the government earlier this week.

The controversial Bay du Nord exploration project off the coast of Newfoundland is running into new headwinds in Ottawa, with Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault busting the myth that new oil and gas wells can help Europe free itself from Russian supplies and the NDP questioning how any new fossil project can align with the government’s climate promises.

Canada’s first-ever green bond raised $5 billion for environmentally focused projects this Tuesday, after a week-long issuance period that showed investors willing to buy more than twice the value of assets on offer.

Canada’s first electric vehicle battery plant is coming to Windsor, Ontario, prompting the beleaguered auto sector to herald the news as a sign of better days ahead.

The damage to public groundwater resources in Minnesota from missteps during construction of the Line 3 oil pipeline is more severe than previously known, state environmental regulators said earlier this week.

Many Alberta youth view their home province as backward-looking and intolerant of diversity, and are leaving in droves in search of more progressive communities, says a new report by the Canada West Foundation.

For many city kids, flowers have cut stems and vegetables are packed in styrofoam and plastic on shelves in the grocery store. But by making a connection with nature in their own communities, kids learn that they can make a positive impact on their environment.

The federal Liberals and New Democrats must make good use of the next three-plus years of political stability by embracing more decisive climate action than they promised in the supply and confidence agreement (CSA) unveiled yesterday, leading climate policy analysts have told The Energy Mix.

A group of civil organizations has called on Ottawa to reject the Bay du Nord offshore oil venture in Newfoundland and Labrador, recalling the province’s gutted cod fishing business as a lesson on the long-term impacts of environmental devastation.

Canadian cities already have the authority to take bold action on climate solutions, and the world’s best municipal climate leaders have shown how other communities can cut their emissions and embrace climate and environmental justice, former Toronto mayor David Miller told an online community meeting in Ottawa Monday evening.

A Halifax professor is disappointed with a report that recommends more and higher dikes to prevent rising seas from flooding the low-lying strip of land that connects Nova Scotia to mainland Canada, as it leaves out the cheaper, more sustainable “soft” option of indigenous saltwater marshes. 

Lower-emitting farm techniques can be part of the solution to the threat of food shortages and rising prices brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Quebec agronomist says

The Biden administration’s climate plans have one less constraint after a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling stayed a Louisiana District Court’s order preventing agencies from considering the social cost of carbon.

At least two first responders have died and vast swaths of territory have been incinerated in a rash of wildfires currently afflicting the wind-whipped, drought-stricken Southern Plains of the United States.

A closer look at last week’s hybrid vehicle funding announcement by the federal and Ontario governments is revealing an unexpected twist: the more than C$260 million headed to a Honda manufacturing plant in Alliston, Ontario over six years includes no immediate commitment to shift the company toward zero-emission vehicles.

The United Kingdom could eliminate all need for imported Russian gas this year and cut average home heating costs by £150 by embracing insulation and heat pumps, encouraging consumers to change their energy habits, and relying more on renewable energy, the E3G climate consultancy concludes in an analysis released last week.

Business leaders from the United States and Canada are again wading into the fray over Line 5, citing the energy crisis brought on by Russia’s war in Ukraine to accuse the state of Michigan of dragging its heels to keep the controversial cross-border pipeline in a state of legal limbo.

America’s biggest federally-owned utility, still under the influence of a Trump-appointed board of directors, is facing a federal investigation after announcing plans to spend more than US$3.5 billion on new gas-fired power plants rather than investing in cheaper renewables.

There’s no relief in sight from a record-shattering megadrought in the western United States that will likely only deepen this spring, the U.S. National Oceanic and

The hybrid work week—with employees commuting to the office only occasionally—is not enough to limit corporate carbon footprints in a post-pandemic reality. Experts say progress to cut emissions could be held back if larger questions of evolving employee behaviours, efficient use of indoor space, and impacts on cities are not addressed.

A Conservative member of Parliament from New Brunswick is raising eyebrows on both sides of the aisle by calling on the province to abandon its own carbon tax system and adopt the federal floor price on carbon.

Vancouver and North Vancouver each took top honours in three categories of a citizen-driven sustainability competition where volunteers across Canada tracked municipalities on 31 indicators of a better life for residents—from affordable housing to air quality, from gender equity to bike lanes.

Canada’s prime minister and Ontario’s premier announced millions in funding support for domestic hybrid car production this week, but both leaders dodged questions on the possibility of incentives to help Canadians buy them.

Royal Bank of Canada, Shopify, and Bullfrog Power Inc. have signed a deal to buy a combined 90,000 megawatt-hours per year from a Berkshire Hathaway wind power project in southeast Alberta.

The Climate Atlas of Canada is out with a new Indigenous Knowledges component that captures the climate impacts facing First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities across the country and the solutions they’ve been putting in place, from land conservation to renewable energy development.

More new electric vehicles hit the road in Canada last year than ever before but the growth is nowhere near what is happening in Europe.

Experts are suggesting nature-based solutions for coastal erosion while Newfoundlanders look to save homes and cemeteries from rising sea levels, but Canada’s coastal risk management policy is not keeping pace with the impacts from climate change.

Canada’s mining industry is pushing back against proposed tougher federal coal effluent rules, saying the draft regulations aren’t practical or backed by science.

U.S. fossil companies’ efforts to defend climate denial messaging as “free speech” are part of a decades-long strategy of “idea advertising”, environmental journalist and podcaster Amy Westervelt writes for the Guardian.

Two recent reports have raised questions about California’s carbon cap-and-trade program, concluding that the system worsens environmental justice disparities and could undermine progress towards the state’s emissions reduction targets without effective policy reforms.

Virginia’s Republican governor is going all out to withdraw from a multi-state carbon reduction initiative, even after the program netted the state US$74.2 million for flood protection and low-income energy efficiency programs.

The water woes of Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated community in the outer orbit of Phoenix, are being interpreted as a symptom of Arizona’s remorselessly thirsty sprawl and a harbinger of far worse to come.

Steelworkers in Regina and politicians at all levels were scrambling to assess the local implications Friday after the federal government extended its Ukraine sanctions list to include Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and part owner of the steel mill that produced pipe for the Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink pipelines.

Storylines for 2022: Where Does Climate Journalism Hit the Wall? is the theme of a webinar coming up Wednesday, March 24, hosted by Energy Mix Productions.

With the war in Ukraine triggering a secondary crisis in gas heating costs across Europe, “tackling poor quality homes in marginal constituencies could swing election success,” the United Kingdom’s Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) concludes in a report released last week.

A group of 16 community renewable energy co-ops from seven provinces is fighting an uphill battle for recognition, nearly a month after urging the federal government to make it easier for Canadians to invest in locally-owned and -generated electricity.

The federal government is just a couple of months away from an initial funding round program to help farmers lower their emissions and improve climate resiliency under the C$182.7-million Agricultural Climate Solutions program.

A disaster expert who led recovery teams after the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 230,000 people in 2004 says British Columbia’s climate response strategy must protect the province from future environmental events.

Like wind and solar, tidal and other forms of marine power consume no fossil fuels and produce no carbon emissions. Freelance writer Alexander Gelfand dives into why tidal has been so slow to develop.

About four dozen communities across Canada are planning events tomorrow to get action on the Trudeau government’s long-standing promise to introduce a Just Transition Act, aimed at priming fossil fuel communities and workers for the transition off fossil fuels.

Deadbeat fossils’ unpaid tax bills to rural municipalities in Alberta now total $253 million, prompting Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver to admit that legislation to get the problem under control didn’t go far enough.

Just two weeks after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland declared that no more federal tax dollars will go into the financially troubled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, analysts are warning that investors won’t touch the C$21.4-billion megaproject without government backing.

Bécancour, Quebec is set to become a hotspot in Canada’s growing supply chain for electric vehicle components, after two company announcements over a two-day span.

Hawaiian households with rooftop solar will soon be rewarded for sharing electricity with the grid at peak hours, while in California, three utilities are pushing to make solar-equipped homes pay extra fees as their monthly power bills go down.

As an ongoing La Niña weather pattern inundated nearly 300 kilometres of Australia’s East Coast to cause record flooding and kill more than 20 people, this is “the right time to talk about climate change,” the Sydney Morning Herald stated, in an editorial criticizing the government’s inaction. 

Over the past two decades, energy efficiency measures in Canada have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 55 megatonnes (Mt) and saved C$26 billion in energy costs for consumers, according to a report from Natural Resources Canada.

Citing profound environmental and social justice costs, local activists are condemning plans to build an expressway that will bury one of Karachi’s few green districts under concrete and displace the tribal communities that have farmed there for generations.

The Alberta government is renewing and expanding its restrictions on coal mining in the province’s Rocky Mountains in response to a strong public outcry and two reports written following extensive consultations on the issue.

Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault has announced a 40-day delay, until April 13, in his assessment of Norwegian state fossil Equinor’s plan to extract up to a billion barrels of crude from its proposed Bay du Nord oilfield off the coast of Newfoundland.

Wildfires, floods, and threatened food supplies are among the biggest impacts Canadians can expect from the climate emergency, based on the analysis in the “atlas of human suffering” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unveiled last week in its report on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.

In light of the Canadian federal government’s decision to not provide additional funding for the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust is calling the viability of the pipeline a “delusion,” and reaffirming its position that the project needs to be halted.

Already crippled by cascading crises of conflict and collapsing governance, rural communities in northeast Syria—once the country’s breadbasket—are facing rising violence over water scarcity as drought kills crops and livestock.

With new satellite data revealing that some United States oil and gas operators are flaring nearly double the volume of natural gas they self-report to regulators, observers are urging the Biden administration to keep its COP 26 pledge to regulate methane emissions.

Investor-owned utilities in the United States have underestimated the financial risks of stranded assets, future carbon costs, and penalties for inaction, which will cost them more than the expenses of rapidly decarbonizing now, according to a Deloitte report.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) wants to stop fossil fuel companies like gas and electricity distributor FortisBC from providing their own brand of educational materials to public schools in British Columbia.

New Brunswick’s provincial utility and its government must work together to ensure that low- and middle-income households can afford energy retrofits, a new report says, in a critique of the province’s failure to make energy efficiency accessible to all.

Canada cannot realistically expect to hit its current target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 45% by 2030, and should instead set a more modest goal while leaning heavily on the electricity and fossil fuel sectors for deep carbon cuts during this decade, a new think tank report concludes this week.

With a decision by Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault expected next week, nearly 200 environmental and citizens’ groups from Canada and beyond are urging the federal government to reject the mammoth Bay du Nord oil and gas development off the coast of Newfoundland.

An auction for the right to generate wind power off the coast of New York and New Jersey yielded record-breaking bids totalling US$4.37 billion—more than 10 times the amount of the previous offshore wind lease.

Canada’s push to require energy efficiency audits for houses before they’re listed for sale is drawing flak from the real estate sector, even if it’s a basic building block for the amped-up energy efficiency effort the country needs to pursue.

Bronzeville, the epicentre of Chicago Black history and culture, will soon be home to America’s first community microgrid, after concerted efforts resolved the question of how to smoothly connect and disconnect a microgrid serving more than 1,000 buildings from the larger state electricity system. 

As concerns about climate change intensify, companies in British Columbia and Alberta are part of a growing push globally to use waste to its full potential as renewable natural gas.

Humankind is not just heading for a more dangerous future: for some people, the safe limits have already been passed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows in its climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability report this week.

While the impacts of climate change fall first and worst on developing nations, the climate adaptation report released this week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world’s richest countries won’t escape the unavoidable impacts of the emergency their greenhouse gas emissions have produced.

Despite efforts by the Biden administration in the United States to strike loss and damage language from this week’s climate impacts and adaptation report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is standing by its finding that the world’s poorest and most marginalized are unfairly paying the highest price for human-driven climate change.

With another 2.5 billion people due to move to cities that are already home to more than half the world’s population, the impacts of the climate emergency will be “felt disproportionately in urban communities with the most economically and socially marginalized, most affected,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in its impacts and adaptation report this week.

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would still cause “unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards” for the 3.3 to 3.6 billion people whose living conditions make them vulnerable to those impacts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, in an exhaustive overview of the latest science on climate impacts and adaptation strategies released today.

British Columbia’s emissions reduction plan is “based on a fantasy” of bountiful hydroelectric power, and should be replaced with an effort to expand solar and wind capacity while promoting energy efficiency, a new report urges provincial policy-makers.

The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) will spend the next five years looking for the most cost-effective ways to conduct energy retrofits on up to 150 homes and identifying barriers to net-zero-ready performance, under a C$4.5-million grant announced last week by Natural Resources Canada.

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, has reaffirmed its friendship with the oil and gas industry in the face of new Texas legislation blacklisting financial firms that boycott fossils.

A recent appearance by Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray at an industry annual meeting has set off a sea squall of controversy, with harvesters and unions warning of the “dire social and economic effects” of federal catch limits and Murray stressing her interest in keeping fish stocks sustainable in an era of climate disruption.

With California entering the third year of severe drought, federal officials said Wednesday they won’t deliver any water to farmers in the state’s major agricultural region—a decision that will force many to plant fewer crops in the fertile soil that yields the bulk of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

The operator of the contested Dakota Access pipeline in North and South Dakota has failed in its effort to sidestep a new environmental review that could ultimately shut it down, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

A study of climate migration in Mexico and Central America says big cities in the region must prepare for a huge influx of internal climate migrants, with lessons for all metropolitan areas on how best to accommodate new arrivals seeking better climate conditions and livelihoods.