Cities and Sub-Nationals

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.

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.

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.

Long-duration storage batteries are beginning to emerge as an alternative to expensive, new transmission lines as power utilities shift to renewable energy, and a town in West Virginia is about to gain 750 jobs as a result.

Ten months out from hosting the COP 28 climate summit, and weeks away from being censured by the C40 Cities initiative for its underwhelming climate efforts, Dubai is poised to pre-emptively drop out of the flagship green communities alliance.

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.

The protracted culture war over environmental policy in the United States was rekindled earlier this month by a controversy over gas stoves, with Republicans declaring that their beloved cooking appliances would have to be pried from their “cold dead hands”—though nobody was coming for them.

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).

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.

New data shows that carbon emissions in United States rose only slightly in 2022 and may be “decoupling” from economic growth, while last year’s legislative accomplishments set the stage for significant carbon cuts.

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

Off-grid energy from technologies like mini-grids, biofuels, and solar may often go unrecorded, but a new report attempting to fill statistical gaps finds that off-grid renewables capacity has continued to grow, despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A South Korean solar panel maker Qcells said Wednesday that it will invest more than US$2.5 billion to build factories in Georgia in what it says is the largest solar investment in American history.

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.

Sandy Anuras is Chief Technology Officer at Sunrun, a leading home solar, storage, and energy services company in the United States. In this feature interview last fall, she talked about nine million renewable energy jobs to be created over the next decade, a tipping point for rooftop solar, and the opportunities for workers who are too often left behind.

The United States is racing towards a carbon-free grid, but with economic and regulatory hurdles blocking transmission infrastructure, the shift off fossil-fueled power may be too slow to avert the worst effects of climate change.

A new crowdfunding platform that helps individuals invest in projects like community solar could bridge the gap for a growing number of people interested in holding sustainable investments.

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.

After nearly half a century of delaying the shift off fossil fuels, and “with the climate crisis breaching our front door,” 2022 may have been the moment when humanity finally turned a corner on emission reductions, says U.S. climate analyst Dr. Leah Stokes.

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.

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.

State and city governments in the United States are using land use regulations—an option long overlooked in climate policy—to lower emissions and combat climate change.

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.

European Union governments and lawmakers reached a deal Sunday on key elements of the 27-nation bloc’s green deal, reforming the EU’s trading system for greenhouse gas emissions and creating a new hardship fund for those hardest-hit by measures to curb climate change.

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 13-day leak from a 4.1-centimetre vent on a fossil gas storage well in rural Pennsylvania dumped more than 28.3 million cubic metres of methane into the atmosphere last month, enough to erase the emission reductions from half of the electric cars sold in the United States last year.

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.

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.

Power grids in North America have enough supply to keep the lights on during normal weather this year, but a new report predicts some regions will be vulnerable to power outages during extreme or prolonged periods of cold weather.

A 30-floor apartment tower in New York City is using an onsite carbon capture system to sequester 60% of the CO2 emissions from a gas boiler that would have been inconvenient at best to replace with electric heat.

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

Low-income households in California are more likely to have their electricity cut off after warmer temperatures drive up their power bills, concludes a new study in the journal Nature Energy.

Newcomer Davante Lewis, a Democrat backed by an environmental political action committee, easily won Saturday’s runoff for a seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission, an obscure regulatory body that has received national attention from media, celebrities, climate activists, and major public utility companies.

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.

A small shift in design approach could lead to solid gains in the energy performance of low- and mid-rise institutional buildings, according to the team behind a recent energy retrofit that covered a single floor of a university hospital in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Farmers in the United States need more tools and support to be part of the climate solution, say advocates, urging lawmakers gearing up to draft the new 2023 Farm Bill to increase funding for a rural renewables and energy efficiency.

A weekend shooting attack on two electric substations in Moore County, North Carolina, is raising questions about grid security in the United States, after 40,000 people—including seniors and people in need of medical care—lost power amid freezing winter temperatures.

Parking lots around the world are increasingly becoming sites for solar power generation, as governments and corporations seek out ways to accelerate their transition to renewables.

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).

Russia’s war in Ukraine was the catalyst for a surge in global energy efficiency investments this year, as governments and consumers “turned to efficiency measures as part of their responses to fuel supply disruptions and record-high energy prices,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its Energy Efficiency 2022 report released Friday.

Microgrid and electricity system infrastructure providers are stepping up to support civilians left powerless in the dark and cold, after Russia spent weeks blitzing Ukraine’s grid to demoralize the population and force surrender.

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.

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.

Countries could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 500 million tonnes by 2030—the amount produced by all the cars in Europe today—by adopting heat pump technology that already supplies 10% of the world’s space heating and is poised for faster growth, the International Energy Agency concludes in a report released this week.

The United States clean energy transition received two boosts this month from the Biden administration—a US$550 million cash infusion for community-based clean energy initiatives, and a first-ever 100% carbon-free electricity agreement with a utility.

Green factories—and the green jobs they bring—are shifting attitudes in some of the most conservative parts of the United States, and the trend is set to accelerate with the Biden administration planning US$25.7 billion in clean manufacturing, much of it in deep-red Republican districts, Bloomberg News reports.

More than nine out of 10 coal ash impoundments in the United States are contaminating groundwater in violation of federal rules, according to environmental groups’ comprehensive analysis of the latest industry-reported data. 

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.

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.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to nearly quadruple its calculation of the social cost of carbon, from US$51 to $190 per tonne.

A new screening tool that prioritizes 27,000 disadvantaged U.S. communities for billions of dollars in federal climate and energy investments is being criticized for leaving out racial makeup—one of the strongest predictors of environmental burden—as a criterion.

A recent lake effect snowfall in western New York offered researchers a rare opportunity to gather data about how wind turbines trigger “thundersnow”—or lightning within a snowstorm.

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.

France is upping its renewable energy capacity by requiring all large car parks to cover at least half of their area with solar panels—a move that could generate up to 11 gigawatts of power.

n the last two decades, 13% of the incarcerated people who died in Texas prisons in the hotter months of the year were affected by heat stress that could have been alleviated by air-conditioning, says a groundbreaking new study.

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.

The World Economic Forum has launched an open-access solutions toolbox for urban decarbonization for cities looking for inspiration and guidance in their race towards net-zero.

The COP 27 climate summit has been dominated by “false solutions” that ignore the needs of underrepresented people and shun vital principles like energy sovereignty, gender justice, and land rights, according to a panel of community experts on the front lines of the climate crisis.

Higher steel costs and rising interest rates are taking the blame after a small modular nuclear reactor project in Utah reported a cost increase from US$58 to $90 or $100 per megawatt-hour for the electricity it’s meant to produce.

Energy imports, energy conservation, new storage capacity, and effective communication helped California avoid blackouts during a record-setting September heat wave.

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.

With the partisan tilt of the next U.S. Congress still uncertain nearly a week after midterm elections last Tuesday, a few things are clear: there was no “red wave” propelling Trump-friendly candidates into office, a strong youth vote was a decisive factor in the election result, and climate action was a winning issue for campaigns in several key U.S. states.

A group of nine climate charities has announced a US$500-million investment over the next three years to support a just transition off fossil fuels in low- and middle-income countries.

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.

Tropical Storm Nicole sent multiple homes in Florida toppling into the Atlantic Ocean Thursday and threatened a row of high-rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away the beach and destroyed seawalls only weeks ago.

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.

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.

Pipelines, compressor stations, and other fossil equipment in Texas and across the United States continue to gush climate-busting methane into the atmosphere, even when companies have installed equipment that’s meant to get the emissions under control.

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.

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.

U.S. federal judges have ordered a nine-year-old lawsuit calling on oil and gas companies to pay for damage to Louisiana’s wetlands to be returned to state court for trial, potentially clearing the way for at least 41 similar lawsuits to move forward.

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 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.

The German state of Baden-Württemberg is pulling the plug on hydrogen fuel cells as an option for intercity rail after concluding the technology would cost 80% more than overhead electricity lines or battery-powered hybrids over a 30-year span.

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.

America’s extensive transmission permitting regulations could slow the clean energy transition facilitated by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and reform won’t come easy for a narrowly divided senate.

An alarming account by Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Blunt traces the deadly failures of California utility giant PG&E.

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.

Cities must halve their per capita emissions by 2030 to remain on a 1.5°C trajectory, finds a new report that prescribes low-emissions mass transit, better waste management, decarbonized grids, and energy-efficient buildings as the way forward.

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.

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?

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.

Strategically burying just 5% of power lines could reduce the number of residents affected by a combination of heat waves and blackouts following hurricanes by nearly 40%, researchers have found.

A weekly “bike bus” to school gives 170 elementary students, a 65-pound golden doodle named Phoebe, and the Portland, Oregon neighborhood through which they ride a jolt of “sheer joy,” while helping to build a stronger, safer, more connected community.

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

As the United Kingdom pursues fracking as a solution to its energy independence, new analysis finds the country’s power sector can reduce its reliance on gas from 40% to 1% by 2030, with a rapid renewables switch bringing £93 billion (C$142 billion) in savings.

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.

Nestlé is one of the world’s top producers of plastic waste, but its CEO objects to the idea that corporations should substantially pick up the tab for this toxic pollution.

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.

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 water scarcity becomes a growing threat to global food security, falling groundwater levels have prompted farmers in a Nevada community to share resources despite laws that distribute water rights less equally.

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.

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.

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.

As Pakistan deals with the aftermath of devastating floods and links with global warming become clearer, a demand for climate reparations from the world’s top emitting countries is gaining momentum ahead of next month’s COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

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.

U.S. Forest Service investigators working to determine the cause of the 76,781-acre Mosquito Fire in California have taken possession of one of Pacific Gas and Electric’s transmission poles and attached equipment.

“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.

Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S., swamping streets with water and smashing trees along the coast while moving at a crawl that threatened catastrophic flooding across a wide area.

As power slowly returns to Puerto Rico in Hurricane Fiona’s wake, pressure is building to wean the island’s grid off its 97% dependence on fossils fuels—towards a climate-resilient distributed system that relies on renewables.

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.

“Go get the money and put it to work in your hometown,” U.S. author Michelle Moore urges. “Whether you agree with the legislation or not, it’s the law of the land, so go get your piece of it and take care of your community.”

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.”

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.

Cities are increasingly footing the bill for climate change as they strain to adapt their infrastructure to rising temperatures, new rainfall patterns, and extreme weather.

A U.S. rooftop solar company is facing headwinds as it seeks to build off-grid neighbourhoods that would be less dependent on established utilities.

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.

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.

The United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could change the landscape of energy economics with its unprecedented support for clean energy sources, says a new report.

One of the world’s political hotspots is already a climate crisis zone, with the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region now warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

Authorities in Alaska were making contact Monday with some of the most remote villages in the United States to determine their food and water needs, as well as assess the damage after a massive storm flooded communities on the state’s vast western coast this weekend.

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 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.

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.

Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds.

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.

Britain’s new policy of capping home energy bills and subsidizing energy giants fails to address the country’s old, inefficient housing stock, says a new report—with one critic warning such an impractical energy policy could “play into the hands” of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Better, cheaper e-bikes and safer charging systems are the keys to preventing e-bike fires in public housing, not a blanket ban on home storage, say environmental justice advocates.

The World Health Organization and nearly 200 global health associations have endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), calling for an end to new fossil infrastructure and a “fair and equitable” phaseout of existing production.

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.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy will save countries at least US$12 trillion by 2050, an Oxford University research team reports.

Witnessing a human being swept away by cruel waves of flood waters while saving five stranded children is not something everyone can bear. This was my experience in early July after a torrential rainfall event in Islamabad and adjoining areas, only a short walk from my house, just a couple of months after a devastating heat wave.

Without concerted global effort to rein in global heating, up to 4.4 million acres of U.S. coastal land may slip under rising seas by 2050.

As the days get hotter, so do tempers, according to new research suggesting that levels of hate speech rise with the thermometer.

Cities and utilities in New England are experimenting with bi-directional charging technology, pulling power from parked electric vehicle batteries during peak demand to stabilize the grid and boost reliability while delivering cost savings to customers.

Outdated infrastructure is making America’s electricity grid vulnerable to blackouts in the face of climate change and an ambitious clean energy transition, experts say.

Economic, political, and ecological concerns are driving the creation of renewable energy communities in Central Eastern Europe, but more needs to be done to facilitate these local efforts to democratize energy systems.

Australian states and businesses are moving in step with the country’s new climate policy, making their own leaps to decarbonization after a new climate change law pledged to slash the nation’s carbon emissions 43% by 2030.

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.

An architectural ceramic factory in China is now the world’s largest building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) project, where 665,000 square metres of solar panels built into 11 rooftop applications will provide all the electricity the facility uses.

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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given Ukraine a chance to lead the world in the war against the coming climate catastrophe by freeing itself from the autocracy of fossil fuels, a webinar audience heard yesterday.

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 text message may have saved the California power grid from crashing under the weight of a devastating heat wave Tuesday afternoon.

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.

As wealthier communities in Massachusetts electrify, environmental justice advocates are urging policy changes so that poorer households aren’t left with the costs of the state’s dwindling, aging gas infrastructure.

When it comes to getting landlords to retrofit the buildings responsible for up to 18% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, bad incentives are leading to bad outcomes, writes green economy lawyer Marc Z. Goldgrub.

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.

Research and development, manufacturing, and infrastructure investment decisions over the next decade will determine how the United States achieves a 100% clean electricity system by 2035, say the authors of a new report that finds multiple pathways to hit the target.

A 90% clean power target by 2035, $54 billion in new spending on clean energy and drought resilience, quicker approvals for power grid upgrades and clean energy projects, and a long-awaited phaseout for oil and gas wells near homes and schools are highlights of a climate package adopted last week by the California state assembly.

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.

Local partnerships are helping poorer households in the U.S. overcome cost barriers to installing solar panels, making them critical to the Biden administration’s plan to power five million U.S. homes with community solar by 2025.

Upstream from one of the United States’ most biologically diverse wetlands sits a coal ash pond leaking toxic metals into the groundwater, imperiling ecosystems and threatening drinking water supplies as climate change increases flood risks.

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.

A clean energy advocate is questioning the vulnerability of Midwestern U.S. energy supplies after a minor electrical fire at a single oil refinery triggered a fuel supply crisis spanning four states.

The Royal Bank of Canada may soon be at risk of being kicked out of Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) when the global coalition begins toughening up its rules next year. But not to worry—the bank’s climate policies have been deemed mild enough to pass a Texas government test of whether financial institutions are sympathetic enough to oil and gas companies.

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.

California plans to require all new cars, trucks, and SUVs to run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035 under a policy approved Thursday by regulators that seeks a dramatic cut in carbon emissions and an eventual end to gasoline-powered vehicles.

What’s considered officially “dangerous heat” in coming decades will likely hit much of the world at least three times more often as climate change worsens unless countries move faster to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

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.

As policy-makers—and the industries that stand to benefit—shift into high rhetorical gear promoting electric vehicles as a silver bullet in the climate fight, a technology writer is warning that EVs are not as planet-friendly as they seem.

A South Korean solar cell giant is planning a US$1.8-billion manufacturing facility in the United States, now that President Joe Biden has signed a climate law that includes credits for making solar panels.

America’s petrochemical industry is pushing hard—and with considerable success—to have states reclassify the controversial “chemical recycling” of plastics as a manufacturing process to avoid environmental protection regulations that apply to waste disposal, says a new report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

Edward Buckles, Jr. was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and completely upended his life. Now he’s produced a film to catch up with other “Katrina Babies” who went through the same trauma.

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.

For redlined communities like one in South Memphis, Tennessee, a win for grassroots advocates against environmental racism can be quickly followed by new threats and greater losses.

Environmental advocates celebrated when U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law earlier this month. But the joy is tempered by lingering caution about a murky side bargain purported to streamline oil and gas projects, Energy News Network reports.

With extreme heat on the rise in many parts of the world, prison inmates are especially vulnerable to the health and safety risks that result, writes J. Carlee Purdum, research assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, in a post for The Conversation.

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.

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.

Freeport LNG has changed its tune on the cause of an explosion and fire at the company’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Texas, according to three trading sources and a document shared with Reuters.

Rural Pennsylvania is facing a continuing onslaught of new natural gas and petrochemical facilities on farmland, despite health and environmental threats that trouble locals.

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.

Recognizing opportunity in the ubiquity of large, glass-walled buildings, and of windows in general, researchers and start-ups are working to create a solar window that is as efficient as it is transparent.

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.

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration just got a boost in North Carolina, with utility giant Duke Energy signing a deal with Ford for a pilot that will draw energy from customers leasing their F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks.

The transmission organization that operates the United States’ largest multi-state grid has greenlighted a US$10.3-billion investment in high-voltage transmission lines to clear bottlenecks that have impeded nearly 100 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity.

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.

In Louisiana—where the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Ida are still rippling through communities—a non-profit and a seaport are demonstrating two distinct responses to climate change.

For the second year in a row, Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River as the Western United States endures an extreme drought, U.S. government officials announced Tuesday.

The United States needs a 45% drop in transportation emissions by 2030 to meet its climate pledges, and the country’s web of Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) branches is ideally positioned to help make that happen, says a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Two oil and gas companies have announced plans to invest US$2.6 billion to develop a major oil field on Alaska’s North Slope.

U.S. climate hawks declared victory, Congressional Democrats got credit for a newly pragmatic approach to climate action, community campaigners demanded more ambitious action, and attention shifted to implementation after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the country’s $370-billion climate and clean energy plan and sent it to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

Ferocious winds. Weeks of drenching rain and snow. Communities “ravaged beyond resettling” and irrigation dams at risk. Californians have always thought of earthquakes or, lately, wildfires when talk turns to the Big One. But new research points to the devastating impacts the state would face from a future superstorm driven by global warming.

New solar installations around the world are poised to grow by a “staggering” 30% this year, and the industry can look ahead to double-digit growth each year through 2025, according to a Bloomberg.com analysis that predates the ambitious clean energy provisions in the US$369-billion Inflation Reduction Act adopted by the U.S. Congress last week.

A suite of recent policy and technology advancements is allowing for the growth of distributed energy resources (DERs) in the U.S., with innovative approaches like transportable microgrids and vehicle-to-grid programs gaining momentum.

On every energy transition metric that matters, e-bikes leave electric vehicles (EVs) behind in the dust, and policy-makers currently swooning over the latter must take note, says Canadian sustainable design expert Lloyd Alter.

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.

Sequoias are the largest trees on Earth, can live for more than 3,000 years, but are being increasingly affected in recent years by fire. But management of the giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park and elsewhere has shifted the vulnerability of the huge, mature specimens in the groves.

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.

Baby boomers are often derided for not taking the climate crisis seriously enough, but many do feel responsible for the climate crisis, Nexus Media News reports. Some of them say they plan to dedicate the next stage of their lives to the climate movement.

After a marathon series of votes that began just before midnight Saturday, the United States Senate adopted a US$369-billion climate and clean energy plan Sunday afternoon, the country’s biggest-ever investment in climate action.

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.

Slamming climate action as “irrational” and “woke,” and positioning themselves as saviours of local economies, many Republican state treasurers have spent the last 18 months working to hobble and punish private and public sector efforts to wean the United States off fossil fuel dependence.

Homeowners considering rooftop solar to slash their energy bills can turn to a new Forbes guide to solar shingles, listing the biggest names in the market and detailing the pros and cons of solar shingles versus panels.

Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity turned up the heat on swing-vote senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, a wider network of business groups stepped up to defend the deal, and environmental justice campaigners decried concessions to oil and gas as advocates absorbed the details of the $369.75-billion climate and clean energy package announced last week by Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.

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.

Solar power is keeping the Texas grid from crashing—despite a sharp increase in energy demand due to record-breaking high temperatures, says an energy expert.

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.

The United States is back on the cusp of the biggest climate investment in its history after Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and coal state Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to a US$370-billion climate and clean energy package, ending months of negotiations on what one elated advocate called the “best-kept secret in Washington”.

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.

As brutal, extended heat waves bring record temperatures across the United States and put millions of residents at risk of heat stroke and death, the government has launched a website aiming to support heat resilience amid a climate crisis.

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.

A new survey reveals that less than half of U.S. utility companies are taking steps to reduce emissions, despite roughly 90% citing that activity as a high or moderate priority.

Long promoted as the best metric of a sustainable life, the carbon footprint should be understood as just one part of everyone’s “climate shadow”—the sum of how our life choices, good and bad, intersect with the climate crisis, writes climate journalist Emma Pattee.

If you’ve been hesitating to talk with your neighbours about climate change, a number of recent studies suggest they’d likely be up for the conversation—as long as you’re ready to really listen, not lecture, and keep the focus local.

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”.

U.S. President Joe Biden visited a former coal plant in Massachusetts yesterday to announce new areas for offshore wind farms, funding for home energy subsidies, and support for communities facing heat emergencies and other climate impacts. But he fell short of declaring a full-scale climate emergency, keeping a door open instead for an accommodation with renegade Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV).

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.

Millionaire coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) played his final card and the White House conceded defeat on ambitious U.S. climate legislation, after the renegade senator declared he wouldn’t support any climate or energy provisions in President Joe Biden’s signature clean energy package.

Hundreds are dead from heat-related causes, tens of thousands are displaced by raging wildfires, and global food security is yet further threatened as vast swathes of western Europe, North Africa, and China continue to suffer in the grip of lethal heat.

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 United States’ largest public utility has issued a request for 5,000 megawatts of carbon-free energy before 2029—weeks after it was directed to reconsider plans for converting a retiring coal plant to a natural gas facility.

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.

Most of the world can switch to renewable energy without destabilizing power grids, at low cost, and relying almost entirely on existing technologies, according to a new Stanford University study.

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.

The European Union’s executive warned last week that the continent is facing one of its toughest years when it comes to natural disasters like droughts and wildfires because of increasing climate change.

Lake Michigan’s shoreline communities face “toxic risks,” says a new report, as extreme weather threatens to damage waste storage sites, nuclear power plants, and industrial facilities in the area.

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

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.

The electricity system regulator in the United States could help slash inflation and double the country’s renewable energy supply by encouraging technologies to reduce the “absurd” 3.5-year wait times delaying interconnections between regional power systems, the Rocky Mountain Institute argues in a new analysis.

A slow and steady approach to community consultation is opening the door to car-free cities in Europe, turning many urban dwellers’ initial, visceral resistance to the idea into support.

Coming soon to a bike lane near you: UPS’ “funny-looking” four-wheeled e-cycle.

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.

(Part 2 of a series) In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision limiting government regulation of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, climate analysts and campaigners are now turning to other legislative options, state and city governments, market forces, and ultimately the ballot box for solutions.

With near record-setting wildfire activity early in Alaska’s fire season and a looming heat wave, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center moved to wildland fire Planning Level 5, the highest level, on Thursday, June 30.

Looking to avoid power blackouts, California may turn to the one energy source it’s otherwise desperate to get rid of: fossil fuels.

As utilities and municipalities rush to conserve water so that no one is left thirsty, the Chicago-based Alliance of Water Efficiency is reminding policy-makers and the public that saving water also means saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.

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.

A deeply radical ruling Thursday by the United States Supreme Court has set back but not ended efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s fossil-fuelled power plants.

The 53 migrants who died from heat exhaustion in Texas after being abandoned in a sweltering tractor-trailer in 100°F heat were victims of vicious smugglers, inhumane laws, dire conditions at home, and a climate crisis that continues to pick off the world’s most vulnerable first.

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.

Scorching track temperatures pushed significantly above standard operating levels by an extreme heat wave are being blamed for the recent derailment of a San Francisco rapid transit train.

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.

Marine stewardship, better methane management, and increased recycling figure prominently in Project Drawdown’s latest update on its already vast array of available, scalable, and financially viable climate solutions.

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.