Finance and Divestment

Arizona kept the lights on through a summer of crushing heat, thanks to widespread buy-in to smart thermostat programs that prompted customers to turn down their air conditioners when the grid was stressed.

It was “everyone against the utilities” in California earlier this month as the push to secure a new payment structure for community solar entered its final stretch, carrying the potential to make the state a sector leader while reducing energy poverty and climate emissions.

Electric vehicle carshares are gaining traction in low-income and rural communities across the United States as they aim to make sure that the shift to zero-emission vehicles does not leave social justice in the dust.

At least five major property insurers in the United States are reducing coverage in response to extreme weather patterns, leaving many American homeowners exposed to natural disasters without essential protection.

Embracing electric school buses could rejuvenate Ontario’s struggling small and medium-sized auto manufacturing enterprises, the Pembina Institute says, in a report that urges Premier Doug Ford’s government to go full-throttle with investments in this direction.

Canadian households could cut their energy bills by $10.4 billion and reduce climate pollution from home heating by 19.6 million tonnes by 2035 by using heat pumps for cooling rather than air conditioners, a new report concludes.

An electric ridesharing start-up that plans monthly subscriptions for Canadian apartment and condominium dwellers has received a million-dollar investment from three of the country’s six Low-Carbon Communities Canada (LC3) centres.

It’s time for decision-makers in places like Ontario to get visionary and rethink our top-down grid from the bottom up, write Ottawa Climate Action Fund Executive Director Steve Winkelman and The Energy Mix Publisher Mitchell Beer, in a post for Corporate Knights.

In pursuit of ambitious emission reduction targets, cities across Canada and the United States are offering residents and businesses low-interest loans to cover the upfront costs of energy efficiency upgrades like heat pumps, solar panels, and insulation.

Curbside charging is taking root in New York City, where nearly half of residents depend on street parking, a reality that limits their ability to charge electric vehicles at home.

Government funding for clean energy projects and infrastructure—and a related surge in private investment—is powering the United States economy as it filters through businesses and communities across the country.

Summer road trippers in the United States be warned: electric vehicle charging stations are rare at the average hotel or inn.

Canada cannot meet its climate targets without ensuring that the one-third of Canadians who live in apartments and condos have access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure, says The Atmospheric Fund.

A longstanding “Indigenous Uber” service in Fresno Country, California has made the transition to electric vehicles, giving the area’s farmworkers and other low-income residents access to affordable, low-emissions transport.

Calgary municipal utility Enmax is dipping its toe into state politics in Maine after its subsidiary, Versant Power, became embroiled in a citizen referendum coming up in November.

Cost- and energy-saving solar microgrids are coming to eight public buildings in San Diego—with a substantial boost from Shell New Energies, a subsidiary of the British oil giant.

Making good on the promise of climate adaptation that is truly “locally-led” and thereby focused on community resilience means “radical shifts” in the distribution of resources and power, says an international team of adaptation researchers.

The premiers of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia say they will apply for federal funding to help protect a vital land corridor linking the two provinces.

Canadians are paying more for insurance as risks related to climate change become more severe, but they’re still “for the most part, insurable” while more Americans lose their coverage, a senior industry executive says.

Nine new solar projects, most of them in Indigenous communities, will add 163 megawatts of generating capacity and 48 MW of battery storage to Alberta’s electricity supply following a C$160-million grant announced last week by federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

As more businesses seek ways to meet their sustainability goals, commercial property developers in Canada are recognizing rooftop solar as an excellent draw for new tenants.

A new study finds that widely-used climate models have a blind spot for how extreme weather events affect food production when multiple regions are hit at the same time, thereby underestimating the threat that climate change poses to global food security.

Halifax is set to surpass the goals of its climate action plan, which was a winner on three fronts: it secured a crucial source of funding for its initiatives, won buy-in from residents through early and ongoing consultation, and integrated its vision into other municipal priorities, recognizing that climate solutions can’t operate in a vacuum.

Years of municipal funding cuts combined with a reduction in ridership revenues, even as COVID-related expenses climbed, have left Toronto’s primary public transit operator with a C$125-million budget gap.

Congestion pricing for New York City has cleared its final federal hurdle, leaving a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)-appointed panel to decide on final toll rates and exemptions, public transit advocates celebrating, and those apprehensive of changes to the status quo crying foul.

A foundation associated with automaking giant Toyota Motor Corporation has launched a three-year, US$9-million Sustainable City Challenge to help communities deliver innovative solutions to local mobility challenges.

Expectations are running high that veteran politician, community activist, and changemaker Olivia Chow will get Toronto on track to meet its climate and energy transition targets after winning the mayoralty of Canada’s largest city.

Canada’s latest climate adaptation strategy specifies key targets and goals that commentators said were lacking in the first draft, and it comes with an updated action plan that has new investments for flooding, freshwater, supply chains, and security.

A national energy retrofit conference in Montreal earlier this month captured the momentum of a sector that is beginning to scale up, but still scrambling to hit the volume and speed that will deliver on Canada’s commitments for emission reductions and net-zero buildings.

In an opinion piece last week for the Globe and Mail, Mayor Jyoti Gondek takes on a question that may be controversial for locals and surprising for outsiders: Is Calgary still on oil town?

An 834-unit mixed-use development being built in New York City is set to be the state’s largest residential project with a geothermal heat pump system, thanks to a mix of compatible building specs, committed developers, and state support.

Over 54% of European mayors who responded to a recent survey put climate action among their top three priorities for 2023, with many urging European Union parliamentarians for better dialogue and increased spending for a faster energy transition.

Six years after Hurricane María underscored Puerto Rico’s urgent need for a resilient power supply, a small town in the island’s mountainous interior will switch on its first community-owned solar microgrid, weeks ahead of peak storm season.

British Columbia’s e-bike rebate program received 12,000 applications the day it launched, an “unprecedented” response that temporarily crashed the government’s website.

Substantial and long overdue investment in public transit—not cutting services and raising fares—will help cities avoid the “transit death spiral” and bring Canada closer to meeting its decarbonization goals, says University of Toronto Associate Professor Shoshanna Saxe, Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure.

Urban farms and food forests can provide communities with bountiful food, carbon storage, and local cooling while boosting equity and sustainability—but they face competition for land from real estate projects that generate more immediate financial returns.

A research team has devised a new greenhouse gas monitoring system to counter what it sees as the “flawed” performance of existing methods.

Environmentalists have scored big wins for the planet by saying ‘no’ to greedy corporations and myopic governments, but the time has come to embrace the right kinds of development with “a resounding yes,” says veteran climate activist Bill McKibben, offering guidelines for discerning which battles to fight—and when to yield.

A small village in Germany is generating income for all residents and a second cash crop for farmers with a community wind farm that dates back to 1999, recently boosted its capacity from four turbines to eight, and now produces about 50 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to power about 16,000 homes.

A U.S. policy think tank is advocating a transformative approach to climate finance for vulnerable countries: cancel national debts and redirect the repayment funds to climate adaptation and resilience projects.

Extending regional planning to suburbs and exurbs is key to catapulting cities toward their climate goals, even as funding and capacity limits make it harder to implement climate pledges, two Brookings Institution researchers say in a recent blog post.

Germany’s recently-launched €49 (C$71.50) Deutschland Ticket—which covers monthly travel on all regional rail, metro, tram, and bus networks—is showing promise, but experts say its long-term success hinges on reliability and comfort improvements, essential for enticing car drivers to take public transport.

Beyond electrifying fleets, lowering fares, or fighting crime, experts say delivering reliable, timely service will be key to saving public transportation in the United States, where rising labour costs, inflation, and stagnated revenue from low ridership have led to multi-billion-dollar shortfalls.

With the majority of the world’s population living in urban areas, and cities accounting for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, local governments will play a central role in allocating the $6 to $9 trillion per year that must be invested in the global sustainability transition this decade, concludes the latest Sustainable Cities Index published by Corporate Knights.

The Lower Nicola Indian Band has signed a deal for a 100-megawatt solar+storage project, to be built on the traditional territory of the Nlaka’pamux and Syilx Nation peoples.

Sweden’s early shift from fossil-fueled heating to electric heat pumps suggests a carrot-and-stick approach of incentives and regulation could help Canadians achieve the lowered costs and 95% drop in building heating emissions that Swedes have enjoyed since the 1990s.

With public demand for electric vehicles rising fast and an EV price war picking up steam, all signs suggest a tipping point for a technology shift that has long been expected to undercut demand for fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and offer car owners a more affordable, convenient ride.

Exhaust-free electric school buses have not only improved school attendance in the United States but will also serve as a crucial emergency power source in Atlantic Canada, making them an essential tool for preserving child welfare, public health, and community resilience.

Tech giant Google is joining forces with one of North America’s largest clean energy companies to build a 500-megawatt solar portfolio in 80 community- sized chunks, with 10% of the resulting revenue flowing to at least 25,000 “high-energy-burden” households.

The owner of a 110-year-old house in Ottawa South is enjoying significantly lower power bills after deep energy retrofits slashed his home energy requirements 68%, eliminated drafts and dampness, and guaranteed him comfortable indoor temperatures—come winter or summer.

The Biden administration has announced plans to pour US$562 million into nearly 150 projects in 30 U.S. states and territories to help coastal communities cope with the impacts of climate change.

Residents of Berlin, Germany rejected a referendum aimed at achieving carbon neutrality 15 years earlier than planned. But the failed vote in late March brought silver linings, including a windfall €5-billion fund for climate action and valuable lessons for other cities.

A mobile app is bringing transit on demand to a regional county municipality in west Quebec that has spent years looking for better, more convenient mobility to and from the Ottawa-Gatineau area nearby.

A 50-year-old arena in Dieppe, New Brunswick, is on course to slash energy use by 44% and greenhouse gas emissions by 46% after a major energy retrofit.

A new energy management system for large buildings is holding out the prospect of easier, more efficient electric vehicle charging for apartment and condo dwellers, just as the need for charging spots becomes more immediate—and, in some buildings, more controversial.

The largest community solar effort in United States history—expected to generate 1.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes and businesses—was made possible by incentives from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration says.

Canadian university students on occupation and hunger strike and American seniors in rocking chairs are intensifying the pressure on big banks to drop their fossil fuel investment, and on one university to drop plans for four new gas-fired power plants—just as new research shows that divestment has an impact on fossils’ market value.

An orderly yet wide-ranging energy transition in the United States will require restrictive supply-side polices to “actively wind down fossil fuel extraction,” say the co-authors of a new report that urges policy-makers to treat carbon fuels the way they did lead paint and asbestos—either ban them outright or phase them out.

A Calgary-based renewable energy developer says all Albertans will gain from the clean energy transition if they can move beyond a polarized perspective on the province’s oil economy.

An array of new tax credits for clean energy development and a pledge to secure Canada’s place in a global green economy are at the centre of this year’s federal budget, released Tuesday afternoon by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, with an estimated $80 billion in multi-year funding for mostly clean energy technologies.

With five million Somalians left acutely food insecure after five consecutive failed rainy seasons, the Somali diaspora in Canada is trying to raise awareness of their homeland’s plight—and pointing to a financial policy that has made it costlier to send aid to their loved ones.

A stark choice between climate stability and global devastation is the constant drumbeat from a landmark report released today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” the UN agency states in its Sixth Assessment Report.

Drastically reducing fossil fuel consumption while scaling up renewable energy and energy efficiency is the quickest but also the most affordable path to the rapid, deep emission reductions that can get the climate emergency under control, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes in its synthesis report released Monday.

More than 1,550 community solar, battery storage, and hydrogen firms in the United States were rushing to regroup after last week’s collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which had issued them billions of dollars in operating loans.

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

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

How is it possible that a year of new solar and wind installations can already deliver more than twice the total peak power capacity it took Canada a century to build? In this book excerpt, author and investigative journalist Paul McKay says it’s partly because renewable production costs per unit are going down as scales and sales go up.

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

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

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

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

A tiny Danish island has completed its journey to becoming the world’s first “renewable energy island,” with its roughly 4,000 residents reducing their emissions to near zero through collective ownership of wind turbines, solar panels, and biomass heating plants.

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

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

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

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

Revelations that almost 95% of the “avoided deforestation” carbon credits issued by the world’s largest certifier have zero climate mitigation value, have sparked calls for rigour, transparency, and accountability in the carbon credit process.

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.

Banks associated with Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) poured US$269 billion into “fossil fuel expanders” in the months after the alliance formed, and investment houses like BlackRock and Vanguard held another $847 billion linked to 165 billion barrels of oil or equivalent under development, according to a scathing report issued this morning by Paris-based Reclaim Finance.

Innovators motivated by climate change have been shifting hydrogen technology toward low-emission solutions, boosting the potential for green hydrogen to replace fossil fuels in industries like long-haul transport, where few clean alternatives exist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

While the global biodiversity crisis deepens and the COP 15 summit in Montreal enters a final week of high-stakes negotiations, a report this morning points to a yawning gap between the degraded landscapes set aside for restoration and countries’ “aspirational goal” to restore a billion hectares—an area the size of China—by the end of this decade.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two more reinsurers have joined the slew of companies refusing to provide coverage to a proposed US$5-billion crude oil pipeline in East Africa that campaigners say would be disastrous for the climate and to its host countries.

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.

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Responsible for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the “hard to abate” global shipping industry is on track to receive more scrutiny than ever before at this year’s COP 27 climate summit.

With a new report warning that developing countries will need US$2 trillion per year by 2030 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and address the impacts of climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is taking fire for trying to put private finance at the centre of rich countries’ response.

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

UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney is pointing to a “wall of opportunity” for clean energy investment, even as a senior banking executive declares that Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) is stalling out on the voluntary commitments it’s trying to extract from the world’s biggest banks.

The world’s biggest ocean-going shipping company, Copenhagen-based Maersk, is blaming the oil industry for slowing its transition off fossil fuels.

As COP 27 opens in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, developing countries and climate justice leaders are urging a notoriously reluctant developed world to get serious about financing for loss and damage, with the immediate and long-term well-being of hundreds of millions hanging in the balance.

The world’s 350 million family farmers and smallhold producers are looking to this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, to help avert a global food security crisis by funding climate adaptation and building “a food system that can feed the world on a hot planet”.

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.

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

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the federal government is not doing enough to fight climate change, according to a new poll that shows limited public awareness in the U.S. about a sweeping new law that commits the U.S. to its largest ever investment to combat global warming.

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.

Oil and gas demand has levelled off, renewable energy costs are falling, and electric vehicles can dominate major markets by 2030, but countries will still need “unprecedented” emission reductions this decade to keep the worst of climate change under control, according to reports by three international agencies released yesterday and today.

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.

Redirecting $570 billion per year from planned oil and gas investments could “fully finance” wind and solar expansion to meet a 1.5°C target, showing that oil and gas development must be halted to keep global warming within safe limits, a new report concludes.

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.

France will become the latest European Union country to leave an energy agreement which climate groups claim is being used by the fossil fuel industry to legally challenge environmental measures, President Emmanuel Macron said last Friday.

Germany’s global buying spree for liquefied natural gas could double consumer energy prices and cost it hundreds of billions of euros, particularly with renewably-produced hydrogen on track to out-compete LNG on price in as little as a decade, according to two recent analyses.

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

The first nine months of 2022 saw 29 multi-billion-dollar extreme weather events, with Hurricane Ian in the United States topping the list at more than US$20 billion in damage.

Insurance companies that have long said they’ll cover anything, at the right price, are increasingly ruling out fossil fuel projects because of climate change—to cheers from environmental campaigners.

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.

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

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?

The swirling hype over hydrogen is at risk of becoming a market bubble, veteran renewable energy analyst Michael Liebreich warned an industry conference in Rotterdam last week.

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.

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.

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.

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

A group of climate heavy hitters have launched legal action to stop the European Union from including fossil gas in its sustainable finance rulebook.

Immediate policy reform is needed to stop the fossil industry from using anti-competition laws to thwart corporate climate action, says an Oxford University public policy expert who recently had to lawyer-proof his advisory group’s guidance on the climate risks of coal.

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

Canada will see C$25 billion in losses per year 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).

“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.”

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.

At the start of 2022, the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s leading private equity firms, published a report on its financial risk from greenhouse gas emissions. Yet something was not in the report.

“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.”

Iconic ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s will work with 15 dairy farms to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2024 as part of its Project Mootopia pilot program.

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

The 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.

Loss and damage due to climate disasters had a moment in the spotlight during this week’s UN General Assembly in New York, with Pakistan calling for urgent action on flooding and Denmark pledging more than US$13 million in financing.

In making planet Earth Patagonia’s “only shareholder,” founder Yvon Chouinard has exchanged considerable personal fortune for substantial political power—an outcome that is good for environment, but could be detrimental for democracy, say experts of philanthropy and tax law.

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.

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

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

Ensuring that America’s clean energy revolution leaves no one behind will require incentives for domestic production and targeted, collaborative investment in communities most likely to see job losses, two expert authors write.

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 founder and owner of the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, has given his US$3-billion company away to a specially-designed trust, ensuring all profits—in perpetuity—are used to fight climate change and preserve wild spaces.

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.

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.

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.

Clean energy companies employ more than half of the 65 million workers in the global energy sector, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report that urges a just transition to support the “energy work force of tomorrow”.

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.

Solar saved the European Union up to €29 billion in gas imports this past summer, and is poised for “exponential growth” across five of Asia’s biggest economies, according to two separate analyses released last week by the UK-based Ember think tank.

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

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.

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.

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.

While luxury car buyers are propelling the electric vehicle revolution in North America, India’s EV transition is rolling forward on cheap and agile two- and three-wheelers.

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.

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.

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.

One of the Netherlands’ biggest onshore wind farms has responded to initial hostility from nearby residents by inviting them to invest in the project.

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.

Nuclear utilities are being forced to buy realistic insurance coverage for the first time ever for the catastrophic accidents the power plants could produce, under a new international treaty that has landed the industry with an enormous and increasing bill for annual premiums.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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”.

The global oil and gas sector has been clearing US$2.8 billion per day in profits over the last 50 years, concludes a new analysis based on World Bank data.

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

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.

Rebuffing the still widespread narrative that natural gas is a “bridge” fuel, a team of German energy economists is warning that the massive global expansion of gas infrastructure now under way puts both climate mitigation efforts and the transition to renewable energy at risk.

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.

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”.

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.

New wind and solar projects saved countries US$82 billion in fossil fuel costs and will continue to provide badly-needed relief from rising electricity bills, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) concludes in a report issued last Thursday.

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.

It’s official: ESG has hit the big time, writes Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps.

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.

A leading advocate for Africa’s renewable energy transition is condemning Germany and Italy for pushing to “saddle” African countries with new fossil fuel infrastructure that will drag down their economies.

In what CNN is calling a “rare move”, more than 200 U.S. congressional staffers have written to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer demanding fast action on climate change and clean energy.

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.

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

Boris Johnson’s imminent departure as British Prime Minister is raising concern that the country will soon begin backsliding on its climate and nature commitments—even if those commitments consisted primarily of grand gestures, with relatively little practical action to back them up.

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 Solar and Energy Storage Association of Puerto Rico is claiming a victory for grid resilience after the Caribbean island installed thousands of solar batteries in the wake of a devastating hurricane in 2017. But liquefied natural gas is still very much on the agenda for the local utility.

From food production to local bike couriers, degrowth strategies are saving land, work time, and money while meeting basic needs and re-localizing economies, 360info reports.

Europe’s banks aren’t sufficiently considering risks from climate change and must “urgently step up efforts” to make sure they understand the possible impact of floods, wildfires, and losses on investments, The European Central Bank concluded Friday, based on a stress test it conducted on 104 banks.

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.

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

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 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 European Court of Human Rights said Thursday that a complaint against 33 countries filed by six young Portuguese climate activists will be examined by the tribunal’s top panel of judges, a move reflecting the case’s legal significance.

Last November, the Biden administration in the United States released a Methane Emissions Reduction Plan that included detailed steps to reduce emissions of the potent planet-warming gas from the oil and gas industries and from landfills. Under the authority of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would expand regulations on fossil energy companies and require landfills to significantly reduce their emissions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

As spiking inflation converges with an unequal post-pandemic recovery and an ever-escalating climate crisis, economists warn of widespread public pessimism about the future that is rapidly curdling into violent despair, especially among young men in many of the world’s poorer countries.

There’s a categorical difference between the raw materials of the clean energy economy and those from fossil fuels, writes Canary Media. But to be considered truly sustainable, renewable industries need to restructure to allow their products to be recycled at the end of their lives.

Global clean energy investment is on track to exceed US$1.4 trillion this year, representing “an important step in the right direction” that nevertheless falls “well short of what is required to hit international climate goals,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) concludes in its annual World Energy Investment 2022 report released yesterday.

Critical mineral infrastructure and hydrogen production are two of the centrepieces of a new industrial strategy for natural resources unveiled Monday by Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

BlackRock Inc. is taking a step back from its position as a leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, with CEO Larry Fink declaring he will not act as “the environmental police.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

U.S. President Joe Biden has announced a two-year pause on a controversial tariff that was hobbling his country’s solar panel installation industry and imperiling his administration’s 2035 clean energy goal.

Private investors in rich countries stand to lose more than a trillion dollars on stranded fossil fuel assets as climate policies slash their value, giving them a powerful interest in the transition off carbon, according to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The CEO of Deutsche Bank’s asset management subsidiary DWS has resigned and the company’s management is “shaken” after about 50 government investigators raided the companies’ offices searching for evidence of greenwashing, Clean Energy Wire reports.

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 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 Group of Seven western industrialized countries set a 2035 deadline to decarbonize electricity generation, promised to end international public financing of fossil fuels this year, cited Russia’s war in Ukraine as a catalyst for a faster fossil phaseout, but left themselves a long list of agenda items on climate finance as they tied up a marathon series of ministerial meetings in Germany last week.

Business-as-usual inaction on climate change could cost the world’s economy US$178 trillion by 2070, while a concerted and collaborative global push for net-zero could see $43 trillion in economic growth over the same period, says a new report from the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress.

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.

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.

The senior safety consultant whose high-profile resignation from Shell spotlighted the company’s “extreme harms” to the environment is drawing a sharp contrast between the colossal fossil’s enduring interest in safer work processes and its failure to deliver on its highly-touted emissions reduction plan.

The last decade has seen a major shift in how brazenly financial institutions can cast their lot with carbon-heavy fossil fuel projects, but there’s lots more work ahead to hold them fully accountable, said Julien Vincent, founder of Melbourne-based Market Forces and one of the winners of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize.

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.

A senior executive at the HSBC bank is being roasted for his claim that central banks and other global authorities are overstating the financial risks of the climate emergency—and his employer is distancing itself from his remarks.

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.

A collection of power sector suppliers from around the world has introduced a Powering Net Zero Pact to “promote a fair and just transition” to reduce emissions.

No longer the sole province of tool- and computer-wielding technicians and scientists, climate careers will be increasingly found across all sectors, according to a new generation of young entrepreneurs who are determined to leave the world far better than they found it.

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 Guardian is out with an exclusive, explosive report based on months of research that documents the scores of new projects fossil fuel companies are proposing, enough to wipe out the world’s remaining carbon budget and shatter any effort to hold global warming to 1.5°C.

Investors concerned about climate risk—a risk typically calculated using the imprecise measurements of Scope 3 emissions—may welcome a new metric that focuses on a company’s indirect climate risk exposure through its customers and suppliers.

New renewable energy capacity will exceed 300 gigawatts this year for the first time, with mounting concerns about climate change and energy security driving an 8% increase over 2021 despite rising costs and supply chain bottlenecks, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports this week in its annual renewables market update.

A future role for electric vehicles as a major source of electricity storage capacity got a boost last week with regulatory approval of three California grid integration projects, totalling US$11.7 million.

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.

“Collective complacency” in the face of the climate crisis and other human-caused catastrophes is setting the world up for 560 disasters a year by 2030, according to a new UN report that says humans are overly optimistic and have made short-sighted decisions so far.

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.

The “deep entanglement” between Canada’s 10 biggest pension funds and a roster of 76 fossil fuel companies raises serious questions about whether fund managers and trustees are looking out for the best interest of the beneficiaries who depend on them, according to a scathing, 40-page report released yesterday by Toronto-based Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Climate Health.

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.

Clean energy spending in governments’ pandemic recovery packages has surged by 50% in the past five months, pushing it over US$710 billion worldwide, despite “troubling imbalances between regions,” a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report concludes.

More than 85 investment firms, academic organizations, and environmental groups from across Canada and around the world are lending their support to a climate-aligned finance bill introduced by Sen. Rosa Galvez (ISG-Quebec) in late March.

The clean energy transition stands to suffer a major blow as wind turbine manufacturers struggle to maintain profitability due to vanishing subsidies, high materials costs, and supply chain issues worsened by the war in Ukraine.

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.

The world’s fifth-largest insurance company, Munich-based Allianz, is withdrawing coverage and investment dollars from a wide swath of fossil fuel projects as of next year, and will stop insuring its existing fossil clients when their policies come up for renewal.

Most Canadian politicians still don’t understand the most important thing about fossil fuel subsidies, writes UNB’s Jason MacLean: Eliminating all financial support for the fossil fuel industry is a necessary first step in completely phasing out fossil production and consumption in Canada.

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.

The vertical farming industry has taken off with the dramatic drop in LED lighting prices over the last decade, and investors are taking note, just as an array of influences including the climate crisis drive up interest in locally-produced food delivered via shorter, more reliable supply chains.

Philanthropy for climate action is growing and can have a central role in shifting the global economy to a carbon-neutral future, but it could also lead to maladaptive outcomes if funding is misdirected, say leaders of two major philanthropic organizations.

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.

Oil demand could peak by 2025 as the global energy transition gains momentum, and renewable energy is on track to become “the new baseload” by 2030, according to this year’s edition of the Global Energy Perspective report issued by McKinsey & Partners.

With electric vehicles poised to dominate roadways in a few years, industry players are preparing to harness their batteries as a massive, distributed clean power plant to meet grid shortfalls during peak times and outages.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is investing US$25 million in Hydrostor Inc., just as the Toronto-based developer closes in on the first major commercial development for its long-storage air compression energy storage technology.

South African fuel and chemicals giant Sasol Ltd. is stepping away from plans to invest in a new pipeline from northern Mozambique, for fear that it will end up saddled a stranded asset in a decarbonizing world.

Countries must accelerate their transition off fossil fuels, not abandon urgent climate action, as they scramble to replace oil and gas supplies from Russia in response to the war in Ukraine, the steering group of the Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance declared earlier this month.

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

Rio Tinto saw its