Fossils Go For Broke

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.

Now that the fossil fuel industry must appear to be reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen hype becomes the greenwashing glue for “blue hydrogen” made from fossil gas, writes longtime LNG activist and now green hydrogen proponent Ken Summers.

British Columbia’s new energy framework is being hailed as a positive step towards capping oil and gas emissions in the province, but one critic is calling it a “political smokescreen,” coming hours after the approval of a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.

Canada and the United States will work together to develop critical mineral supply chains, coordinate efforts on net-zero grid development and electric vehicle charging networks, advance long-duration energy storage, measure and monitor methane and carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and promote trade in products like green steel and aluminium in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa March 23-24.

Embracing a “narrative of abundance” and rejecting the deception of “austerity” that fossil fuels impose upon us will be key to spurring climate action, says the American feminist writer, historian, and activist, Rebecca Solnit.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed a major, new climate science report as a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time bomb”, minutes after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire warning urging countries to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions before a 1.5°C future slips out of reach.

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.

With Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland set to deliver a federal budget next week that’s meant to “invest aggressively” in clean technology, Monday’s synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes some strong guidance on which technologies should qualify for government support—and which ones shouldn’t.

One of the important storylines emerging from Monday’s synthesis report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the race to avoid overshooting a 1.5°C limit on average global temperature rise—and the added risks that would result from extraordinary efforts to bring warming back below that threshold.

A landmark agreement seeks to rectify decades of environmental destruction sanctioned by British Columbia policy-makers on Indigenous land, but also reopens one of Canada’s most prolific shale formations to the fossil industry, inviting them back to resume drilling a land once left “decimated” by extraction.

Lauded by its backers as a boon for the Alaskan economy and a critical path to energy independence, the recently approved Willow oil project is now facing two lawsuits, along with tough questions about just how much Alaskans or America as a whole will gain from the project.

Six Pacific Island nations have issued a call for a fossil fuel-free Pacific and called on all countries to sign a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty (FFNPT).

A national Indigenous group is fighting a proposed federal limit on oil and gas sector emissions by arguing it will harm First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities.

State politicians in Kansas worried last week that the southern part of their state is vulnerable to oil spills from the Keystone pipeline, just days after a U.S. regulator ordered TC Energy to lower the operating pressure across the entire Keystone system.

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

Bailing on an election promise to never again allow drilling on federal lands, United States President Joe Biden has approved a US$8-billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from an ecologically sensitive region in Alaska.

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

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

United Nations officials declared partial victory Thursday in a multi-year effort to avert a US$20-billion humanitarian and environmental catastrophe along the Red Sea coast, but warned their mission may still unravel if they can’t raise another $34 million to fully fund the work.

Despite a high-profile pledge from U.S. President Joe Biden’s to eliminate US$31 billion in fossil fuel subsidies, the country’s oil and gas industry is still lining up for billions in financial support under the national climate plan it once opposed.

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

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

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.

Job opportunities in renewable energy are pulling U.S. workers from the fossil fuel sector, but some worry that the available labour force will still fall short of the Biden administration’s clean energy goals.

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

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

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

Locals remain desperate for answers almost a month after a train laden with harmful petrochemicals derailed in a small Ohio town, as government agencies refuse to test for some dangerous toxins, the railroad company shells out paltry restitution, and politicians steal the moment for publicity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The oil executive who will lead this year’s United Nations climate talks has responded to fears that fossil fuel interests are hijacking the process: his “top priority” is to keep the 1.5°C goal alive, he said, a week after cautioning that the world still needs oil to “bridge from the current energy system to the new one.”

Climate campaigners say some of the world’s biggest information technology firms are allowing rampant greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry on online platforms, despite their public statements supporting sustainability.

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

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

A week after Shell announced record-high profits, an activist group sued its board of directors, in a bid to hold the 11 members personally liable for the British colossal fossil’s failure to pursue an effective climate strategy.

Members of a Texas community are resisting a US$10-billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that is promising carbon dioxide emissions reductions of “more than 90%” by banking on carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).

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.

Mexico has become one of the first countries to ban solar engineering experiments, after a start-up released balloons of sulphur dioxide particles meant to cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space.

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

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

Ten years after Ecuador abandoned efforts to get the international community to pay it not to drill for oil in a corner of Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, the cash-strapped country’s decision to double down on fossil exploration is signalling the need for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation agreement.

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 rising cost of international shipping has temporarily torpedoed a United Nations mission to prevent a US$20-billion ecological and humanitarian disaster along the Red Sea coast.

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

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

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

Two legal challenges against the Woodhouse Colliery coal mine in the North West England county Cumbria may determine the country’s future reputation as a climate leader, after a new analysis suggested the mine would release 17,500 tonnes of methane per year.

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.

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.

A first-ever systematic assessment of an oil and gas company’s climate projections shows that Exxon scientists accurately predicted how fossil fuels would affect global temperatures, despite decades of PR activity meant to sow doubt and climate denial.

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 questions are as predictable as the incremental, half-hearted result of this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 27, in Egypt.

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.

Toxic, destined to become ecosystem-ravaging microplastics in their own right, and a very long way from being carbon-negative, bioplastics are by no means the antidote to their destructive fossil-kin, researchers say.

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.

A group of former oil and gas executives and academics is calling for the industry to pay tens of trillions of dollars through 2050 to take full responsibility for every tonne of carbon it produces.

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

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 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.

Just as a majority Black community in Florida’s Gulf County has begun to envision a “safe, vibrant, and healthy” comeback from the polluted shadow of heavy industry, local officials risk thwarting those ambitions by saying yes to a waterfront gas terminal.

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

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

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

Ukraine is planning to speed up its shift to clean, green electricity, citing Russia’s drone and missile attacks on its electricity infrastructure as a catalyst to build a more resilient grid.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Saudi Arabia is building solar panels and promoting electric cars to reduce oil consumption at home, but the kingdom has a different plan for the rest of the world—pushing for policies that sustain and even increase oil dependence for decades to come.

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

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

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

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

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

Physicists were thrilled but power grid managers had less to celebrate this week after a U.S. research lab cleared an initial milestone on the very long road to a working nuclear fusion reactor.

A letter backed by 650 scientists says forest bioenergy has “wrongly been deemed ‘carbon neutral’” and calls on world leaders to stop the practice that they say destroys valuable wildlife habitats.

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

A 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.

The world’s biggest fossil companies, many of them operating in Canada, approved new oil and gas projects in 2021 and early 2022 that will blow through a 1.5°C limit on average global warming, according to new analysis released late last week by the Carbon Tracker Initiative.

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.

The skyrocketing price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is driving down demand in China and India and raising the risk that new import terminals will be delayed or cancelled, according to a new analysis last week by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

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.

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

Britain’s Conservative government on Wednesday approved the UK’s first new coal mine in three decades, a decision condemned by environmentalists as a leap backwards in the fight against climate change.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Norway has postponed its next round of oil and gas leases in frontier areas until 2025 under a budget deal between the minority Labour government and the opposition Socialist Left (SV) party.

After the European Union’s landmark decision last week to bring the shipping industry into its carbon market, Transport & Environment is urging decision-makers to follow suit with air travel.

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.

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. 

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).

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

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

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

Millions of Ukrainians remained without power amid freezing temperatures over the weekend, after Russia rained missiles down on civilian infrastructure in what was called a bid to “freeze the country into submission.”

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 landmark victory on loss and damage funding was muted when COP 27 delegates realized they’d adopted a final declaration placing natural gas at the centre of the transition off carbon.

China has drafted a plan to reduce methane emissions and the United States has pledged to help, but climate campaigners say the country’s biggest methane culprits—coal mines and livestock—have yet to be addressed.

Negotiations to secure US$11 billion in funding to help Vietnam shift its economy off coal are in the home stretch, with the country’s debt wariness and donor concerns about suppression of dissent among the thorny issues still to be resolved.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

A dramatic new offer from the plenary floor at COP 27, in which rich countries would immediately set up a loss and damage fund in exchange for a pledge to peak greenhouse gas emissions before 2025 and phase down oil and gas as well as coal, changed the tone and may have salvaged the outcome of climate negotiations that seemed hopelessly deadlocked just hours before.

Something significant is happening in the desert in Egypt as countries meet at COP 27, the United Nations summit on climate change, veteran climate finance special Rachel Kyte writes in a post for The Conversation.

A COP 27 event marked the Glasgow Statement’s one-year anniversary by urging Germany, Italy, Canada, and the United States to live up to climate promises that could shift US$28 billion per year from fossil fuels to clean energy.

African petrostates betting on fossil fuel exports for wealth creation and energy security are making an imprudent choice, warns a new report, as the “inevitable and irreversible” energy transition will slash demand, lower oil prices, and freeze investments from international oil companies.

For decades, 40,000 litres per day of toxic effluent have been knowingly released from an oil terminal on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, endangering a super-hardy coral species that may contain the key to climate-proofing the rest of the world’s coral.

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

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.

One of the most important moments in this year’s COP 27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, may have happened 9,550 kilometres away in Indonesia, when U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart formal climate cooperation during a side meeting at this year’s G20 summit in Bali.

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

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

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

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

The Biden administration has unveiled proposed rules to hold government contractors accountable for greenhouse gases, and oil and gas companies for methane, as it pushes to slash federal emissions and assure other countries that the United States can deliver on its climate promises.

As forecasts of a mild winter in Europe and nearly full gas reserves ease Germany’s immediate worries about fossil gas shortages, energy experts are nonetheless warning against complacency.

A new report busts the “fallacy” that boosting gas production in Africa will benefit the continent’s population. Instead, the so-called “dash for gas” will devastate the natural environment, leave local communities powerless, and wreak havoc on the climate, report authors say.

As the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we’re hearing the same question that comes up every year: Why bother? Or, just a bit more optimistically—what will the COP have to achieve to make it worthwhile?

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

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

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 COP 27 host Egypt and 16 other natural gas-exporting governments pledging to plug the fossil energy source as “the perfect solution” to climate change and energy security, critics warned of a “dash for gas” in Africa—a prophecy taking shape this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, where some African countries said exploiting fossil reserves will help lift people out of poverty.

A series of symbolic moves on climate finance suggests positive momentum could be starting to build on a pivotal issue at the COP 27 summit in Egypt.

An inventory of the world’s highest-emitting greenhouse gas sources reveals that oil and gas production emissions are being underreported by as much as three times, due to limited reporting requirements, underestimated methane leaks, and intentional flaring.

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

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

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

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

At last year’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, 193 governments promised to strengthen their national climate targets within one year. But only about two dozen of them have delivered on that promise, leaving civil society representatives wary of more empty promises and false solutions at the onset of COP 27.

Countries across Africa could lose 14% of their per capita GDP to climate change by 2050 and 34% by 2100, even if average global warming is held to 1.5°C, according to a report released this morning at this year’s UN climate conference, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

This year’s COP 27 climate conference may prove UN negotiations on global heating dead for some. But for others, the annual, marathon negotiating summits are a crucial forum to exert soft power, keep checks on Big Oil, and remind corporate interests that the Amazon is much more than just a business opportunity.

With 40 countries expected to unveil their methane reduction plans at COP 27, global action on the climate-busting greenhouse gas could get a boost after stalling out under industry pressure over the last year, even after more 100 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge at COP 26.

Tuvalu has joined its fellow Pacific Island nation Vanuatu in calling on countries to develop a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), becoming the second nation-state to endorse the proposal.

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

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.

An administrative decision on carbon removals, adopted in the dead of night with no community input, is raising alarm with experts attending the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Leaders of major economies who handed polluting fossil fuels US$693 billion in financial support last year—the highest level since 2014—are among those entrusted with tackling global heating and delivering climate justice at the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres is calling out the fossil fuel industry for not decisively acting to bring about an energy transition, despite reaping record profits from high energy prices.

In the Putumayo region of the Colombian Amazon, Segundo Meneses’ daily routine took him to the Chufiya river, its banks verdant and waters alive with catfish and piranha. On one morning seven years ago, he noticed a dark film lapping the shore. Where the river turned a bend, it turned to black. It was an oil slick that he says went on to sicken his young family and poison their cows and pigs.

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.

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

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

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

Summer heat waves driven by climate change do more than harm health and claim lives, a new study shows. They also blight national economies, and hit the poorest hardest of all.

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.

The world’s seven biggest oil firms are projected to reap gargantuan profits of US$173 billion this year, leading to fresh calls for windfall taxes on a sector that has thrived after Russia’s war in Ukraine led to sky-high fuel prices.

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

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

The world’s biggest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software is receiving a mixed assessment after opening a carbon credit marketplace to support climate action.

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

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

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

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

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.

Incoming British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will restore his country’s ban on oil and gas fracking, Reuters reported yesterday, after his predecessor Liz Truss reversed a moratorium originally set out in the UK Conservative Party’s 2019 election platform.

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.

The state of New South Wales has contracted energy storage start-up Akaysha Energy to build the world’s biggest battery before Australia’s biggest coal plant shuts. down.

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.

The European Parliament is calling on EU nation states to begin developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), and to “stand ready” to do what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

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.

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.

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.

Solar and wind power purchase agreements (PPAs) in the United States could be signed for less than one cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) thanks to Inflation Reduction Act funding, concludes an analysis by investment banking giant Crédit Suisse.

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.

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.

Global carbon dioxide emissions are “defying expectations” and set to rise by just under 1% this year, far less than analysts predicted, due to record deployment of renewable energy and electric vehicles, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports.

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

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

New Jersey is taking five colossal fossils and the American Petroleum Institute to court, saying they deliberately deceived the public about their contribution to global heating.

A fuel crisis in Haiti is inflaming security and humanitarian crises, as gangs exploit the country’s oil dependency to pressure interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign after he cut fuel subsidies in September.

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

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

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.

Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg has come out in favour of Germany extending the life of its controversial nuclear plants, just days after a news analysis traced the decades-long history of nuclear facilities threatened by war or terrorism.

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.

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

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

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

New Zealand’s government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gases that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change.

The world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, has announced it will stop investing in and insuring new oil and gas fields, infrastructure, and power plants as of April, 2023.

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

The Austrian government said Monday it has filed a legal complaint with the European Union’s top court over plans by the bloc’s executive branch to label natural gas and nuclear power generation as sustainable energies.

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.

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.

Emissions of climate-busting methane in the three biggest fracking regions in the United States are five times higher than previously believed, according to a new paper published last week in the journal Science.

The dominance of the Russian state-controlled supply chain for uranium and fuel threatens the future operation of many western reactors if international relations continue to deteriorate, an independent report into state of the nuclear industry worldwide shows.

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

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

The United Nations aviation agency has allowed corporate interests to influence the direction of its climate policy, say environmental groups, pointing to new research that finds nearly one-third of delegates at its environmental committee meetings come from aviation or fossil fuel industries.

Despite vowing climate action, many United States power utilities remain heavily committed to fossil fuels and are ill-prepared to support President Joe Biden’s goal of delivering 80% clean power by 2030, finds a new report.

Its video ads are chockablock with natural wonders and shiny happy people, but Chevron really doesn’t give a f**k about any of that, observes a bitterly funny parody ad produced by Adam McKay, producer of the feature film Don’t Look Up.

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

Methane leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines is likely the biggest burst of the climate super-pollutant on record by far, and countries in the region suspect this week’s undersea explosions were a case of sabotage.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Big Oil is spending more money now than ever before on elaborate, deceptive public relations strategies to thwart climate policy, a PR expert told a United States congressional hearing, as freshly released internal emails revealed how fossil executives watered down the language of their climate commitments, mocked activists, and derided Americans in general.

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.

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

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

The United Nations hit its fundraising goal Saturday to avert a $20-billion environmental and humanitarian disaster after the Netherlands put up €7.5 million to help salvage the FSO Safer, a disabled oil tanker carrying 1.1 million of barrels of oil in the Red Sea off Yemen.

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

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.

A South African court sided with environmental groups and local fishing communities to strike down an oil and gas exploration permit after two UK-based companies—Royal Dutch Shell and Impact Africa—failed to consult with local Indigenous communities.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

Five of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies put a lot more effort into public messaging last year than actual low-carbon investments, concludes a content analysis released last week by InfluenceMap.

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.

EU parliamentarians are being urged to vote “yes” on a measure that would exclude woody biomass from counting towards renewable energy targets.

The incoming British government is committed to building a new generation of nuclear power stations to provide a quarter of the  nation’s electricity. But how it is going to happen remains a mystery.

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.

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

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

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

Newly-installed British Prime Minister Liz Truss appointed a reputed climate change denier to head her energy ministry and vowed to increase North Sea oil and gas drilling in the hours after she took office Tuesday.

The Kremlin has declared it will stop shipping gas to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, prompting European leaders to propose price caps to cut into Russia’s financing for its war in Ukraine.

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.

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.

A new analysis has pegged the social cost of carbon at US$185 per tonne, more than triple the figure the Joe Biden administration currently uses.

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.

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.

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

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.

Despite pledges to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, the world’s major economies moved to offset rising consumer energy prices in 2021 by nearly doubling consumer supports rather than investing in renewable energy.

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.

After emerging from brutal July heat waves, the United Kingdom is headed for a harsh winter, with an 80% jump in energy bills expected to strain millions of households and businesses.

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

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

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

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.

China suspended cooperative climate talks with the United States after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) recent trip to Taiwan, raising questions about what the two countries’ worsening relationship means for global climate action. But contrary to initial worries, some observers are taking hope from a “clean energy arms race” in the making.

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).

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.

A United States start-up is cooking up a plan to mount direct air capture (DAC) technology on trains to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a much lower cost than stationary systems.

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

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

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.

A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty would help rein in oil companies that are exploiting people and the planet while reaping record profits, says veteran Canadian climate and energy campaigner Tzeporah Berman.

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

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.

Three of the world’s biggest fossil companies—BP, Shell, and Equinor—are relying on decarbonization scenarios that fall short of the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, concludes a peer-reviewed study led by Berlin-based Climate Analytics.

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.

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.

When U.S. President Joe Biden signed a landmark, US$369-billion climate and energy package into law earlier this week, the price of the deal was a promise to make more federal lands available for oil and gas drilling. But that doesn’t mean U.S. fossil companies are terribly keen to bid on those leases.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

In the wake of last week’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and now G7 foreign ministers are urging Moscow to abandon the “suicidal” gambit of using the plant as a nuclear shield, and return it to Ukrainian control.

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.

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.

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

Heat waves and drought in France are adding to Europe’s energy crisis which began when Russian invaded Ukraine—but the decline in the French electricity production is not just a temporary blip. France’s nuclear industry is in serious trouble.

The high cost of fossil fuels is making green hydrogen a better bet than the “blue” variety produced from natural gas, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden admitted last week.

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.

China’s fourteenth five-year plan (14FYP) shows the country could build enough wind and solar capacity to reach its emissions peak ahead of schedule, but continuing coal investments raise doubts.

Australia’s new government announced Thursday it plans to prevent development of a coal mine due to the potential impact on the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

The University of Cambridge is reportedly planning to change the name of its BP Institute after pressure from climate advocacy group Fossil Free Research, though no formal decision has been announced.

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.

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