The Canadian economy has added 42 new jobs for each one it has lost in fossil fuels since 2014, and a 20-year industry phaseout would only reduce fossil employment by about 8,500 positions per year—as many as the country usually creates every 10 days—concludes economist Jim Stanford in an analysis published this week by Environmental Defence.

An aggressive program of executive actions and green investments, a White House staffed with “climate champions”, and a concerted effort to rebuild the U.S. government’s scientific capacity and morale will all begin to take shape today with the inauguration of President Joe Biden, former White House counsellor John Podesta said Tuesday afternoon, during a webinar hosted by Toronto-based GreenPAC.

When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in later today as the 46th president and 49th vice-president of the United States, they’ll take office with a raft of campaign promises and a team cabinet nominees and committee chairs that hold the potential to deliver fast, decisive action on the climate crisis.

Calgary-based pipeliner TC Energy touted a “zero-emissions” approach to its fossil fuel transportation business, the federal and Alberta government vowed to continue the fight, and Premier Jason Kenney admitted his province stands to lose a billion-dollar gamble as the reality sank in that U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline after he’s sworn in later today.

Wind and solar will deliver 70% of new U.S. renewable energy capacity this year, compared to only 16% expected to come from natural gas, while battery storage will vault to 11% of the total, according to new data released last week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

While direct carbon removal (DCR) technologies like afforestation and direct air carbon capture are showing up in climate plans across the corporate world, it will be sharp emissions reductions, not DCR, that actually will keep a 1.5˚C climate target in view, Greenpeace UK warns in a new report.

With Canadian companies continuing to flout climate risk disclosure regulations, even as many of their global competitors come clean, the CEO of one of the nation’s largest investment managers says the disconnect will come back to burn the economy, particularly as the country struggles to rebuild from the pandemic.

While oft-criticized in North America for promising much and delivering little, the “smart city” concept is gaining a foothold in the Global South—a troubling development for those who worry about the incursions of Big Data, or see the projects as little more than oversized gated communities.

As the climate crisis accelerates and the Earth nears a fast-approaching “temperature tipping point,” the world’s nations need to speed up their adaptation planning and funding, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warns in its latest Adaptation Gap Report.

Results of a ratification vote were to be released today after GM Canada and Unifor reached a tentative deal that will see the giant automaker invest C$1 billion to build electric vans at its CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario.

Disgraced engineering giant SNC Lavalin and a former BC Hydro chief engineer were among the big winners when the provincial utility awarded C$171 million in sole-source, “no-bid” contracts for its controversial Site C hydropower megaproject, according to an exposé published by The Narwhal last week.

While the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is still necessarily taking up most of the oxygen on Parliament Hill, climate action and a green recovery figure fairly prominently in a new batch of ministerial mandate letters released last Thursday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

With climate action and ambition accelerating toward the end of last year, in Canada and internationally, and COVID-19 vaccine distribution under way, 2021 could be a pivotal year in the fight to get the climate crisis under control, writes Shawn McCarthy, senior counsel at the Sussex Strategy Group, in a post last week for Policy Options.

Forward-thinking executives are calling on their peers in the business world to listen to science in a bid to avert catastrophic global warming. That means investing in low-carbon technologies, supporting carbon pricing, and putting a stop to hollow, disingenuous actions—like making far-future net-zero pledges with no plans or accountability systems in place.

Anyone banking on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the silver bullet that will allow for undisturbed continuation of the fossil fuel business had better have (extremely) deep pockets, reports Grist, citing a new study that declares the technology gobsmackingly expensive, wildly inefficient, and a dangerous form of climate-action delay.

Newfoundland and Labrador is offering C$175 million to the owners of the dormant Terra Nova offshore oilfield, but only if oil starts pumping again.

A “huge” case of falsified records, in which 59 reclamation certificates for abandoned gas wells were rescinded by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), has resulted in warning letters and media coverage but no financial penalties for the two companies involved, after a complex investigation ran into the two-year limit imposed by provincial legislation.

A year after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink issued a landmark investors’ letter that stressed climate risk and fossil fuel divestment, the world’s biggest asset manager is being accused of greenwashing in a report that documents US$85 billion the company still holds in the coal sector.

A bloc of HSBC shareholders have filed a resolution urging Europe’s largest bank to stop funding the fossil industry, with coal at the top of the list. Among these activist investors are the world’s largest publicly-traded hedge fund company and Europe’s largest listed asset manager.

The Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation and their corporate partner NRStor Inc. have tapped into support from the Canada Investment Bank to get the country’s biggest battery storage project off the ground.

In a global first, a study just published in the journal Environmental Research Letters concludes that reliance on fossil-fuelled power plants in a warming world could drive up global electricity demand by as much as 27,000 megawatts.

Empty rhetoric, ignorance, vested interests, and systemic racism—all persisting even as the climate crisis melts away the life-sustaining Arctic ice—may well mean that any achievement in Canada’s 2050 net-zero target will come too late for those who call the North home.

Renewable energy investment is falling short of what’s needed to meet rapid decarbonization goals, and national implementation strategies often work to the disadvantage of small and medium-sized renewable energy producers, according to a think tank study released late last year.

In the closing months of the Trump administration, fossil companies stockpiled enough drilling permits for western public lands to keep pumping oil for years and undercut President-elect Joe Biden’s plans to curb new drilling because of climate change, according to public records and industry analysts.

Large-scale progressive change can be accomplished as much by “positive-sum” cooperation as by “zero-sum” thinking, argues a new study co-authored by the deputy director of the UK’s Cabinet Office COP26 Unit.

2021 is shaping up as a boom year for utility-scale battery storage in the United States, with one big project already in service, another one expected to go online this year, still larger systems on the drawing boards, and utilities and regulators scrambling to keep up.

It will take a “decarbonization shock” to jolt utilities and governments in Africa into a quick transition to renewable energy this decade that avoids investments in fossil fuel projects that will lock the continent into a future of high-carbon development, warns a report this week in the journal Nature Energy.

COVID-19 recovery funds and green job investment could be a cornerstone for efforts by more than 20 developing nations to come up with new, improved national climate plans, according to a Seoul, South Korea-based organization that is working on Green New Deal-type plans with nearly a dozen different countries.

As Paris Agreement climate financing commitments come due, established standards and third-party verification for finance data are desperately needed to win back the trust of poorer nations, urges the editorial board of the journal Nature.

The climate crisis is exacting a rising price from the global insurance industry, a relief and development agency says. As the world digests the news that 2020 was the joint hottest year on record, two reports attempt to assess how many billions of dollars are being lost as a result of an ever-warming planet.

The UK government is being accused of “rank hypocrisy” that “beggars belief”, after failing to rescind local approval of the country’s first new underground coal mine in 30 years while preparing to convene this year’s United Nations climate change conference, COP 26, just 10 months from now.

Global leaders are in the midst of a high-stakes virtual summit today, aimed at rebooting international diplomacy on climate change and species extinction ahead of a United Nations biodiversity conference scheduled for October.

Two high-profile North American investors closed out 2020 with pledges to reduce the carbon footprint of their portfolios, with Lévis, Quebec-based Desjardins Group promising to drop most of its coal investments and the storied Rockefeller Foundation saying it will purge its US$5-billion endowment of fossil fuel holdings.

The Vancouver City Savings Credit Union is promising to bring its entire mortgage and loan portfolio to net-zero by 2040, 10 years ahead of the target set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as part of a five-part plan aimed at building climate action into the financial co-op’s business strategy.

While Canada’s pledge to achieve a carbon price of C$170 by 2030 gives the country “a credible shot” at hitting its 2030 climate targets, the invisible hand of the marketplace won’t deliver a just transition to a lower-carbon economy without a green industrial policy to chart the course, Broadbent Institute policy fellow Brendan Haley argues in a recent blog post.

Canadian automakers are jumping onboard the federal government’s updated climate plan and calling for an extensive “cash for clunkers” program to cut emissions and drive the shift to electric vehicles.

Donald Trump sustained an epic defeat last week when a widely-criticized, eleventh-hour bid to sell oil and gas exploration leases in the ecologically fragile Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) produced only a fraction of the revenue or industry interest his administration was hoping for.

After a horrid year of pandemic lockdowns and searing inequalities that nevertheless produced surprising progress for climate action and carbon reduction commitments, several news outlets are looking ahead to 2021 with something that sounds an awful lot like optimism.

With Democrats poised to form a narrow majority in the U.S. Senate, following landmark run-off election wins this week by Senators-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the first two months of the Biden-Harris administration may be marked by a concerted push to roll back some of the worst deregulatory excesses of the Donald Trump years.

TORONTO — An environmental coalition is appealing to Ontario teachers to pressure their pension fund to divest from companies that develop or transport fossil fuel products.

Under mounting pressure from investors, colossal fossil ExxonMobil disclosed Tuesday that its operations accounted for 730 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, making it the biggest emitter among western oil and gas companies and placing its carbon pollution on a par with a country like Canada.

CALGARY — The new operator of the White Rose offshore oilfield says no final decision has been made about its future despite a move by partner Suncor Energy Inc. to take a C$425-million impairment charge, or downgrade, on the value of its stake, The Canadian Press reports.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan closed out the year by buying a controlling interest in a fossil gas pipeline company in Italy, with an OTPP official claiming the deal is a “low- or zero-carbon” investment.

ST. JOHN’S, NL — Newfoundland and Labrador is giving C$38 million to the Hibernia offshore oil project in a bid to protect 148 jobs over 18 months.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has published draft rules for a new Clean Fuel Standard (CFS) that it says would focus primarily on fossil refineries, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from liquid fuels by nearly 21 million tonnes by 2030, and drive up the cost of a litre of gasoline by up to 11¢.

Canada’s action plan for small modular nuclear reactors is nothing more than science fiction, writes analyst Burgess Langshaw-Power: idle dreams of an indefinite group of technologies which may be ready in a decade. In the meantime, renewable energy continues to leap ahead, mostly without any federal support.

From solar and wind tax credits, to reductions in climate-busting hydrofluorocarbons, to financial support for battery storage, microgrids, combined heat and power, and carbon capture, the US$900-billion pandemic relief package adopted by the U.S. Congress late last month is being hailed as the most substantial federal investment and one of the biggest victories for climate action in a decade.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a “potential turning point” in global fossil fuel production, countries will drive greenhouse gas emissions far beyond a 1.5°C limit on average warming if their published plans to increase coal, oil, and gas extraction come to pass, according to the 2020 Production Gap Report issued by five major international agencies.

While global greenhouse gas emissions have risen from 53 to 55 billion tonnes per year since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, low-carbon solutions are poised for mass-market appeal in sectors representing 70% of emissions by 2030, creating more than 35 million net new jobs along the way, according to an analysis released by SYSTEMIQ.

Renewable energy, energy storage, energy efficiency, and green hydrogen are set to draw away more than 75% of future demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), analysts at Wood Mackenzie warned.

Continuing low gas prices, the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and continuing uncertainty about a cluster of market factors have turned 2020 into a never-ending slump for liquefied natural gas (LNG) project developers, despite their earlier hopes for a breakout year.

Institutional investors with nearly US$7 trillion at their disposal are planning to double their renewable energy holdings over the next five years, to about $742.5 billion per year, driven by what The Guardian calls “deepening concerns over the fossil fuel industry’s climate plans”.

Royal Dutch Shell is faced a wave of resignations among clean energy executives who’ve become disillusioned with the colossal fossil’s highly-touted carbon reduction plan, just weeks before a major strategy review due to be released in February.

I have sat in many long Zoom calls this year discussing climate ambition. Never once have I thought these were life or death discussions for me personally. But for 1.2 billion people across the globe, the collective decarbonization commitments put forward by all governments are a matter of survival. The tempest of our changing climate is right on their door and pushing hard.

With the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warning that the Earth has warmed 1.2°C since the mid-1800s, and the high-stakes virtual climate summit that took place on December 12, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres is urging humanity to call off its “war on nature” and get greenhouse gas emissions under control.

With their promise to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement on Day One of their new administration, and a US$2-trillion climate plan in their back pockets, a major climate think tank says the election win by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris could be enough to bring a 1.5°C limit on average global warming “within striking distance”.

New York State’s pension has announced plans to drop the “riskiest” oil and gas stocks from its massive investment portfolio by 2025 and fully divest by 2040, making it the first U.S. state and the biggest pension fund in the world to make such a commitment.

Climate campaigners parsed language and awaited details after the United Kingdom announced it would become the first major world economy to promise an end to public financing of overseas fossil projects.

The pushback was fierce and pretty much instantaneous after colossal fossil ExxonMobil announced a vague climate plan that would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions per unit of oil and gas extraction, with almost nothing to say about the real cuts in carbon pollution required by climate science.

The world’s biggest insurance network, UK-based Lloyd’s, is promising to end new investments in tar sands/oil sands, Arctic oil and gas, and coal by 2022 and stop insuring any fossil projects at all by 2030.

Impatience is building among policy analysts behind the push for mass, deep energy retrofits as a cornerstone of Canada’s post-pandemic green recovery, after the Fall Economic Statement from Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland came up with just a fraction of the funding and none of the design and structure that a comprehensive program would require.

With its price nearly doubling, construction deadlines slipping, and serious geological challenges on the ground, BC Hydro’s plan to complete the Site C megadam on the Peace River may be slipping away, Dogwood B.C. warned.

Canada posts the fourth-worst climate performance in the world, ahead only of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, and no country is consistent with the overall targets in the 2015 Paris Agreement, in the latest edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) published by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute, and Climate Action Network-International.

The Trans Mountain pipeline is still a profitable venture for the federal government, but could end up losing money as a result of tougher climate change policies, declining oil demand, construction delays, and rising costs, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux concluded.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil announced that is writing off US$17 to $20 billion in natural gas holdings in North and South America as stranded assets, on the same day that its Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil declared that it never expects to develop gas properties in Alberta worth up to C$1.2 billion.

With nearly three-quarters of the country’s fossil-fuelled power plants reaching the end of their operating life by 2035, it will probably cost the United States less than expected to decarbonize its grid over that time span, according to a new analysis published in the journal Science.

Across nearly a dozen pieces of news and analysis in November, a consistent theme emerged: Canada’s fossil sector crash is accelerating, the renewable energy industries are beginning to surge, and oil-producing provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan need a whole new narrative if they’re going to catch up, keep up, and thrive in an emerging, low-carbon world.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled an updated national climate plan earlier this month that includes a $170-per-tonne carbon price in 2030, C$15 billion in new climate spending, a more modest Clean Fuel Standard, and a slight increase in the country’s 2030 carbon reduction goal—just barely enough to keep the government’s promise to boost its ambition beyond the 30% target originally adopted by the Stephen Harper government in 2015.

Canada averaged US$14.3 billion per year in fossil fuel subsidies between 2017 and 2019, earning it top ranking alongside Saudi Arabia as the two G20 countries with the most generous subsidies for oil and gas production, according a scorecard issued in November by three international think tanks.

Leaders and diplomats from 75 countries closed out the Climate Ambition Summit Saturday with solid progress in the road to stabilizing average global warming at 1.5°C, but a lot more ground to cover before they reconvene in Glasgow next year for the next United Nations climate change conference, COP 26.

As U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet and senior White House appointments take shape, a picture is emerging of an administration that will be keenly focused on climate action and environmental justice—not only in the key portfolios traditionally responsible for environment and natural resources, but in important related areas from treasury to health, from transportation to trade.

The European Union is boosting its greenhouse gas reduction target to 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, prompting negotiators to take a victory lap but climate analysts to raise warnings about loopholes in a deal that still doesn’t go far enough, fast enough toward decarbonization.

An all-renewable electricity system is “both physically possible and economically affordable by 2030,” according to a new report from the RethinkX think tank, write co-founder Tony Seba and research fellow Adam Dorr in an early November post for Utility Dive.

As citizens battle to rebuild—again—after the destruction of November’s back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes in Central America, aid workers and political leaders are pleading for help from wealthy nations. Forecasting ever-deepening poverty, despair-driven violence, and even famine, observers are warning of an exodus should help not come.

There’s “no vaccine for climate change” in a world that has seen more than 100 climate disasters since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and where 410,000 people have lost their lives to extreme weather and other climate impacts in the last decade, the International Red Cross warned in a report in November.

After years of insisting that tar sands/oil sands bitumen is ethically superior to petroleum from countries like Saudi Arabia, the Jason Kenney government in Alberta has decided it likes the desert kingdom just fine as a possible source of investment for a new C$5-billion petrochemical plant.

The Trudeau government is continuing its flurry of year-end policy moves on climate change and energy, with announcements earlier this week on hydrogen strategy and tree planting and more news expected today on a narrowed Clean Fuel Standard and small modular nuclear reactors.

As U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet and senior White House appointments take shape, a picture is emerging of an administration that will be keenly focused on climate action and environmental justice—not only in the key portfolios traditionally responsible for environment and natural resources, but in important related areas from treasury to health, from transportation to trade.

Brent Wanner is Power Sector Modelling Lead with the team that produces the annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) for the International Energy Agency. In this feature interview, he talks about the path to 1.5°C, the breakaway growth potential in renewable energy, and why the WEO’s purpose is to model the climate implications of current government policies and plans as a way to nudge policy-makers toward more ambitious climate action.

Montreal’s light rail network has announced a C$10-billion expansion into the city’s perpetually underserved east end, meaning that residents will be just a minutes-long trip away from downtown once the 23 new stations and 32 kilometres of track go into service in 2029.

Overreaching, unnecessary, and downright dangerous is how Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities are describing a new provincial law that limits their power to protect an already vulnerable public from increasing flood risks—a threat the Ford government continues shrug off.

The world’s biggest insurance network, UK-based Lloyd’s, is promising to end new investments in tar sands/oil sands, Arctic oil and gas, and coal by 2022 and stop insuring any fossil projects at all by 2030.

Amid the 75 action commitments that different countries put forward at the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit last weekend, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) is pointing to a pledge from Prime Minister Imre Khan that Pakistan “will not have any more power based on coal”.

Neither the COVID-19 pandemic nor policy uncertainty held U.S. utility-scale solar back in 2020, with a record year on track to see more than 19 gigawatts of new capacity installed—enough to power 3.6 million homes.

Two-thirds of Canadians would like to see their country as either “world leading” or “among the most ambitious” in the shift to clean energy and clean technology, according to the latest in a series of surveys conducted by Clean Energy Canada and Abacus Data.

A new federal climate strategy with a C$170-per-tonne carbon price at its core is receiving a largely positive response in initial media coverage, with news outlets and pundits crediting the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with developing a program that might work—and telling provincial premiers to get with the program.

The pushback was fierce and pretty much instantaneous this week after colossal fossil ExxonMobil announced a vague climate plan that would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions per unit of oil and gas extraction, with almost nothing to say about the real cuts in carbon pollution required by climate science.

Renewable energy, energy storage, energy efficiency, and green hydrogen are set to draw away more than 75% of future demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), analysts at Wood Mackenzie warned last week.

With nearly three-quarters of the country’s fossil-fuelled power plants reaching the end of their operating life by 2035, it will probably cost the United States less than expected to decarbonize its grid over that time span, according to a new analysis published earlier this month in the journal Science.

Saint-Jérôme, Quebec-based electric bus and truck manufacturer Lion Electric announced what one industry newsletter calls a “power move on the competition” late last month, signing a US$500-million merger deal that will win it a coveted listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

As flood risk grows in tandem with the climate crisis, absent or weak disclosure laws are putting the safety and financial well-being of millions of Americans at risk.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled an updated national climate plan Friday that includes a $170-per-tonne carbon price in 2030, C$15 billion in new climate spending, a more modest Clean Fuel Standard, and a slight increase in the country’s 2030 carbon reduction goal—just barely enough to keep the government’s promise to boost its ambition beyond the 30% target originally adopted by the Stephen Harper government in 2015.

Leaders and diplomats from 75 countries closed out the Climate Ambition Summit Saturday with solid progress in the road to stabilizing average global warming at 1.5°C, but a lot more ground to cover before they reconvene in Glasgow next year for the next United Nations climate change conference, COP 26.

Climate campaigners were parsing language and awaiting details Friday after the United Kingdom announced it would become the first major world economy to promise an end to public financing of overseas fossil projects.

While global greenhouse gas emissions have risen from 53 to 55 billion tonnes per year since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, low-carbon solutions are poised for mass-market appeal in sectors representing 70% of emissions by 2030, creating more than 35 million net new jobs along the way, according to an analysis released last week by SYSTEMIQ.

The European Union is boosting its greenhouse gas reduction target to 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, prompting negotiators to take a victory lap but climate analysts to raise warnings about loopholes in a deal that still doesn’t go far enough, fast enough toward decarbonization.

A new report calls for Ottawa to provide financial support to help the freight transportation industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the purchase of zero-emission vehicles and charging stations.

New York State’s pension has announced plans to drop the “riskiest” oil and gas stocks from its massive investment portfolio by 2025 and fully divest by 2040, making it the first U.S. state and the biggest pension fund in the world to make such a commitment.

Royal Dutch Shell is facing a wave of resignations among clean energy executives who’ve become disillusioned with the colossal fossil’s highly-touted carbon reduction plan, just weeks before a major strategy review due to be released in February.

With record greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 on track to deliver 3.0°C average global warming, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is calling on the world’s wealthiest countries to cut their carbon footprints by a factor of 30 to hold off the worst effects of climate change, while climate campaigners point to a dozen fossil megaprojects set to drive emissions even higher.

Kathy Bardswick is President and Ryan Ness is Adaptation Research Director of the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. In this feature interview, they talk about their new report on climate impacts and adaptation, the close connections between adaptation and mitigation, and how to get rolling on climate action while the detailed data is still taking shape.

A 25% reduction in average living space in developed countries, less food waste and meat consumption, less road-based transport, better infrastructure, and “relocalization” of economies are key elements of a new 1.5°C scenario from two European think tanks that charts a course to stabilize the climate by mid-century, while balancing the economies of the Global North and South.

Despite being one of the wealthiest nations on Earth and having an abundance of fresh water, Canada can’t seem to find a way to secure clean water for First Nations communities—though it will move heaven and earth to pipe its oil and gas to market.

Federal scientists are predicting a hot, dry, and fiery future for the Prairies. “In a warming climate, you can expect extreme weather events to occur with increased severity,” said Dave Sauchyn, a professor at the University of Regina and a lead author of an extensive report released Monday by Natural Resources Canada.

The Trans Mountain pipeline is still a profitable venture for the federal government, but could end up losing money as a result of tougher climate change policies, declining oil demand, construction delays, and rising costs, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux concludes in a report released yesterday.

Quebec Premier François Legault has ruled out provincial financial support for a plan to build the GNL Québec liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the province’s Saguenay region, but stopped short of cancelling a controversial and high-carbon project that he previously supported.

With Canada’s government short on specifics for how the billions in “smart investments” promised in its recent Fall Economic Statement will be spent, the Globe and Mail is calling for deep investments in public transit as a timely and just use of the funds.

Quebec and federal officials announced an investment Tuesday in a biofuel production facility that will use non-recyclable residual materials, diverting those items from landfills while reducing greenhouse gases in the province.

Callous disregard for community health has left a Virginia utility giant on the hook for a US$8-billion cancelled pipeline. And more of the same lies ahead for fossil interests as citizens, courts, and legislators increasingly say to no to projects that bode ill for people and climate.

Canada posts the fourth-worst climate performance in the world, ahead only of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, and no country is consistent with the overall targets in the 2015 Paris Agreement, in the latest edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) published this morning by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute, and Climate Action Network-International.

Alberta took one step forward and one step back on the road to phasing out coal, with independent power producer Capital Power announcing it was speeding up its shift to coal-free electricity but the province opening up new mining leases across nearly 2,000 hectares on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

The billions of dollars Canadians are already paying out for weather-related climate disasters are just the tip of a much bigger iceberg that calls for proactive investment in climate adaptation and resilience, the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices (CICC) concludes in a report issued last week.

The International Energy Agency is blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for dragging annual improvements in energy efficiency down to their lowest pace since 2010, in a report that urges governments to pick up the pace on efforts to reduce global primary energy intensity.

A group of environmental organizations representing thousands of Dutch citizens have launched a civil case against Royal Dutch Shell, asking a district court to order the fossil giant to cut its carbon emissions 45% by 2030.

Member petro-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Middle East can—and must—accelerate their adoption of renewable energy if they are to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, say a team of experts from the region.

Look no farther than the demise of film cameras from 1995 to 2007—and the subsequent crash of the digital cameras that briefly replaced them—as evidence that the clean energy “crossover” will be the investment story of the year in 2021, Australian business writer Ryan Dinse advises in a post published late last month.

The Canadian government has a chance to tap into renewably-produced hydrogen as a way to decarbonize key sectors of the economy, but not if it allows that potential to be “undermined by a focus on fossil fuel-derived hydrogen,” a list of 27 environmental organizations and other non-profits warned last week in a letter to Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan and three of his cabinet colleagues.

Last month, the federal government released its long awaited plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Bill C-12, if passed, commits Canada to “binding” targets every five years as of 2030 with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

With the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warning that the Earth has warmed 1.2°C since the mid-1800s, and a high-stakes virtual climate summit coming up December 12, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres is urging humanity to call off its “war on nature” and get greenhouse gas emissions under control.

As U.S. public mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to turn a mostly blind eye to climate risk, policy experts warn that such ostrich-like behaviour could spark a reprise of the 2008 housing crisis—with low-income and minority communities, as always, in the crosshairs.

In a bid to reduce both emissions and costs—especially as online shopping explodes—major parcel couriers in Toronto and Montreal are experimenting with delivery by e-bike and trike. Collateral benefits include cleaner air, safer pedestrians and cyclists, and delivery workers delighted to be out from behind the wheel.

A popular football team in the United Kingdom is under pressure to part company with the AIA insurance company as its jersey sponsor, after campaigners revealed the Hong Kong-based insurer has invested at least US$3 billion in various coal projects.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a “potential turning point” in global fossil fuel production, countries will drive greenhouse gas emissions far beyond a 1.5°C limit on average warming if their published plans to increase coal, oil, and gas extraction come to pass, according to the 2020 Production Gap Report issued this morning by five major international agencies.

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is receiving mixed reviews for the green components of a Fall Economic Statement that includes $5,000 grants to help households fund energy retrofits, a $150-million boost for zero-emission vehicle infrastructure, nearly $4 billion over 10 years for a list of nature-based climate solutions, and a promise of permanent funding for public transit systems.

Impatience is building among policy analysts behind the push for mass, deep energy retrofits as a cornerstone of Canada’s post-pandemic green recovery, after this week’s Fall Economic Statement from Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland came up with just a fraction of the funding and none of the design and structure that a comprehensive program would require.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil announced yesterday that is writing off US$17 to $20 billion in natural gas holdings in North and South America as stranded assets, on the same day that its Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil declared that it never expects to develop gas properties in Alberta worth up to C$1.2 billion.

The Bank of America has become the sixth of six big U.S. banks to declare that it won’t invest in fossil projects in the Arctic, including the ecologically precarious Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

There must be a basement somewhere on Bay Street full of English majors, writes campaigner and Engagement Organizing author Matt Price. Every day they churn out great reams of verbiage about “environmental, social and governance strategy” and fill annual reports with a dozen different ways to say the big five Canadian banks care about the environment.

In a global first, a Saskatoon-based geothermal company has successfully drilled and fracked a 90-degree horizontal well, delivering enough heat to supply electricity to 3,000 homes. And it did so thanks to the expertise of over 100 oilfield technicians—a switch that is offering hope to many such workers facing unemployment as fossil fortunes tank.

Upcoming radical changes in the United Kingdom’s agricultural policy—including the replacement of an ineffective, $2.7-billion annual landowner subsidy—are being largely welcomed by both farmers and environmental groups.

The coming energy transition may be carbon-free, but it is still very much dependent on mining—and that has experts warning that stringent regulation is needed to ensure that the shift to renewable energy is truly sustainable. MiningWatch Canada has released some recommendations on how to make it happen.

In an urgent call to simultaneously address the climate crisis and energy poverty, 1,000 young energy industry professionals have released a Generation 2050 Manifesto that champions ingenuity, passion, and collaboration over attachment to entrenched and beleaguered status quos. 

With Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland due to release her long-awaited fiscal update today, the federal government is coming under new pressure to abandon the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion as an economic “white elephant” whose “justification has evaporated” given the threat it poses to Indigenous rights and endangered species.

As citizens battle to rebuild—again—after the destruction of this month’s back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes in Central America, aid workers and political leaders are pleading for help from wealthy nations. Forecasting ever-deepening poverty, despair-driven violence, and even famine, observers are warning of an exodus should help not come.

An all-renewable electricity system is “both physically possible and economically affordable by 2030,” according to a new report from the RethinkX think tank, write co-founder Tony Seba and research fellow Adam Dorr in an early November post for Utility Dive.

News that two more reactors in the United Kingdom are to shut down on safety grounds earlier than planned has capped a depressing month for nuclear power in Europe.

With the editors of the Washington Post urging U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to step up as the country’s “climate change president”, an analysis for Greentech Media says the new administration has precisely the legislative tool it needs to drive faster, deeper carbon cuts—whether or not Senate Republicans approve.

Calgary-based Imperial Oil announced last week that it is laying off 200 staff, just a day after the ExxonMobil subsidiary agreed to hand over business management of the mammoth Syncrude Canada tar sands/oil sands mine and upgrader to project partner Suncor Energy.

Continuing low gas prices, the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and continuing uncertainty about a cluster of market factors have turned 2020 into a never-ending slump for liquefied natural gas (LNG) project developers, despite their earlier hopes for a breakout year.

A new report by CDP has found that global food giants are underestimating climate risks like drought, pollution, and declining biodiversity as they respond to consumer demand for healthier and more sustainable diets—a short-sightedness that could bode ill for future resilience and food security.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen as treasury secretary is being interpreted as the latest sign the new administration is planning a serious response to the climate crisis.

Building retrofits, more telecommuting, and a fleet consisting of 80% hybrid and electric vehicles by 2030 are among the highlights of a greening of government strategy unveiled yesterday by Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos.

Fossil fuel trade associations spent nearly US$1.4 trillion on public relations strategies between 2008 and 2017. But a major new campaign to make it more difficult for PR and advertising industries to act as proxies for Big Oil is already claiming an initial victory.

The world’s biggest aluminum and textile producer has shuttered 3,400 MW of coal-fired generating capacity in China’s Shandong province, even as the country weighs the more than US$300 billion in stranded asset risk it could face if it doesn’t begin restricting construction of new coal plants.

Drawing on “the latest data available representing international financial commitments in 2017 and 2018,” a recent study has found a problematic gap in climate financing for small-scale farmers worldwide.

There will be no need and no justification to complete the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion or the Keystone XL pipeline if Canada makes any effort at all to strengthen its climate policies, according to the more ambitious of two fossil demand scenarios in an analysis published yesterday by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER).

Institutional investors with nearly US$7 trillion at their disposal are planning to double their renewable energy holdings over the next five years, to about $742.5 billion per year, driven by what The Guardian calls “deepening concerns over the fossil fuel industry’s climate plans”.

Paris Agreement architect John Kerry was appointed White House climate “czar”, a half-dozen other senior appointments signalled stability and continuity, and a few glass ceilings were shattered as U.S. President-elect Joe Biden announced nominees for senior administration positions Monday.

With nearly four decades of growth in global oil demand coming to an end, Canada’s fossil industry is going to have to pay closer attention to a combination of climate response and surging new technologies if it wants to stay competitive in a “quickly changing world”, Pembina Institute Senior Analyst Benjamin Israël writes in the second of a series of three blog posts.

Across nearly a dozen pieces of news and analysis over the last week, a consistent theme is emerging: Canada’s fossil sector crash is accelerating, the renewable energy industries are beginning to surge, and oil-producing provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan need a whole new narrative if they’re going to catch up, keep up, and thrive in an emerging, low-carbon world.

With its September unemployment rate standing at 12.6% and office space vacancies approaching 30%, Calgary is struggling to reinvent itself in a world accelerating beyond fossil fuels.

In an effort to help cities balance climate action with pandemic recovery, C40 Cities has released a guide to establishing local green banks as an equitable, resilient, and sustainable path to achieving both goals.

China’s landmark commitment to domestic carbon neutrality could help jump-start a “cleaner growth pathway” for countries participating in the country’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, international climate advocate Han Chen writes in a recent post for China Dialogue.

There’s “no vaccine for climate change” in a world that has seen more than 100 climate disasters since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and where 410,000 people have lost their lives to extreme weather and other climate impacts in the last decade, the International Red Cross warned in a report last week.

Scott Moffatt has been an Ottawa city councillor since 2010 and became chair of the city’s Standing Committee on Environmental Protection, Water and Waste Management in 2018. In this feature interview, he talks about what it took to get the city’s Energy Evolution decarbonization strategy adopted by a disparate group of councillors, and how to turn ideas into action.

British Columbia maintained its lead as Canada’s top jurisdiction for energy efficiency in 2019, Saskatchewan came in last for a second year running, Prince Edward Island distinguished itself as most-improved province, and program cuts in Alberta and Ontario emerged as a serious threat, as Efficiency Canada released its second annual scorecard of provincial efficiency programs.

As rising seas and fiercer storms make the coast an ever more tenuous place to live, policy-makers all over the world need to plan and fund a managed retreat to ensure that under-resourced populations are not forced to forfeit what little security and agency they possessed in their former homes.

Pandemic-struck New York City is pleading for emergency transit funding, with tens of billions in local GDP, hundreds of thousands of transit-dependent jobs, and the ongoing struggle for social justice all hanging in the balance. And with former commuters continuing to shun their service in droves, transit districts across the U.S. are facing the same crisis.

A C$1-billion-plus proposal to re-establish 130 kilometres of passenger rail service between Calgary and Banff is earning serious attention from both the provincial and federal levels. But local First Nations, those anxious to protect the fragile ecology of the Bow Valley, and even the Canadian Pacific Railway itself are yet to be convinced.

Adrien Salazar is Senior Campaign Strategist for Climate Equity at Dēmos, a U.S. racial and economic justice policy organization. Ben Goloff is Senior Climate Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. In this feature interview, they talk about what the Biden-Harris administration can get done on climate, energy, and environmental justice, and how front-line communities across the United States put them in a position to make a difference.

If Vancouver’s newly-minted Climate Emergency Action Plan goes well, 2030 will find 80% of all trips within city limits occurring by foot, bike, or transit, embodied emissions in new buildings reduced by 40%, and 50% of all kilometres driven on city roads emitting zero greenhouse gases.

Canada’s banks and businesses must pick up the pace on disclosing the risks they’re exposed to as a result of the climate crisis, newly-installed Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem told an online panel earlier this week organized by the Public Policy Forum.

Mayors in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia recently unveiled a US$60-billion Marshall Plan for Middle America, intended to accelerate a compassionate, equitable, just, and sustainable transition away from fossil fuels.

Investment in new natural gas supply will plummet by US$1.3 trillion, or nearly two-thirds, if a serious commitment to limit average global warming to 2.0°C drives down demand for the climate-busting fuel through 2040, according to a new analysis by Wood Mackenzie.

Citing repeated and routine refusals by Calgary-based Enbridge to address safety concerns surrounding the 6.4-kilometre Straits of Mackinac section of its Line 5 pipeline, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has terminated the easement that allowed the submarine pipeline to operate.

The Trump administration is making a last-ditch effort to sell oil and gas drilling rights in Alaska’s environmentally fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before it hits its own best-before date January 20—despite the fierce local opposition any new projects will ignite, and some skepticism on whether cash-strapped fossils will be interested in the leases.

The Quebec government may have nabbed some early headlines by tipping the centrepiece of its Green Economy Plan, a 2035 phaseout of internal combustion vehicle sales. But once the full strategy was released Monday, climate analysts and campaigners quickly concluded that it won’t meet the province’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

With its price nearly doubling, construction deadlines slipping, and serious geological challenges on the ground, BC Hydro’s plan to complete the Site C megadam on the Peace River may be slipping away, Dogwood B.C. warns in a recent blog post.

Transit is having a moment toward the top of the agenda for economic recovery investment requests, with both the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and a national transit consortium urging Ottawa to make it a priority for federal spending.

Calgary-based pipeliner TC Energy and Natural Law Energy announced a tentative agreement yesterday that could bring up to C$1 billion in new investment and the imprimatur of three Indigenous treaties to the struggling Keystone XL pipeline.

The details of the deal allow nearly a year for Natural Law to raise the funds it will need to seal its investment—or, presumably, to step away if U.S. President-elect Joe Biden follows through on his promise to cancel Keystone once and for all.

I have sat in many long Zoom calls this year discussing climate ambition. Never once have I thought these were life or death discussions for me personally. But for 1.2 billion people across the globe, the collective decarbonization commitments put forward by all governments are a matter of survival. The tempest of our changing climate is right on their door and pushing hard.