Corporate Knights

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Hotter summers , drier forests , rising waters : climate change is not just a threat to our future, it’s hurting our world right now. While there are many ways human activity has brought about climate change, global electricity generation sources are among the leading culprits. Despite small upticks in the supply of wind and solar power , we have not yet reached a point where we are able to dislodge the fossil fuels that are entrenched in the power mix of many countries.

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Decarbonize Climate Change Net Zero Supply Chains 266

Corporate Knights

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Whenever Ram Amar explains his idea for mitigating climate change, people usually look at him strangely and ask if he’s crazy. It’s easy to see why. His startup, Rewind , wants to sequester a gigaton of carbon each year — about 10 percent of what climate scientists deem necessary each year to reach net zero by 2050 — in a remarkably simple way. The elevator pitch goes like this: Gather millions of tons of agricultural waste and send it to the bottom of the Black Sea, where it won’t decay.

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Climate Scientist Net Zero Waste Shipping 146

Corporate Knights

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Banks are shelling out more than US$500 billion a year to finance the largest contributors to climate change in the Global South, a region that is especially vulnerable to the roiling weather disasters gripping the planet. That figure is more than 20 times the amount the region received in funding to combat climate change, according to a report released by ActionAid last week.

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Banking Paris Agreement Climate Change 345

Corporate Knights

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Tourism is projected to make up nearly 12% of the global economy by 2033, but it is also poised to consume a troubling 40% of the world’s remaining 1.5°C carbon budget by mid-century, highlighting what experts describe as “industry dishonesty” in efforts to reduce emissions in line with other sectors. Meanwhile, the very communities meant to benefit from a tourism boom have been grappling with record-breaking summer heat, their landscapes charred by wildfires as global heating alters ecosystems

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Net Zero Shipping Climate Change Decarbonize 146

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 24, 2023

The federal government’s latest National Inventory Report, released in April 2023 , confirms Canada’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But looking ahead to 2030, it’s clear we need to accelerate the scale and pace of action to continue to achieve our targets. The largest source of GHG emissions in Ontario is transportation. There are about 12 million vehicles in the province today and each year, moving people and goods consumes about 1,000 petajoules of refined petroleum prod

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Waste Climate Change Development 130

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 30, 2023

Scotland is embracing a fresh approach to its economy. In the spring, it appointed its first cabinet secretary for “wellbeing economy, fair work and energy,” tasked with developing “an economy that is fair, green and growing. to ensure our collective and individual wellbeing.” Along with New Zealand, Iceland, Wales and Finland, Scotland rounds out the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) partnership of nations – all five explicitly working toward building economies “designed to serve people and

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Climate Change Social Sustainability Development 300

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 31, 2023

Yesterday, representatives of 185 countries officially agreed to launch a new fund to ramp up investment in meeting major global biodiversity goals. The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was ratified at the Global Environmental Facility’s (GEF) seventh assembly in Vancouver, Canada, with wildfires in British Columbia as a backdrop. This comes after global delegates at the U.N. biodiversity conference (COP15) committed last December in Montreal to meet a set of goals inked into a Glo

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Climate Change Development 146

Corporate Knights

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

The idea for this story first struck me on the brightest of blue-sky days in my hometown of Nelson, on a Friday morning less than three days after the McDougall Creek fire began on August 15 near West Kelowna, a community of 35,000 people, located west of the larger Kelowna city. Blue sky summer days are common in Nelson, a town of 11,000 perched on the shores of Kootenay Lake, all around which rise forested slopes, some still untouched by logging.

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Corporate Knights

AUGUST 24, 2023

Occidental Petroleum’s purchase of a Canadian direct air capture (DAC) company for US$1.1 billion will enable it to profit from tackling climate change while continuing to extract oil and gas for 60 or more years into the future, says CEO Vicki Hollub. After acquiring British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering last week, Occidental hopes to build about 100 DAC plants that strip carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to bury underground, or for use in making products like concrete and aviation fuel.

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Net Zero Carbon Offsets Climate Scientist Climate Change 225

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 18, 2023

About 10 years ago, a very thick book written by a French economist became a surprising bestseller. It was called “Capital in the 21st Century.” In it, Thomas Piketty traces the history of income and wealth inequality over the past couple of hundred years. The book’s insights struck a chord with people who felt a growing sense of economic inequality but didn’t have the data to back it up.

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Divestment 246

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 16, 2023

It’s the sort of June day that British summers should be made of, but rarely are. Pink flower-flecked brambles proliferate in knurled mounds, scattered across 3,500 sun-soaked acres of West Sussex scrubland audibly humming with bees. Curvy-horned cows chew rhythmically under shady old oaks among billowing stands of pussywillow and hawthorn. The birdsong is unreal.

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Regenerative Carbon Offsets Climate Change Paris Agreement 246

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 17, 2023

Rich Kruger, the new CEO of Suncor, Canada’s second-largest energy company, let shareholders know earlier this week that the transition to clean energy can take a backseat to the primary prerogative of juicing billions in short-term profits for shareholders from the oil sands. While this move will not be popular among environmentalists, I expect it will please some investors, who would like to wring as much money as possible from these fossil fuel assets before they become stranded.

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Divestment Waste 232

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 15, 2023

Many observers will focus on the political intrigue, crookedness and corruption. How developers made direct requests to a minister’s chief of staff to take properties out of the Greenbelt. That government complied, making formerly protected areas available for development. For me, the sad thing is how the Greenbelt is conceived. Investors and politicians see it as land parcels, dark circles on a map, numbers tallied on a chart.

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Development 243

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 10, 2023

The heatwave enveloping much of the world is so deadly that, in Europe, it has acquired two hellish mythical names: Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hades, and Charon, the man who, legend has it, ferries the dead to the afterlife. Workers are taking a stand against the brutal conditions, using walkouts, strikes, and protests to call attention to the outsize danger the heat poses to the people who must work outdoors or in conditions where air conditioning isn’t available.

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Development 240

Corporate Knights

AUGUST 1, 2023

Floods, wildfires and record high temperatures are turning investor attention to the climate emergency, raising the threat of higher borrowing costs for Canadian provinces with large oil and gas industries. Backed by government taxing powers, Canada’s provincial and territorial bond market receives high scores from credit rating agencies. The $1-trillion market for these bonds helps to finance schools, hospitals, social services and other provincial spending.

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Net Zero Green Bonds 206

Corporate Knights

JULY 31, 2023

This summer, the urgency of the energy transition has come into sharper focus as Canadians struggle with forest fires and dangerous air quality. A pressing question is where the money is going to come from to shift our economy to a low carbon footing. At Investors for Paris Compliance, we just reviewed our major banks' net zero progress to assess whether they may have it covered.

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Corporate Knights

JULY 28, 2023

The fossil fuel industry is on a roll. Emboldened by global crises, big oil and gas companies are awash in cash from historically unprecedented profits and determined to seek ever more profit, no matter the cost. In recent weeks and months, the fossil fuel lobby and its supporters in governments of all political stripes have been touting the putative benefits of liquefied natural gas.

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Greenwashing Decarbonize Climate Change Manufacturing 246

Corporate Knights

JULY 25, 2023

Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault has unveiled detailed plans to phase out “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies, based on guidelines released yesterday morning that take effect immediately and are meant to fulfill a 14-year-old pledge by G20 countries. “The simple reality is that it’s no longer free to pollute in Canada,” Guilbeault told media Monday morning.

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Carbon Offsets Paris Agreement Decarbonize Bend the Curve 238

Corporate Knights

JULY 24, 2023

As Spain suffers through yet another terrifying heat wave, researchers at the Higher Technical School of Engineering at the University of Seville have unveiled a new pilot project designed to prevent heat stroke while locals wait for the bus. When testing begins next year, the “ bioclimatic bus stops ” will combine the oldest, most fundamental form of cooling (through heat transfer) with tried and true solar panels and the latest in high-tech thermal sensors to lower temperatures inside the shel

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Climate Change Development 221

Corporate Knights

JULY 20, 2023

As more regulators take steps to rein in the Wild West of green marketing , forward-thinking companies are re-evaluating the way they communicate green initiatives to external audiences. For many, “greenblushing ” – or the act of playing it safe by not making environmental claims at all – is no longer an option. Today, green products are in high demand.

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Greenwashing Development 243

Corporate Knights

JULY 19, 2023

Weeks after Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) triumphantly unveiled the biggest battery storage procurement in Canadian history, persistent questions remain about how much of that storage capacity will be powered by high-emitting natural gas, The Energy Mix has learned. As the IESO moves ahead with plans to add 1,500 megawatts of new natural gas-fired generating capacity at four existing generating stations, independent analysts are also looking into how long the provinc

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Net Zero Development 242

Corporate Knights

JULY 18, 2023

Sometimes, we end up exactly where we are supposed to be. Such was the case for Kathy Bardswick, a titan in Canadian insurance who is now spearheading sustainable finance reform in Canada. As Bardswick was finishing up her MBA at McMaster University in the late 1970s, her mother – unbeknownst to her – applied for a job on her daughter’s behalf. It was an underwriting position with The Co-operators Group insurance company, based in Sault Ste.

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Net Zero Climate Change Green Investing 242

Corporate Knights

JULY 17, 2023

As solar-energy capacity levels gallop ahead, with China leading the charge, scientists are celebrating increased efficiency in solar power cells that could eventually bring down the price of what is already the cheapest electricity in history. The latest technological milestone has been a decade in the making. But now, several teams of researchers around the world have succeeded in pushing the efficiency of perovskite and silicon “tandem” solar cells past an important 30% threshold – which mea

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Supply Chains Supply Chain Climate Change Development 184

Corporate Knights

JULY 14, 2023

Sometimes persistence pays off. After years of advocacy from environmental and human health groups, Canada recently updated its cornerstone environmental and toxics law – the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). This is the first major update to the act since 1999, and while science and our understanding of pollution have evolved, Canada’s main toxics law has failed to keep pace.

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Climate Change Development 245

Corporate Knights

JULY 12, 2023

More than 3.6 million electric cars are driving around the U.S., but if you live in an apartment, finding an available charger isn’t always easy. Grocery stores and shopping centers might have a few, but charging takes time and the spaces may be taken or inconvenient. Several states and cities, aiming to expand EV use, are now trying to lift that barrier to ownership with “right to charge” laws.

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Decarbonize 130

Corporate Knights

JULY 10, 2023

The recent Supreme Court ruling overturning affirmative action sent shock waves across college campuses in the United States. In one fell swoop, a supermajority of judges voting to limit the consideration of race in admissions processes undid years of work to address the persistent racial inequalities baked into our societies. But the decision has sparked another crucial debate, casting a long shadow over current efforts to enhance workplace diversity and, by extension, representation.

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Corporate Knights

JULY 6, 2023

There are over 50,000 Indigenous businesses in Canada today. According to the 2020 census, the Indigenous economy generated a gross domestic product of $48.9 billion dollars. A growing number of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities are establishing economic development corporations (EDCs), of which many are involved in the renewable energy sector.

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Development 235

Corporate Knights

JULY 5, 2023

The global accounting profession has launched a single standard for company environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, raising expectations that the bewildering array of corporate sustainability disclosure systems will finally come to an end. The new standard, published by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), is the product of 18 months of planning and consultation.

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Greenhouse Gas Protocol Stranded Assets COP26 Development 244

Corporate Knights

JULY 4, 2023

Sadly, business can seldom be relied on to police its own behaviour. We thus have little choice but to fall back on governments, NGOs and, not least, activists and the media to do the job. Yet the record of these outside watchdogs is also decidedly mixed. At the “hero” end of the spectrum, we tip our hats to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a non-profit network of 280 journalists in more than 100 countries who collaborate on cross-border investigative projects.

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Corporate Knights

JULY 4, 2023

The Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) seemed a great idea when it was proposed by the Liberal government in Ottawa in 2018. The new agency, touted as the first of its kind in the world, would supposedly shine a light on alleged human rights abuses by Canadian companies at their foreign operations. Whether investigating the use of forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region, starvation wages at Bangladeshi sweatshops or sickness caused by pollution from mining operations in the

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Manufacturing 190

Corporate Knights

JUNE 25, 2023

In an era marked by a rise in devastating climate events, communities worldwide are grappling with the aftermath of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. In the United States alone, over 200,000 acres of forest , equivalent to the size of Austin, Texas, burned down due to wildfires in 2023. These events are becoming more frequent and more extreme, highlighting the pressing need for individuals and corporations to find solutions to deal with the far-reaching impacts of climate change.

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Regenerative Impact Investing Climate Change Waste 130

Corporate Knights

JUNE 30, 2023

Stephanie Lipp discovered the power – literally – of mushrooms by accident. Four years ago, she and her partner, Leo Gillis, moved from Ontario to rural Newfoundland with the intention of starting their own mushroom farm to provide fresh local produce to food-insecure communities. The two experimented with using grow bags – plastic bags with air patches that can help plants germinate and root quickly – for the mushrooms.

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Net Zero Development 255

Corporate Knights

JUNE 29, 2023

Editor’s note: Our initial assignment to ChatGPT was to write a 1,000-word news article on AI and the climate crisis using quotes from thought leaders. It turned in clean copy with captivating – and very fake – quotes. Good old human-powered fact-checking caught the errors. Chat apologized for the confusion and said the quotes were fabricated by the AI model.

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Climate Change Smart Grid Development 244

Corporate Knights

JUNE 28, 2023

Who are this year’s top international corporate citizens in Canada? They are selected from companies that earn more than $1 billion in revenues in Canada, are not listed or headquartered in Canada and have the highest scores on the Corporate Knights Sustainability Rating methodology employed for the 2023 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.

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Corporate Knights

JUNE 27, 2023

In the fourth year of her accounting degree at McGill University, Sarah Keyes walked into the classroom of a mandatory credit course called The Social Context of Business. When she walked out that day in 2009, she wasn’t sure she still wanted to be an accountant. The professor – one Louis Chauvin – was a standout in McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management.

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Net Zero Triple Bottom Line Sustainable Investment Climate Change 255

Corporate Knights

JUNE 23, 2023

A county government in Oregon is suing more than a dozen fossil fuel companies for the costs it incurred in a 2021 heat emergency that killed at least 69 of its residents, in a move that could help prepare the ground for similar legal action in Canada. In a civil suit filed this afternoon in Oregon Circuit Court, Multnomah County seeks to hold colossal fossils ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and a dozen other defendants responsible for a killer heat dome that hit the county on Ju

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Climate Change 255

Corporate Knights

JUNE 21, 2023

Ernie Daniels has travelled a long road from a residential school in the Northwest Territories to the centre of Canadian finance at the Bank of Canada’s board table. The 67-year-old accountant is a trailblazer: after three and a half decades in financial management (including 11 years as chief executive officer at the First Nations Finance Authority), Daniels became the first First Nations person appointed to the Bank of Canada’s board of directors in January.

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Banking Digitalization Development 246