Time for Canada to set a price for carbon

Time for Canada to set a price for carbon

With our major trading partners, the United States and China, having recently ratified the Paris climate agreement, there is mounting pressure on Canada to come up with a plan to meet its emissions reduction targets.

Globe and Mail – Globe and Mail

Corporate sustainability needs to include carbon removal

An increasing number of large companies track and report their direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — also known as Scope 1-3 GHG reporting. However, corporate climate action addressing Scope 1-3 emissions will get us only part of the way to delivering on the Paris Agreement pledge of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, let alone 1.5 C.

Green Biz

Calgary plan earns LEED-ND Platinum in Canadian first

Calgary’s University District is not even built yet and already it’s scored one of the highest green certifications available. The 200-acre development in northwest Calgary became the largest residential project in Canadian history to earn LEED for Neighbourhood Development Platinum certification.

Read more

Edmonton debates carbon offsets versus retrofitting

City councillors will debate next week whether to spend $3.25 million buying carbon offsets or to invest the same amount of money to retrofit city buildings.

Metro News

Carbon tax best way to cut emissions, group argues

Carbon pricing has been a wedge issue for the last decade – dividing provinces, political parties, and of course, dinner tables across Canada.

Canadians for Clean Prosperity

Stock exchanges get serious about sustainability

Stock exchanges are not usually associated with social or environmental causes. A market place for trading securities and providing liquidity, they have long played an essential role for economic development and growth.

Eco-Business

Global clean tech competition offers $20 million prize

XPRIZE and Enviro Innovate Corporation today announced a new partnership in support of teams competing for the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a global competition to develop breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO₂ into one or more products with the highest net value.

Marketwired

Renewable energy investment on the rise

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) has revealed that renewable energy investments of $313 bn accounted for nearly a fifth of total energy spending in 2015, which decreased 8 per cent from 2014.

Clean Technology Business Review

Canadian firms studying grid integration of wind power

Hydro-Quebec’s research institute (IREQ) and Enercon Canada have entered into R&D partnership to study grid integration of wind power.

Clean Technology Business Review

Canadian government invests over $45 million in clean technology

The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, today announced an investment of over $39.6 million in 14 innovative clean technology projects across Canada.

Market Wired

Panel to advise Alberta on green tech investments

An expert panel will have one month to prepare recommendations for the Alberta government on how to best invest part of the province’s new carbon levy on clean technology and innovation.

CBC News

Political will needed to back green technology

You can boast to your grandchildren that you lived through a technological revolution. That is, if you’re lucky. But rather than speeding us through a capitalist-led transformation to a high-tech low-carbon economy, politicians seem to be getting cold feet, fearful that voters won’t accept the short-term pain of the costs involved.

CBC News

Americans not keen to pay to fight climate change

More Americans now acknowledge the existence of climate change and the need to combat it, but far fewer see the task as something for which they should be held financially responsible, according to a new poll.

Christian Science Monitor

Bill Gates pursues low carbon plastics

Days before the U.N.’s Paris climate talks began last winter, Bill Gates famously pulled together 28 high-profile investors to form the Breakthrough Energy Coalition and committed them to invest in low-carbon energy innovations to save the planet. 

Green Biz

GM plans to move to 100 per cent renewable energy

General Motors Co. said Wednesday it is committing to power all of its global operations completely by renewable energy by 2050.

Detroit News

Green Companies and CSR Reports

Latest Global Green Economy Index includes corporate sustainablity

Now in its fifth year, the Global Green Economy Index incorporates a huge range of data on the different drivers of a nation’s economy, from energy intensity and renewables use to building efficiency and biodiversity levels. And this year, for the first time, it includes a measure for corporate sustainability.

BusinessGreen

Will Apple meet its clean energy commitments?

Coming soon to a store near you: the clean-energy iPhone. Apple committed on Monday to powering its operations entirely on renewable energy and helping its suppliers do the same.

Christian Science Monitor

Phillips Lighting reveals sustainability goals

Philips Lighting has set out a wide-ranging new five year sustainability programme, including a goal of deriving 80 per cent of its turnover from products, systems and services which “provide environmental and social benefits”.

Business Green

Financing sustainability

Advocate calls for national U.S. carbon tax

It feels as if we may be getting close, or at least closer, as a nation to putting some kind of price on global warming pollution.

Yale Environment 360

Sustainability professionals

Partnership aims to help tourism industry go green

The world’s largest sustainability certification program for the tourism industry will now be helping Canadian tourism businesses to reduce their environmental impacts. 

Canada News Wire

How to advance sustainable development goals

Companies are having to do a difficult balancing act with their sustainability plans. On one hand, they must focus on environmental goals such as improving the efficiency of their water use and reduce their waste and emissions.

Eco-Business

Two new sustainable initiatives set to launch

No, I wasn’t a true Trekkie, but I know what warp speed is. And something in my bones tells me that to live long and prosper, human societies must work out how to jump into a very different space — technologically, economically, politically and, above all, culturally.

Green Biz

New sustainable forestry initiative launched

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) has announced the launch of its large-scale effort to quantify the conservation benefits associated with well-managed forests stretching across North America from British Columbia to Florida.

Globe-Net

How to create a viral grassroots, sustainability program

Treatment plants don’t have to be smelly, industrial concrete jungles. When I first arrived at the Paul R. Noland Wastewater Treatment Plant in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2007 to manage operations, invasive vegetation had choked out native flora and reduced biodiversity on the site. 

Green Biz

Clean technology

New patent may boost CO2 capture technology

A technology that could in theory catch 90 per cent of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations has been patented by US government scientists.

Climate News Network

Boralex acquires European wind power portfolio

Boralex is pleased to announce the completion of the acquisition of a portfolio of wind power projects of nearly 200 MW located in France and in Scotland as well as about 8,500 hectares of land on which the projects will be developed, for a total cash consideration of C$103 million.

Canada News Wire

Saskatchewan government rejects wind energy project

Environment Minister Scott Moe announced a wind energy project near Chaplin, approximately 85 km west of Moose Jaw, will not be approved to proceed in its proposed location.

ReNew Canada

Amazon plans major wind farm for Texas

Online retail giant Amazon has unveiled plans to build a 253MW wind farm in Scurry County, Texas, US.

Clean Technology Business Review

Clean power set to be distributed through electrical grid

Opus One Solutions today announced that it is leading a $16.4M multi-utility project that will drive the development of technology to improve the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as wind, solar, and battery storage into the existing electricity grid at three utilities in Canada and the US.

Market Wired

Cutting labour costs enables solar for low-incomes

One way to help make rooftop solar affordable for low-income homeowners and renters is to eliminate the labor cost. That idea was on display on the first day of the GreenBiz VERGE 16 event, when conference-goers took part in a GRID Alternatives installation, topping a modest home nearby with 12 solar panels.

Green Biz

U.S. utilities fight solar expansion

Below the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, they glimmer in the relentless Nevada sun like scales on a monstrous grey dragon. More than 26,000 solar panels cover 113,000 square metres of rooftop. It’s the biggest solar array of its kind in America.

CBC News

Water management

Innovation key to development of sustainable water

Can access to water and sanitation be secured now for future generations? We don’t have a choice; sustainability must be at the heart of all efforts to deliver these services.

The Guardian

University of Iowa launching sustainable water development program

The University of Iowa has received a five-year, $3 million National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) grant to develop a Sustainable Water Development graduate program.

Iowa Now

Green buildings

Report: Business benefits of healthy buildings paying off

Building owners, developers, managers and investors in the US are increasingly interested in creating healthier buildings – with many already starting to see the business benefits of doing so, according to a new report by Dodge Data & Analytics, on which the World Green Building Council was a research partner. 

World Green Building Council

B.C. community centre granted LEED Gold

The city of New Westminster has received LEED gold certification for the Queensborough Community Centre expansion, three years after the project was complete.

Proud Green Building

Wildlife and business

Is wildlife farming the answer?

More than a decade ago, looking to slow the decimation of wildlife populations for the bushmeat trade, researchers in West Africa sought to establish an alternative protein supply.

Yale Environment 360

Biz Buzz

JetBlue opts for clean, bio-based fuel

JetBlue today announced a ten-year renewable jet fuel purchase agreement with bioenergy company SG Preston, for jet fuel made from rapidly renewable, bio-based feedstocks that do not compete with food production.

Sustainable Brands

Funding goes to clean farming tech leader

Farmers Edge, a global leader in precision agriculture and independent data management solutions, announced today that it will receive $6,107,563 million CAD from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) with an additional $12.2 million from internal sources and contributions from consortium partners.

Business Wire

Decline in red meat consumption hits bottom line

We know industrially-produced meat is bad for our health and the health of the planet, but a new study suggests it’s also bad for business.

Green Biz

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