Canada’s Clean Economy

and Green Stimulus

Peter Allan Peter Allan

Hamilton slams Doug Ford government for pulling out of LRT

Hamilton’s business lobby and other critics lambasted the Doug Ford government Monday after Ontario’s transportation minister pulled $1 billion in promised funding for a light rail project.

After hastily cancelling a news conference in Hamilton where protestors were assembled, Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney said in a statement that the project’s costs had ballooned to five times its original estimate, blaming the former Liberal government for hiding the true costs.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

One woman’s mission to make B.C. a clean-tech epicentre

They want to reform the landscape of B.C.’s clean-tech industry.

In a small office tucked away in Burnaby, Jeanette Jackson sits with her clean-teach accelerator team every day, thinking of big ideas. Specifically, she and the others at Foresight want to make the province a collective hub for clean-tech companies to grow.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Can First Nations Power Authority transform the energy industry?

After hundreds of years of outside governments and industry cashing in on Indigenous lands and resources with few benefits reciprocated, one organization is setting new precedent that could transform the energy industry.

Armed with the backing of dozens of First Nation members and corporate partnerships, an initiative to create renewable energy projects led by Indigenous groups is aiming to make millions of dollars in Alberta and Saskatchewan. With the growing demand for cleaner energy and power, Indigenous groups are open for business and ready to bring it to market.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

VCIB buys CoPower, eyes expansion of its green finance model

David Berliner has been interested in conserving and protecting the environment since he was a teenager. Now, he has a chance to make a real difference.

His youthful days canoeing through Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario have given way to a green financing platform he co-founded in his late 20s called CoPower Inc. CoPower lends to green projects with steady, predictable returns and pools that debt into bonds it then offers to investors with as little as $5,000 to spare.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Montreal-developed satellite pinpoints carbon from space

It’s the future in a major Canadian city. Streets hum with electric buses and every burger is made with lab-grown beef. Just after New Year’s Day, people gather around their televisions to watch the annual global carbon count. One by one, an envoy from each country on earth submits their emissions total, then waits nervously as the governing body checks that number against the official list.

How is there an official list? Because satellites have been circling the planet all year, not only able to read the amount of carbon in the atmosphere but to trace where it came from. Canada, it turns out, has underestimated its emissions and is slapped with a penalty.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

These building rules could be a big part of our climate solution

Previous story

You’ve probably never even heard of two of Canada’s more effective provincial and city-scale climate policies—and that’s probably not a bad thing.

The BC Energy Step Code and the City of Vancouver’s Zero Emissions Building Plan are both building regulations introduced within the past two years or so by the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver, respectively.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

White Pines demolition mourned as Ford dismantles green energy in Ontario

The crane has been on-site at the White Pines Wind Farm in picturesque Prince Edward County for more than a week now, and on Tuesday, local landowners and other supporters of the axed project decided it was time to say goodbye.

The first of nine turbines on the site was due to be dismantled and removed, marking the start of a decommissioning expected to take at least three years, so supporters of the project gathered to give speeches and commiserate its demise.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Why Quebec leads in clean tech — so far

n a hangar-like space an hour from Montreal, workers in safety glasses carefully jockey huge aluminum arches into rows, like ribs, before switching on a whining drill to screw them into place.

The object takes shape — one of the world’s most recognizable shapes, a yellow school bus.

But that’s the only thing familiar about this bus. It’s all-electric, a wild pipe dream until just three years ago, when the first three like it hit the roads.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

‘I don’t want to fight them. I want to fight climate change’: McKenna

Two days into her job as a rookie environment minister, Catherine McKenna was sent to Paris for the United Nations climate summit, not knowing what “COP21” — the official phrasing for the 2015 meeting — stood for.

She remembers the momentum: the gathering of countries, the urgency, the ambition, the instruction to work closely with Barack Obama’s U.S. administration, the stunned applause when she stood at the podium and said that “Canada is here to help.”

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

How are Canada's agriculture ministers fighting climate change?

There's a finite amount of land on this fast-warming planet that a rapidly growing population will need to use wisely to produce enough food and fuel for every single person.

The world is not doing that right now, a new 1,400-page special report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds, urging countries to rethink the way they use and manage their land.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

What the heck is the circular economy?

Infinited Fiber Company’s fabric feels similar to denim, although it is perhaps a little smoother, is cheaper to produce and will likely last longer. But the most interesting part is what it’s made out of: dried and discarded husks from agriculture, recycled and reconstituted cardboard and old clothes.

The biotech company, a spinoff of the state-owned VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, is one among many concrete examples of what’s known as the circular economy. It’s a mainstream term in Europe, but it doesn’t yet exist in the Canadian lexicon.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Canada becomes first country to sign pledge for zero emission commercial vehicles

Canada has become the first country to sign on to the Drive to Zero Pledge, an international initiative aimed at increasing the number of zero and low emission vehicles in the medium- and heavy-duty transportation sector.

By signing the pledge, Canada is joining other partners, including municipal governments, in committing to eliminate barriers and implement mechanisms that accelerate the viability and growth of zero emission technology for these commercial vehicles.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Made-in-Canada version of Bill Gates-led clean energy fund launches

Canada is helping to fund a new initiative connected with a group of wealthy donors like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos to help startups finance new energy technologies that can lower carbon pollution.

Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada is expected to be a “public-private” initiative orchestrated out of Natural Resources Canada, and will involve annual pitch events where entrepreneurs can perform for investors, Dragons' Den-style.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

New York City's Green New Deal is music to Quebec's ears

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's Green New Deal is music to the ears of Quebec Premier François Legault‏.

Under de Blasio’s plan to tackle climate change, unveiled Monday, all city operations would run on 100 per cent “zero-emission Canadian hydropower” within five years. Negotiations would begin “right away” with the aim of signing a deal by the end of 2020.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Many Canadian transit agencies are missing made-in-Canada electric buses, says new report

Canada is home to leading-edge electric bus manufacturing companies, but a report released Thursday by the Vancouver-based think tank Clean Energy Canada says that the country's transit agencies are not buying and using the cleaner buses as fast as their counterparts in other countries.

“The conversation’s really just starting in Canada,” said Merran Smith, Clean Energy Canada’s executive director.

“We’ve got four buses in Vancouver, two in Victoria, 10 in Toronto,” Smith said. “Our leader is Montreal with 36 buses ... Overall, Canada’s approach is very cautious and there isn’t a good reason for it (to be cautious).”

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Trudeau-appointed task force proposes solutions to address fear, anxiety and mistrust among coal workers

There is mistrust and suspicion of government intentions. There are fears about devastating impacts to communities. There's anxiety over whether officials can deliver on promises. And there's frustration with being disparaged as dirty.

These are some of the stark assessments from the thousands of workers in coal mines and coal-fired power plants across Canada that were captured by 11 experts appointed by the government almost a year ago.

The special task force was launched by Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna on April 25, 2018 to investigate how to fairly provide for these workers as their livelihoods are taken offline over the next decade.

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Peter Allan Peter Allan

Alberta creeps closer to 2030 renewable energy target

Alberta's NDP government is planning a new auction for renewable energy capacity that is aiming to move it closer to its 2030 target of getting 30 per cent of its electricity supply from wind, solar and other green sources.

The government announced plans on Tuesday to add another 400 megawatts of renewable electricity capacity to its energy mix by way of an auction that mandates that the winning project or projects benefit Indigenous communities.

The auction will be the fourth auction of renewable electricity capacity as the oil-rich province creeps closer to its 2030 target, the government said in a statement. Currently about 10 per cent of Alberta’s electricity generation comes from renewable sources, the statement added.

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