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This report details ten landmark climate change cases across different countries, highlighting how courts are holding governments and corporations accountable. Key examples include the Urgenda case in the Netherlands, which established a state's legal duty to increase climate ambition, and the Milieudefensie v. Shell case, which held a private company liable for inadequate emissions reductions. The document explores diverse legal strategies, including human rights obligations, fiduciary duties of corporate boards, and the necessity of climate considerations in environmental impact assessments.

The document examines how fuel subsidies in the EU fishing fleet incentivise overfishing, increase greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a competitive advantage to environmentally damaging, fuel-intensive fishing methods like trawling. It argues that removing these subsidies—estimated at €1 billion to €1.5 billion annually—would promote energy efficiency, support fish stock recovery, and benefit small-scale fishers, who currently receive less support than large-scale and distant-water fleets.

The GCHA argues that the transition away from fossil fuels is hindered by structural barriers, including economic dependence, infrastructure lock-in, subsidies, and industry lobbying. To address these, the GCHA proposes three primary solutions: implementing health cost accounting to reveal the true economic burden of fossil fuels, redirecting fossil fuel subsidies toward clean energy and public health, and banning fossil fuel marketing and sponsorships. The submission emphasizes that air pollution from fossil fuels causes approximately 5.3 million premature deaths annually and cost the global economy US$2.9 trillion in 2018.

Alberta faces significant economic risks due to its high concentration of workers and GDP tied to transition-vulnerable sectors, particularly oil and gas. While the province has established a foothold in low-carbon electricity, hydrogen, and CCUS, growth is hindered by mixed policy signals and a geographic mismatch between new opportunity companies in cities and vulnerable workers in rural areas.

The document analyzes Alberta's position in the global energy transition, highlighting a tension between emerging low-carbon investments and a continued reliance on the oil and gas sector. While the province shows strength in carbon-free electricity and industrial transition technologies, it faces significant risks due to workforce concentration in vulnerable sectors and contradictory political signals that may hinder large-scale decarbonization.

Atlantic Canada faces significant fiscal and economic risks due to its reliance on oil, gas, and coal, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick. While the region shows momentum in clean technology—led by Nova Scotia—and possesses strong natural resource advantages in wind, hydro, and tidal energy, scaling these opportunities is hindered by a lack of capital, a shortage of skilled STEM labour, and a mismatch between the location of new growth and transition-vulnerable rural communities.

The document identifies systemic barriers to decarbonizing Canada's electricity grid, including misaligned utility mandates, vested interests, siloed planning, and market access restrictions. It recommends implementing system-wide decarbonization mandates, technology-neutral Clean Electricity Standards, and performance-based regulation to incentivize innovation. The paper also emphasizes the need for improved interprovincial transmission and larger grid-balancing regions to integrate variable renewable energy.

The document identifies a stark divide in Canada's electricity sector between low-emitting provinces (B.C., Manitoba, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario) and fossil fuel-based provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). To achieve net zero, the author proposes five integrated pathways: expanding variable renewable energy, implementing clean firm supply, enhancing interprovincial transmission, increasing demand flexibility, and deploying energy storage. While wind and solar are now the lowest-cost energy sources, their integration requires complementary resources to manage intermittency and seasonal variation, particularly in Canada's high-latitude environment.

The report finds that Canadian provinces are generally underplanning for industrial electricity growth and lagging in transmission investment, though hydro-led jurisdictions possess a natural advantage in system flexibility. It recommends that the federal government support inter-provincial planning, provide strategic funding for grid build-out, implement flexible Clean Electricity Regulations, and prioritize system flexibility in investment programs.

The paper argues that Canada should move beyond textbook definitions of fossil fuel subsidies to evaluate policies based on their consistency with a low-carbon transition, value for money, employment outcomes, and policy fit. It highlights that public investment in long-lived fossil fuel assets now carries significant risk of becoming stranded as global demand for coal, oil, and gas inevitably declines. The authors recommend that Canadian governments pivot economic strategies toward transition-consistent business lines and prioritize the reform of new or highly obstructive measures, such as British Columbia's support for oil, gas, and coal development.

The report examines the current state of Energy Systems Integration (ESI) in Canada, focusing on five key technologies: electric vehicles, heat pumps, demand response, distributed generation, and hydrogen. It argues that while Canada has successfully decarbonized its electricity grid, further progress requires coordinating energy vectors and scales. The author identifies significant barriers, including fragmented governance, a lack of integrated modeling, and a policy landscape dominated by voluntary 'soft' incentives rather than systemic mandates. The document recommends replacing sectoral subsidies with market reforms that remunerate grid flexibility and implementing integrated modeling platforms to guide coordinated infrastructure investments.

The document identifies several systemic obstacles hindering the deployment of clean energy technologies in Canada, including misaligned mandates, market access restrictions, and outdated information. It argues that the highly centralized and regulated nature of the Canadian grid creates a path dependency that favors fossil fuels and large-scale hydro over innovative solutions like energy storage and distributed renewables. To overcome these, the report recommends implementing clear decarbonization mandates, adopting performance-based regulation, improving interprovincial transmission infrastructure, and utilizing carbon pricing to shift investment toward zero-emission resources.

The document outlines a strategy for Canada to achieve a net-zero electricity sector by 2050, noting a sharp divide between 'clean' provinces (e.g., Quebec, Ontario) and those reliant on fossil fuels (e.g., Alberta, Saskatchewan). It proposes five key technical trajectories: increasing variable renewable energy, securing clean firm capacity, enhancing interprovincial transmission, improving demand flexibility, and deploying long-duration storage. The author argues that while the economic cost of wind and solar has plummeted, the primary barriers are now financial uncertainty regarding carbon pricing and the technical need for firm capacity and seasonal storage to manage intermittency.

Ontario is well-positioned for the low-carbon transition due to its financial center and manufacturing expertise, but faces significant risks in its automotive and primary metals sectors. While the province leads Canada in the number of transition-opportunity companies, particularly in low-carbon electricity and batteries, progress is hindered by policy inconsistency and a lack of long-term sector-specific strategies. Workforce vulnerability is high in traditional manufacturing hubs, and high public debt may constrain the investment needed for a smooth transition.

Ontario is well-positioned for the carbon-neutral transition due to its financial hub status and concentration of clean energy and bio-product companies. However, it faces significant risks, including a high number of vulnerable workers in the manufacturing sector, high public debt, and policy instability. While major investments are occurring in electric vehicle production and steel electrification, the province lacks long-term sectoral policies and a clear carbon-neutral grid strategy, which may hinder large-scale technology adoption and competitiveness compared to other provinces.

The document argues that while Canada possesses a competitive advantage in clean energy, its electricity grids are often optimized for legacy technologies and lack sufficient planning for industrial growth. It compares Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia with international peers, highlighting that hydro-dominant provinces have a flexibility advantage, while others must proactively develop storage and interconnections. The report recommends that the federal government support interprovincial planning, provide targeted funding for grid development, ensure climate policy stability, and prioritize grid flexibility to avoid wasting renewable energy and to attract global capital.

The document analyzes four international policy mechanisms—US hydrogen tax credits, Norway's carbon capture and storage in the North Sea, the UK's Contracts for Difference for renewable electricity, and Australia's Green Bank—to derive strategic lessons for Canada's clean energy transition. It evaluates the strengths, limitations, and applicable lessons of each approach, focusing on reducing financial risk, leveraging comparative advantages, and ensuring cost-efficiency in public spending.

The research paper evaluates nine climate policy scenarios to determine the most effective way to address carbon leakage in the EU ETS. Using the CASE II model, it compares full auctioning against various border adjustment (BA) and output-based allocation (OB) strategies. The findings suggest that while full auctioning leads to a leakage ratio of 10%, border adjustments are the most efficient at reducing this ratio, often resulting in negative leakage (spillovers) where emissions in the rest of the world actually decrease. Output-based allocations also reduce leakage but are less efficient than border adjustments and can lead to higher carbon prices.

The document assesses the challenges of the EU's proposed CBAM based on incurred emissions, noting that it fails to fully address carbon leakage for exports and value chains. It proposes an alternative 'climate contribution' based on standardised carbon intensity factors, which would act as an excise charge that can be passed along the supply chain and waived for exports. This model, combined with Carbon Contracts for Difference (CCfDs) funded by CBAM revenues, is presented as a way to create immediate investment incentives for climate-neutral production of materials like steel, cement, and aluminium.

The report examines how carbon pricing and policy credibility influence private sector investment in low-carbon technologies. It argues that while carbon prices provide a necessary signal, the lack of long-term policy certainty often leads firms to adopt 'carbon ignorant' strategies or delay investment. The analysis highlights the role of capital costs, the importance of a predictable policy trajectory, and the necessity of combining carbon pricing with complementary policies to drive a systemic energy transition.