Search Climate Insights Directory

The Canadian Climate Institute outlines three priorities for Canada's climate strategy: improving affordability through clean energy technologies, enhancing economic competitiveness via industrial carbon pricing to align with global partners, and increasing protection against escalating climate-driven financial losses from natural disasters.

The 'Cities in Transition' research argues that meeting emissions targets requires more than transitioning to renewables; it necessitates a reduction in total energy demand through urban planning. Using the city of Winnipeg as a focus, the study employs the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) methodology to show that compact, walkable, and mixed-use infill development reduces emissions and municipal infrastructure costs compared to car-oriented sprawl. The research identifies three primary barriers to this transition: NIMBY opposition to infill, outdated governance models, and the high financial costs associated with urban sprawl.

The document details regulatory actions, litigation, and legislative updates across several countries focusing on AI, data privacy, and online safety. It also reviews four reports on algorithmic recommender systems, highlighting risks such as the amplification of harmful content and the prioritisation of short-term engagement over long-term user value.

Reclaim Finance is calling on ArcelorMittal shareholders to escalate engagement at the 2025 AGM by voting against management-proposed resolutions. The organization argues that the company is backtracking on climate goals, delaying direct reduced iron (DRI) projects, and allocating insufficient capital to decarbonization, with only US$0.3-0.4 billion of planned 2025 capital expenditures dedicated to such projects.

The African Union's admission as a permanent member of the G20 in September 2023 represents a shift in global economic governance, increasing the G20's global population representation from 65% to 80%. Historically, the G20 has been viewed as favoring advanced economies, with initiatives like the 2017 Compact with Africa (CWA) and the 2021 debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) criticized for serving the interests of wealthier nations or creditors. The AU's debut at the November 2024 Rio de Janeiro summit focused on priorities including financial system reform, food security, and climate resilience. However, the document warns that rising nationalism, specifically the 'America First' agenda of the Trump administration, poses a threat to the multilateralism necessary for the AU's effectiveness. To move beyond symbolism, the paper argues the AU must leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to increase aggregate purchasing power—projected to reach USD 1.8 trillion by 2035—and emulate the European Union's model of policy harmonization to attract global investment.

The document details the link between rising global temperatures and the intensification of extreme weather events in Canada, such as hail, windstorms, and hurricanes. It highlights significant insured losses in provinces like Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario, and notes a trend of tornado-prone areas shifting eastward. The text emphasizes the need for improved early warning systems, resilient building codes, and nature-based coastal protections to adapt to these increasing risks.

Climate change is intensifying extreme weather globally, with warmer temperatures providing more energy for storms. In Canada, this manifests as more frequent and severe convective storms, including hailstorms, windstorms, and hurricanes. Significant economic losses have already occurred, such as a $3.2 billion hailstorm in Calgary in 2024. Regional projections indicate increased storm intensity in the Prairies, eastern Canada, and Atlantic Canada, while the Pacific coast faces a higher likelihood of extreme atmospheric river events. Adaptation needs include improved forecasting, updated building codes for wind and hail resilience, and revised land-use policies to move development away from high-risk areas.

The report advocates for Australia to adopt satellite-based top-down verification for methane emissions to complement existing bottom-up estimates. It highlights the TROPOMI satellite's ability to provide frequent global daily coverage, making it suitable for verifying emissions across clustered coal mining areas despite its lower spatial resolution compared to point-source imagers. The document cites Canada's use of a hybrid reporting framework as a successful precedent and notes that 91% of Australia's annual coal production occurs in regions well-suited for such monitoring. It also identifies a need for spatially distributed methane inventories, noting that the Safeguard Mechanism's shift in April 2024 to report methane quantities rather than CO2-equivalent will facilitate these comparisons.

A satellite analysis using TROPOMI data reveals that Australia's coal mine methane emissions are significantly under-reported. For the 2020 financial year, satellite estimates for six mining clusters—representing 79% of black coal production—were 40% higher than the national total reported by the National Greenhouse Accounts. The discrepancy is most pronounced in New South Wales, where fugitive emissions were found to be approximately twice as high as official reports in both 2020 and 2021. The report attributes some of this variability to the adoption of 'Method 2', a site-specific company-led estimation approach for open-cut mines that often results in lower reported emissions compared to state-based averages (Method 1).

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) argues that the 'triple planetary crises of pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change' are causing measurable harm to human health in Canada, particularly among vulnerable populations. The organization calls on federal candidates to preserve environmental regulations like the Clean Electricity Regulations and the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap, strengthen the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), establish an Office of Environmental Justice, ban fossil fuel advertising, and enforce 'polluter pays' legislation. CAPE highlights that air pollution from fossil fuels is linked to 34,000 premature deaths in Canada annually and costs the economy $120 billion per year.

The U.S. steel industry is already less carbon-intensive than other major regions due to a high reliance on electric arc furnaces (EAFs), which account for 70% of production. However, the remaining 30% relies on integrated blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) routes to produce high-quality steel. Decarbonization requires transitioning these integrated mills to direct reduced iron (DRI) and submerged arc furnaces (SAF) or implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS). While clean electricity offers a 'quick win' for EAFs, deep decarbonization is hindered by the high cost of green hydrogen and the need for extensive CCS infrastructure. The report argues that because steel is a low-margin commodity, government policy—including carbon taxes, border adjustment mechanisms, and demand-side incentives—is essential to offset the increased costs of low-carbon production.

In 2024, global electricity generation reached new record highs for solar, wind, hydro, gas, and coal. Solar was the fastest-growing source, increasing by 474 TWh to reach a 6.9% share of the global mix, with China contributing 53% of this growth. Wind generation also hit a record of 2,494 TWh, though growth slowed due to weather conditions. Hydro rebounded to an all-time high of 4,416 TWh following 2023 droughts, largely driven by China. Nuclear generation grew by 2.5% to 2,768 TWh, but its global market share fell to a 45-year low of 9%. Gas and coal both reached record generation levels in 2024, though their shares of the global electricity mix declined to 22% and 34% respectively, as electricity demand grew faster than their production.

In 2024, global electricity demand rose by 4% to 30,856 TWh, driven largely by China and extreme heatwaves. Low-carbon sources reached a historic high of 40.9% of global generation, with solar and wind combined surpassing hydropower. Despite this, global power sector emissions hit a record high, increasing by 1.6% due to a rise in fossil generation linked to cooling demand during heatwaves.

G7 countries are on track to miss their 2025 deadline to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, with total subsidies reaching a record USD 282 billion in 2023. The surge was primarily driven by consumer subsidies for natural gas and petroleum to mitigate energy price volatility following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While some members have implemented domestic reforms or joined coalitions like COFFIS and CETP, the author argues that the G7 must now drop the 'inefficient' qualifier, establish national action plans, and prohibit all subsidies to coal and fossil fuel production to align with 1.5°C climate pathways.

The document argues that the British Columbia government should apply its strategy of recovering healthcare costs from harmful product manufacturers—such as those in the tobacco and opioid industries—to the fossil fuel sector. It highlights significant health and financial burdens on BC's healthcare system, including costs from the 2021 heat dome, wildfire smoke, and the spread of infectious diseases due to warming temperatures. The authors contend that fossil fuel companies have profited while engaging in misinformation, and they call for a ban on fossil fuel advertising and the recovery of expenses from the oil and gas industry.

The document analyzes how climate change accelerates biodiversity loss and how the loss of ecosystems further destabilizes the climate. It critiques 'false solutions' such as monoculture tree plantations, carbon offsets, and geoengineering, arguing they often cause more harm than good. The report calls for a systemic shift toward agroecology, community-led energy transitions, and the protection of Indigenous rights.

The report argues that while phasing out oil and gas is essential to meet the 1.5C Paris Agreement goals, the threat of investor-state arbitration often creates a 'regulatory chill' that discourages ambitious climate action. It identifies that legal risks increase as a project progresses through its life cycle, with the highest risks associated with targeting the production phase. To mitigate these risks, the authors propose five principles: stopping the issuance of new licenses, managing investor expectations through long-term frameworks and early notice, grounding policies in legislation and scientific evidence, leveraging existing environmental regulations, and ensuring consistent application across all investors. The report specifically suggests that governments should prioritize a managed phase-out with clear end dates and consider an internationally legally binding instrument to harmonize production deadlines and exclude arbitration rights for fossil fuel investors.

The report finds that Shell's investment strategy prioritizes oil and gas expansion and shareholder returns over renewable energy, with 2030 production targets and LNG capacities significantly overshooting IEA Net Zero Emissions (NZE) levels. Shell's diversification into sustainable energy remains marginal, and the company has recently reduced its decarbonization targets for product carbon intensity.

The document analyzes how interoperability—the bridging of differing standards and policies—can reduce trade barriers and administrative costs in climate mitigation. It details existing frameworks for emission equivalency, carbon price parity, and the convergence of international standards in sectors such as aviation, shipping, carbon removals, and climate finance. The author highlights the role of the OECD, WTO, and ISSB in creating comparable metrics and suggests that the WTO could further enhance carbon measure equivalency through a special notification system and standardized embedded carbon methodologies.

Canada is uniquely positioned to benefit from surging global electricity demand and corporate net-zero commitments because approximately 85 per cent of its electricity is already non-emitting. This clean energy advantage has already attracted significant investments in electric vehicle manufacturing in Ontario and data centers in Quebec. To maintain this competitive edge and ensure energy affordability, the document asserts that Canadian provincial and territorial governments must prioritize strategic grid expansion and modernization.