Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2024 i Corporate Knights

While the COVID-19 pandemic caused long-lasting pain on many economic fronts, it failed to slow down green job growth. The clean energy sector added 4.7 million jobs between 2019 and 2022, according to the second annual World Energy Employment report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), published in November. That puts the total number of jobs in clean energy at 35 million in 2022, compared to just 32 million in oil, gas and coal. The fossil fuel sector created 1.3 million fewer jobs than it did in 2019. “Solar [photovoltaic] is by far the largest employer, accounting for 4 million jobs, while EVs and batteries were the fastest growing, adding well over 1 million jobs since 2019,” the report says. Chart source: International Energy Agency The power generation sector employed…

Jamaica was on hurricane watch in the days leading up to the UN COP28 climate summit. An unusual tropical storm swinging infrom the west was heading for the Caribbean, a region often in the eye of the changing climate, with intensifying storms, record flooding, devastating drought and crumbling coastlines. In the face of such turmoil, the Caribbean has home-grown solutions that are building resilience and lowering emissions as it girds for fiercer storms: coral reef baskets to protect coastlines, sugarcane waste to create biofuel, recycled plastic to strengthen building blocks, and carbon-absorbing concrete made with saltwater. But what it’s missing are greater pools of more equitable funding that help scale these projects and a recognition that the destructive changes it is suffering through are largely not of its making. That’s…

The scrap metal industry, to upcycle a tread-worn cliché, don’t get no respect. Stephen Mikkelsen, CEO and managing director of Sims Ltd., the 106-year-old Australian recycling giant, points out that in conversations about climate and carbon, topics like renewable-energy investments and offshore wind farms tend to attract the lion’s share of the attention paid to problems and solutions. According to Sims’s latest climate report, every tonne of scrap used for steel production avoids 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions compared to producing steel from raw materials. The savings, Mikkelsen says, “are enormous” and added up to a savings of 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2023 alone – equivalent to removing almost three million gas-powered cars from the road for a year. Mikkelsen also likes to say that Sims…

“WHO’S READY TO AXE THE (CARBON) TAX?”—CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF CANADA LEADER PIERRE POILIEVRE, 2023. There is a habit among politicians, on all sides of the political spectrum, to judge a policy not on its merits but on its lineage. If an idea was born on one side of the aisle, it is unlikely to find support on the other side. In the last few decades this habit has metastasized into a psychosis, both in the United States and in Canada, especially among my conservative tribe, and especially in regard to the issue of climate change. We have wandered into a fever swamp, and our inability to find a way out may end up being one of Canada’s greatest tragedies in the 21st century. At first, we conservatives argued that climate…

Hero: Energy-storage pioneers The Edinburgh port of Leith has seen many historic firsts. But one of the oddest took place in Leith’s dockyards three years ago, when two 25-tonne weights were dropped from a 15-metre tower. The falling weights instantly generated 250 kilowatts of electricity, confirming the investigators’ theory that gravitational energy can be stored and generated at scale – backstopping renewable-energy grids when the skies cloud over or the winds die down. The founders of Gravitricity, an Edinburgh start-up, hope their energy-balancing system will become standard in decommissioned coal mine shafts in Europe, South Africa and the U.S., turning depleted assets into productive ones while accelerating the transition to 100% renewable energy. Around the world, innovators are developing new energy-storage solutions that shore up growth in renewables against criticism…

If you’ve scrolled through the news recently, e-bikes might evoke images of battery fires and deadly collisions. The e-bike boom has received its fair share of bad press as their proliferation has caused a spike in accidents and safety concerns in cities globally. Local leaders and regulators have tried to catch up and figure out the best safety standards for the micromobility revolution. But micromobility advocates maintain that two wheels are more sustainable than four, as e-bikes and electric mopeds are putting a larger dent in demand for petrol than electric cars. E-bikes, in particular, are starting to dominate the mobility market in certain parts of the world, leading to larger climate gains than EVs can claim. “The electric transport revolution is a great chance to rethink how we move…

The road to Colombia’s energy transition runs through La Guajira. The northern department spilling into the turquoise Caribbean Sea is known for its majestic sand dunes, haunting desert landscapes and remote fishing outposts inhabited by Indigenous Wayuu communities. And now, it is the backdrop to a key plank in the South American country’s dramatic pivot to a greener economy. When President Gustavo Petro took office in 2022, he made the energy transition the cornerstone of his mandate, turning heads by drawing comparisons between the world’s addictions to cocaine and oil. His government says it will not issue any new oil and gas exploration contracts – a first for a major petroleum-producing country – and at COP28 in December in Dubai it joined the international alliance calling for a treaty to…

At some point this year, in an unprepossessing 120,000-square-foot box on the outskirts of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, technicians will flip the switch in a plant that promises to do something no one else is doing in North America at the moment: transform minerals containing “rare earth elements” (REE) into specialized metal alloys that can be used to make the kinds of “permanent magnets” found in smartphones, hard drives, wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. The $70-million-plus project run by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) – will be chockablock with cutting-edge mineral-processing technology, including systems that promise to recycle the water and chemicals used in the plant. But SRC isn’t just using this showcase to develop less environmentally damaging approaches to REE processing; it is also testing a business model built to…

“THE ONLY GLOBAL WARMING WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT AND WORRYING ABOUT IS NUCLEAR GLOBAL WARMING.”—TRUMP, FOX NEWS TOWN HALL, 2023. Political movements are ironic, indeterminate, inspiring and infuriating. Conservatism and environmentalism exemplify how movements’ identities and relationship to each other evolve, often dramatically. A century ago, the two intersected regularly. Over the past decade, both movements have strayed from their roots and each other. Yet the underlying political and economic conditions in the United States clamour for reunion, where conservatives seize the opportunity to lead on environmental issues. Republicans have a proud environmental legacy, epitomized by Theodore Roosevelt’s commitment to land and wildlife conservation in the early 1900s. Conservative scholars, such as those at the Property and Environment Research Center, were at the forefront of market-based solutions to fishery…

Twenty years ago, Delaware-based DuPont became the first U.S. public company to appoint a chief sustainability officer (CSO). To skeptics, the controversial chemical giant wasn’t exactly taking a risk: Linda Fisher had been deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an appointee of the George W. Bush administration that took little interest in regulation or climate change. DuPont may have hired her in the hopes of boosting its troubled environmental image, but in her 12 years with the corporation, Fisher surprised many by bringing in changes that led to notable reductions in pollution. She pushed executives to see climate issues not just as an emissions problem, but as the source of new business opportunities through innovations in sustainable materials and processes, such as producing ethanol from plant waste and…

WINTER 2024 VOL 23 ISSUE 1 A first nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel industry After round-the-clock negotiations at the climate summit in Dubai in mid-December, a flawed but potentially transformative declaration was reached, calling for a shift away from oil and gas for the first time in United Nations climate agreement history. The COP28 decision text included language about “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” and “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, or before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.” That phrasing reflected a hard-fought battle that pitted more than 100 countries favouring a fossil fuel phasedown or phaseout against the nearly 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists that…

When it comes to the ecological harms of industrial farming, pesticides and nitrous-oxide-spewing fertilizers are often top concerns for environmentalists. But agriculture’s overall use of fossil fuels is also an enormous problem, according to a recent analysis by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The report estimates that agriculture’s supply chain is responsible for at least 15% of the world’s fossil fuel use and for driving the equivalent annual carbon emissions of the European Union and Russia combined. This is thanks to the ways we produce, transport and store food. As is the case with many industries, fossil fuels are deeply entrenched in agricultural supply chains, from using combustion-engine tractors to packaging foods in plastic wrapping. “Industrial food systems have a fossil fuel problem,” said Patty Fong, a…

In November 1959, some 300 businessmen, scientists and government officials gathered at Columbia University in New York to celebrate the first hundred years of commercial oil exploitation in the United States. The mood was triumphant: fossil fuels were the lifeblood of the world’s largest economy, powering the postwar boom, industrial expansion and the suburban American dream. But then a man with bushy black eyebrows and a heavy Eastern European accent took the stage. Speaking in measured terms, the nuclear physicist Edward Teller – known for his central role on the Manhattan Project – rained on the entire parade. Fossil fuels, he explained, could not be relied on for the energy of the future. Not only was their supply finite, but they were also “contaminating the atmosphere.” The carbon dioxide released…

As 2023 came to a close, the World Meteorological Organization declared it to be the hottest year on record. One week later, the Global Carbon Project shared more discouraging news: that despite global pledges to reduce emissions, greenhouse gases from fossil fuels hit a record high again in 2023. As the climate crisis exacts a punishing toll around the globe, we’re also getting better at solving problems. Corporate leaders are flowing a growing share of their revenues into investments that will accelerate the green transition, according to Corporate Knights research. Now in its 20th year, Corporate Knights’ Global 100 ranking of the world’s most sustainable companies reveals the top firms that are increasing their investments in green solutions such as renewable energy, energy efficiency and the circular economy. “When we…

“I’M NOT IN HOCK TO IDEOLOGICAL ZEALOTS ON CLIMATE.”—U.K. PRIME MINISTER RISHI SUNAK, 2023. In 2006, David Cameron, then leader of the Conservative Opposition, travelled to the Arctic to be photographed “hugging a husky.” The image was carried in every U.K. newspaper and was part of the party’s attempt to “detoxify” after years in opposition. There was a growing recognition that a serious party needed to be seen to care about tackling environmental problems, and shortly after Cameron promised voters he would lead the country’s “greenest ever” government. Seven years later, as prime minister, Cameron was overheard demanding that his ministers “cut the green crap.” The United Kingdom had hit a turbulent economic patch, and despite years of telling the world that it was in the green transition that jobs,…