by Mitchell Beer

The federal and Alberta governments have reached a preliminary agreement that will allow the province to set its own regulations on climate-busting methane emissions and postpone its emission reduction deadline by five years.

The deal’s effectiveness in putting a lid on methane pollution will depend on details that are still under development. But experts say Ottawa already traded away the equivalent of 53 million tonnes of carbon reductions last November, when it first signalled that it would allow Alberta to postpone methane controls from 2030 to 2035.

Methane carries about 84 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over the crucial 20-year period when humanity will be scrambling to get climate change under control. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies methane reductions as one of the cheapest paths to the quickest, deepest greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030.

The agreement in principle, released Wednesday, cements a five-year postponement in Ottawa’s 2030 methane target that first appeared in the November, 2025 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. If the two governments can agree on an “outcome-based equivalency agreement” under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, Canada will stand down its own methane regulations in deference to Alberta’s.

The two governments have also agreed to identify an independent third party “to conduct methane modelling, analysis of emissions reductions, and to assess methane reduction results”. That provision is being hailed as an important step, a week after analysis by the Calgary-based Pembina Institute concluded that Alberta’s methane emissions are up to 90% higher than the province’s official estimate, which relies on self-reporting by industry.

The agreement is to take effect on January 1, 2027, following a 60-day consultation on the draft plan.

The methane equivalency agreement was one of several commitments in the Canada-Alberta MOU that were meant to be finalized by April 1. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith now says other elements of the deal, including a proposed new oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast, will be delayed beyond next week’s deadline.

Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) President Rick Smith declared the agreement in principle a “positive step forward”. He called the provision for an independent third party “an important approach to reinforce policy ambition and integrity, and help ensure the regulations cover the true extent of methane pollution levels from Alberta’s oil and gas sector.”

But he cautioned that “the final details of the equivalency agreement, and follow-through on the commitment to independent and transparent verification of outcomes, will be critical to determine the agreement’s success.”

CCI Senior Research Associate Alison Bailie said she had confidence in the agreement’s focus on “looking at the Alberta numbers, not just accepting them,” adding that methane measurement technologies have improved in recent years—with some of the gains achieved by Emissions Reduction Alberta with funding from the province’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) system.

“That’s where I see the hope and the benefits of doing this properly,” she told The Energy Mix. “It helps Alberta’s own companies,” creating a business case for methane controls in Canada and enabling them to position themselves for methane abatement projects overseas.

Bailie added that Canada has “tended to see greater emission reductions” when federal and provincial governments actually work together. “That can work really well,” she said. “We’d like to see more.”

Aly Hyder Ali, senior program manager, oil and gas at Environmental Defence Canada, called the five-year delay an “unnecessary concession” that represents a “bad deal for everyone outside the oil patch.” Citing Pembina Institute modelling, he said the carveout would pour 1.9 million extra tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 53 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period—or far more over a 20-year span.

Amanda Bryant, manager of Pembina’s oil and gas program, agreed in a release that independent, third-party verification is a “vitally important and positive step”, allowing Alberta to “report its methane progress more credibly”. She said the agreement “signals an end to the roadblock that had been preventing progress on this crucial element of climate and energy policy,” enabling industry to “invest and hire with confidence to advance the next stage of methane mitigation work.”

But so far there’s no clarity on whether the “independent party” responsible for monitoring Alberta’s methane controls will rely on theoretical modelling or actual measurement of releases from oil and gas infrastructure, or on whose data the monitor will rely. Real measurement “will be vital, both for an effective response to climate change and to ensure ongoing access to major international natural gas markets that are demanding provably low-emissions-intensity fossil fuel imports, such as the European Union, South Korea, and Japan,” Bryant said.

Last week, a Pembina technical analysis flagged data and regulatory gaps in Alberta’s current approach to methane controls, resulting in actual emissions that have been up to 90% higher than official government figures.

“Alberta should not be afraid modernize its measurement data and methods, including vehicle-based systems, aircraft, and satellites to effectively reduce its methane emissions,” Bryant said at the time.

But Alberta Premier Smith may have a different take on what to expect from the independent third party. During an unrelated media conference Wednesday, she said the goal is to arrive at “a common set of facts” after “some other reports that have been put out there kind of put us at odds,” iPolitics reports.

The agreement in principle states that, “should third party analysis determine that emissions are higher than expected, Alberta commits to take the necessary corrective actions.”

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By Ian Munroe, Anna Berka and Christina E. Hoicka

The number of renewable energy projects that are fully or partly Indigenous-owned is growing quickly in Canada, and our new research suggests that their benefits reach far beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The number of such projects on traditional Indigenous territories and reserve lands jumped by more than 300 per cent between 2009 and 2020. Nearly one-fifth of the country’s electricity-generating infrastructure involved First Nations, Métis and Inuit partners or beneficiaries as of 2022.

Yet little is known about the impacts of these renewable-energy projects within the participating communities beyond the physical footprint of the construction.

We aimed to fill this information policy gap in response to a request from two organizations that work extensively with First Nations, the Clean Energy Association of British Columbia and the New Relationship Trust, which obtained funding from Natural Resources Canada to conduct research.

Together we conducted a study to paint a more complete picture of these broader impacts, interviewing knowledge-holders in 14 First Nations in British Columbia involved with 36 planned or operational Indigenous-led renewable energy projects.

We found that these projects employ “placed-based” approaches, often with a high degree of community engagement early on, and revenues often allocated to support their own culture, governance, ecology, support services and economy.

Transformational change

We found that when First Nations’ worldviews are centred and community control is enabled, broad social and cultural benefits result, providing greater self-determination.

As part of our research, we interviewed knowledge-holders from the West Moberly First Nations near Peace River, B.C. The nation has used wind-project revenues to support cultural camps and youth programs. As one knowledge-holder there told us:

“We are involved in it, and we are engaged in it. We are co-owners. And I know our Elders feel really good about hearing that. Knowing that we are not just sitting on the sidelines, while other people fill their pockets in our territory. And our community is doing that kind of stuff more and more. There is a connection there, right, because you are involved. More money is flowing to the community.”

In the Fraser Canyon region, the T’eqt’aqtn’mux (Kanaka Bar Indian Band), which has been affected by wildfires in recent years, has used proceeds from solar projects to reduce fire hazards and protect homes.

In the case of the Skidegate Band Council, we heard that revenues from a two-megawatt microgrid solar project would go toward funding Tll Yahda Energy, a partnership with the Old Massett Village Council to develop renewable energy projects in Haida Gwaii.

While these results demonstrate that a broad range of positive outcomes can flow from Indigenous-led renewable energy projects, the social and cultural impacts remain neglected in conventional energy practice.

An alternative to traditional energy planning

The Indigenous-led projects we heard about stand in contrast to typically used top-down decision-making, favoured by governments.

This approach is often characterized by public consultation that occurs after the decision of where to site the project has been made, often leading to local rejection of the project, and sometimes cancellation.

The bottom-up nature of the approaches we heard about hold important lessons that can enable widespread acceptance of energy transitions.

This is particularly relevant in B.C., where the provincial government is encouraging renewable energy projects to create economic opportunity and counter external economic shocks, including tariffs from the United States.

This policy push extends to the province’s more than 200 First Nations, with a 2025 procurement call that requires at least 25 per cent First Nations ownership of a project.

The B.C. government must also meet its obligations under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which aims to bring provincial legislation into agreement with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The UN treaty requires that state parties enable self-determination and obtain free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous Peoples for projects that impact their lands or resources. Indigenous-led renewable electricity projects in B.C. could help meet requirements under DRIPA to provide pathways for First Nations to improve their economic and social conditions without discrimination.

The Indigenous-led approaches we studied provide a vehicle to support Indigenous communities and make progress toward the province’s decarbonization goals. They also hold valuable lessons for developing policy in other jurisdictions like Ontario, where the provincial government has pledged to boost support for the growing number of Indigenous energy projects.

The world is entering a new era in which energy independence will be more important. Our findings about Indigenous-led projects illustrate a radically different approach to growing the Canada’s renewables industry in a way that can provide energy and facilitate transformational social and cultural change.

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By Mitchell Beer

An updated industrial carbon pricing system must deliver outcomes as well as optics, the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) concludes this week, based on a review of 57 possible future scenarios for how Alberta’s emission pricing system can deliver on a target price of $130 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

The $130 target under Alberta’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) regulation is built into last November’s controversial memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Canadian and Alberta governments. But the climate institute warns there’s a difference between the advertised price per tonne in a carbon regulation and the effective marginal credit price (EMCP)—the real-world price a carbon polluter actually has to pay, and therefore the strength of the incentive they receive to reduce their emissions.

The institute released its analysis [pdf] this week as Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) looks into whether the federal government’s current benchmarks for industrial carbon pricing “can distinguish systems that merely function from those that deliver outcomes of equivalent stringency,” the CCI paper states. Most of the 57 scenarios could meet the 2030 benchmark on paper, “yet fail[ed] to deliver stringency equivalent to $130-per-tonne EMCP.”

The analysis by CCI Chief Economist Dave Sawyer and Executive Vice President Dale Beugin found that:

• 84% of the scenarios met the federal government’s design criteria for a provincial pricing system;

• But of those apparently successful design options, 77%  failed to deliver the equivalent of a $130-per-tonne EMCP by 2030, meaning that only 11 of the original 57 succeeded.

A High-Stakes Review

The stakes for the ECCC review are high, the paper states, since this year’s decisions on system design and stringency will shape Canada’s industrial carbon pricing market into the 2030s.

The review is also taking place in a deeply politicized atmosphere, with Canada facing a serious sovereignty threat from south of the border and a separation referendum likely to take place in Alberta this year. “Against this backdrop, the federal government has launched a process to modernize large-emitter trading systems,” CCI writes. “The first track is regulatory and technical,” while “the second track is political and bilateral, centred on negotiations between Canada and Alberta.” The paper says the Canada-Alberta MOU sets the $130-per-tonne benchmark, but contains no plan or deadline to meet the stringency target.

The weaknesses in the current system have been accumulating for some time, the institute says. Existing large-emitter trading systems (LETS) “are opaque, rely on outdated design choices, and have been systematically weakened by provinces over time.” The federal government, meanwhile, has been inconsistent in its oversight and “reluctant to impose the backstop where provincial systems fall short, most notably as Saskatchewan zeroed out its industrial carbon price in 2025.”

But improving the system wouldn’t just make it easier to link provincial carbon trading systems and reduce disparities between polluters operating in different jurisdictions: “It would also help shield Canadian exports from rising border carbon tariffs, including the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.”

Asked what it would take for the federal government to adopt a more consistent, evidence-based pricing strategy, Beugin replied that “grounding the benchmark in concrete, transparent metrics of stringency is the best way to shift the federal government’s approach to industrial carbon pricing. It’s currently too easy for provincial systems to comply with the federal benchmark without delivering robust carbon markets with strong incentives to invest in low-carbon projects.  That’s why we’ve proposed an approach that’s focused on market outcomes and ensuring a minimum effective carbon price in each system.”

In response to Trump’s annexation agenda and the separatist threat at home, the CCI’s plan would also “ensure provinces have plenty of flexibility in designing provincial carbon markets,” Beugin added in an email. “We’re suggesting that the federal benchmark makes provinces accountable for delivering an outcome (minimum effective carbon price) without being prescriptive as to how. Provinces can and should tailor their approach to their own context.”

An ‘Unresolved Tension’

However, in the consultation materials that ECCC released late last month, the climate institute said it detected an “unresolved tension” between the carbon pollution price signal the government wants to send and the tools it is proposing to assess polluters’ performance.

“By establishing minimum national stringency standards, the benchmark seeks to ensure that regulated facilities face comparable incentives to reduce emissions and invest in low-carbon technologies,” the CCI explains. But the gap is in the detailed factors ECCC is proposing to measure, including market balance, credit availability, and banking dynamics. “These considerations are necessary to ensure market operation and compliance feasibility,” the paper states, but they aren’t enough on their own to ensure that provincial pricing systems meet the federal target, and meet it on schedule.

“This distinction matters. The relevant question is not simply whether systems adopt the minimum national carbon price (MNCP) schedule, but whether the price signal delivered by the system achieves the intended outcome,” the CCI stresses. “Tests of net demand, market balance, and static banking metrics are useful for determining whether a market is operational. They are not sufficient for determining whether a system meets a given stringency requirement.”

The report identifies the size of the buffer—the extent to which a carbon pricing system adapts to keep the demand for carbon credits higher than the supply—as a key factor driving the stringency of the system. A 6% buffer, the level ECCC has proposed, is enough to keep a carbon market from failing. But carbon pricing systems only “begin to deliver stronger outcomes” with buffers of 10 to 305. They can only deliver reliable price signals, consistent with the federal targets, with buffers of more than 30%.

What Works, What Doesn’t

The CCI paper identifies tighter benchmarks over time as the single most important tool to create a scarcity of carbon credits and reduce emissions. By contrast, that stringency is severely diluted by direct investment credits that allow polluters to directly fund emission reduction projects instead and increase the number of carbon credits in the system while paying a lower carbon price.

“In the scenarios, introducing direct investment credits reduces costs by roughly two-thirds and cuts abatement by more than half,” the paper states. “The cost savings are therefore not a productivity improvement but rather a dilution of policy stringency.”

With a half-dozen policy options included in the analysis, the paper lays out a “clear hierarchy of levers,” Sawyer and Beugin write. “Benchmark tightening does the heavy lifting for equivalency attainment. Floor escalation and banking controls protect and stabilize the signal that benchmarks create. Credit and offset limits provide guardrails. Direct investment credits, by contrast, act as a dilution lever capable of neutralizing even aggressive benchmark tightening.”

The two authors recommend four steps to bolster the system:

• Strengthening the investment incentive for emission reductions—in an updated federal benchmark, and in the MOU—by basing it on what carbon polluters actually have to pay, rather than the average market price of the credits;

• Allowing Alberta and other provinces to find their own way to hit the $130 threshold “subject to a small set of non-negotiable conditions” to ensure their programs meet the test for stringency—including benchmarks that get progressively tighter, minimum and maximum prices that shift over time, and limits on compliance options that dilute the carbon price’s impact;

• Requiring data that is transparent and credible enough to verify compliance;

• Tracking performance over time.

“Taken together,” they write, “these recommendations support a benchmark framework that verifies equivalency based on outcomes rather than optics while maintaining flexibility in provincial system design and strengthening confidence that industrial carbon pricing delivers federal climate objectives.”

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By Tik Root

The logic behind electric vehicles benefiting public health has long been solid: More EVs means fewer internal combustion engines on the road, and a reduction in harmful tailpipe emissions. But now researchers have confirmed, to the greatest extent yet, that this is indeed what’s actually happening on the ground. What’s more, they found that even relatively small upticks in EV adoption can have a measurably positive impact on a community.

Whereas previous work has largely been based on modeling, a study published this month in the journal Lancet Planetary Health used satellites to measure actual emissions. The study, conducted between 2019 and 2023, focused on California, which has among the highest rates of EV use in the country, and nitrogen dioxide, one of the gases released during combustion, including when fossil fuels are burned. Exposure to the pollutant can contribute to heart and lung issues, or even premature death. Across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes, the analysis showed that, for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen dioxide emissions decreased by 1.1 percent.

“A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution,” said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “It’s remarkable.”

The group had tried to establish this link using Environmental Protection Agency air monitors before, but because there are only about 100 of them in California, the results weren’t statistically significant. The data also were from 2013 through 2019, when there were fewer electric vehicles on the road. Although the satellite instrument they ultimately used only detected nitrogen dioxide, it did allow researchers to gather data for virtually the entire state, and this time the findings were clear.

“It’s making a real difference in our neighbourhoods,” said Eckel, who said a methodology like theirs could be used anywhere in the world. The advent of such powerful satellites allows scientists to look at other sources of emissions, such as factories or homes, too. “It’s a revolutionary approach.”

Mary Johnson, who researches environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was not involved in the study, said she’s not aware of a similar study of this size, or one that uses satellite data so extensively. “Their analysis seems sound,” she said, noting that the authors controlled for variables such as the COVID-19 pandemic and shifts toward working from home.

The results, Johnson added, “totally make sense” and align with other research in this area. When London implemented congestion pricing in 2003, for example, it reduced traffic and emissions and increased life expectancy. That is the direction this latest research could go too. “They didn’t take the next step and look at health data,” she said, “which I think would be interesting.”

Daniel Horton, who leads Northwestern University’s climate change research group, also sees value in this latest work. “The results help to confirm the sort of predictions that numerical air quality modellers have been making for the past decade,” he said, adding that it could also lay the foundation for similar research. “This proof of concept paper is a great start and augurs good things to come.”

Eckel hopes that, eventually, advances in satellite technology will allow for more widespread detection of other types of emissions too, such as fine particulate matter. That could even help account for some of the potential downsides of EVs, which are heavier and could therefore kick up more tire or brake dust than their gasoline counterparts. On the whole, though, she believes the picture overwhelmingly illustrates how driving an electric car is better not just for the planet but for people.

Research like this, she says, underscores the importance of continued EV adoption, the sales of which have slumped recently, and the need to do so equitably. Although lower-income neighbourhoods have historically borne the brunt of pollution from highways and traffic, they can’t always afford the relatively high cost of EVs. Eckel hopes that research like this can help guide policymakers.

“There are concerns that some of the communities that really stand to benefit the most from reductions in air pollution are also some of the communities that are really at risk of being left behind in the transition,” she said. Previous research has shown that EVs could alleviate harms such as asthma in children, and detailed data like this latest study can help highlight both where more work needs to be done and what’s working.

“It’s really exciting that we were able to show that there were these measurable improvements in the air that we’re all breathing,” she said. Another arguably hopeful finding was that the median increase in electric vehicle usage during the study was 272 per ZIP code.

That, Eckel says, means there is plenty of opportunity to make our air even cleaner.

Correction: This story originally misidentified the pollutant studied. It is nitrogen dioxide.

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The Canada Energy Regulator’s Market Snapshot: The rise of Canada’s carbon dioxide removal industry highlights how evolving policy frameworks, abundant natural resources and emerging technology developers are laying the foundation for an industry that may play an indispensable role in meeting Canada’s climate commitments.

CDR refers to a suite of technologies and processes that remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and store it permanently or use it in long-lived products. This can include direct air capture (DAC), biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS), enhanced rock weathering, carbon mineralization and ocean-based removal techniques. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, virtually all scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5°C involve large-scale deployment of CDR alongside deep emissions cuts.

The CER snapshot lays out how Canada’s combination of policy support, renewable energy resources, and geological storage opportunities creates conditions favourable to scaling such technologies domestically. It notes that 78 Canadian companies are currently active in the sector with 48 active and planned CDR projects, data visualized on the Carbon Removal Canada Carbon Console platform.

Federal climate policy is starting to reflect the importance of CDR. A key plank of Canada’s broader climate strategy is using government procurement to help create early demand for carbon removal services, with official commitments to purchase CDR projects that reduce government emissions. Such demand signals are crucial to making early projects economically viable.

Outside government, industry groups are pushing for a more robust policy framework. The Carbon Business Council, which represents more than 100 carbon removal companies, published a policy primer recommending a suite of federal actions — including stable tax incentives, clear regulatory frameworks and streamlined permitting — to unlock tens of billions in economic value and cement Canada’s leadership in the emerging global market. “Canada is positioned to lead on carbon removal with its abundant renewable energy, durable geological storage and expansive coastlines,” a council spokesperson said in a recent overview.

Independent analyses point to major economic upside if Canada scales its CDR industry. A 2023 report from Carbon Removal Canada, for example, estimated that widespread deployment of carbon removal solutions could create more than 300,000 jobs and add roughly $143 billion in GDP by 2050, all while advancing national climate goals.

Canada’s CDR landscape spans a range of technologies and business models. Montreal-based Deep Sky is one of the emerging players in the direct air capture space, developing pilot projects designed to capture hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO₂ annually using a range of capture pathways and geological storage options.

Elsewhere, CarbonCure Technologies, originally founded in Halifax, has been commercializing carbon mineralization technology that injects captured CO₂ into concrete, permanently storing it while improving strength — a model that has seen adoption in buildings and infrastructure projects worldwide.

Beyond land-based removal, recent reports have underscored the potential of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approaches, which leverage Canada’s vast coastlines. Analysis from the Ocean Supercluster suggests that ocean-based approaches could create tens of thousands of jobs and contribute significantly to long-term removal capacity if developed responsibly.

Despite the momentum, significant hurdles remain. Most CDR technologies are still at early commercial scales and costly relative to traditional emissions reductions, meaning sustained public and private investment will be necessary to drive down costs and build infrastructure at scale. The energy requirements for processes like direct air capture, potential environmental impacts of certain ocean-based methods, and the need for robust carbon storage networks are among the challenges noted by both the CER and independent research.

The CER snapshot also points to land-use conflicts, permitting issues and the need for transparent measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems that ensure CO₂ removals are real, permanent and additional.

Internationally, demand for carbon removal solutions is rising as companies and countries seek to address hard-to-abate emissions in sectors like steel, aviation and heavy industry. Global consultancies estimate the CDR market could be worth more than US$1 trillion by mid-century, a figure that underscores why countries with strong natural advantages — including renewable energy, geological storage and research capacity — are vying to establish early leadership.

Canada’s relative strength in these areas — blended with emerging policy and market signals — has attracted interest from major multinational corporations seeking removal credits as part of their climate strategies. Names such as Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify and Google have engaged with Canadian initiatives, reflecting a cross-sector push into removal markets.

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By Chris Bonasia

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“If the surveys to find geothermal sources are successful, we will radically change the energy paradigm of Tenerife,” Martínez said, pointing to geothermal’s potential to deliver continuous, weather-independent power.

Tenerife’s move comes amid growing global recognition of geothermal energy’s role in clean energy transitions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), geothermal generation can provide steady baseload electricity, helping to balance the variability of wind and solar power that increasingly dominate renewable portfolios worldwide. The IEA’s World Energy Outlook and technology briefs have underscored that geothermal’s firm output is a key advantage in grids with high shares of intermittent renewables.

Geothermal: a reliable complement to variable renewables

Unlike solar and wind, geothermal energy is available 24 hours a day and is not subject to weather fluctuations, a feature analysts say is particularly valuable for island grids with limited interconnections. Tenerife officials emphasize that baseload geothermal power could enable the island to integrate more renewable energy while reducing costly fossil-fuel backups.

“The ability to provide consistent capacity is what makes geothermal attractive,” said a renewable energy analyst based in Europe. “It’s one reason why islands and isolated grids are serious about it.”

A 2024 Reuters analysis of global energy strategies noted that several regions with volcanic geology — including parts of East Africa, Iceland and Japan — are advancing geothermal projects as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions and strengthen energy independence. That report highlighted both the promise and challenges of geothermal, noting that high upfront costs and drilling risks remain barriers in many markets.

Local and global industry context

Canadian geothermal developer Eavor Technologies — known for its “closed-loop” technology that conducts heat from rock formations rather than hot water reservoirs — has been expanding its footprint in Europe. Eavor and similar firms are gaining attention as utilities and governments look for dispatchable clean power solutions. Eavor’s project in Germany, for example, are being watched as test cases for scalable geothermal deployment outside traditional hydrothermal regions.

Climate and energy finance analysts also see geothermal as under-leveraged. A 2025 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) argued that geothermal, along with other firm-power technologies, should play a larger role in decarbonisation strategies. The IEEFA warned, however, that without supportive policy frameworks and risk-reducing incentives, geothermal investment could lag behind its potential.

Economic and environmental implications for Tenerife

For Tenerife, an island heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels, the economic stakes are significant. Geothermal energy could help lower electricity costs over the long-term and insulate the local economy from volatile global fuel prices. Officials also point to the relatively small land footprint of geothermal plants compared with large solar or wind farms, a factor that can ease conflicts over land use on densely populated islands.

Experts note that while the initial surveys are crucial, successful development will require further drilling, permitting and substantial capital investment. Even then, geothermal projects typically take longer to bring online than wind or solar.

Canary Islands aim to lead volcanic renewables

Tenerife’s initiative follows similar moves on La Palma and Gran Canaria, positioning the Canary Islands as a regional hub for geothermal and volcanic-geology renewable innovation. If Tenerife’s surveys confirm a viable resource, the islands could emerge as a testbed for clean energy deployment in volcanic settings — offering a model for other island regions worldwide.

With surveys set to begin in early 2026, Tenerife’s geothermal programme represents a bold step toward energy independence and decarbonisation, reflecting broader global interest in firm, low-carbon power solutions that complement variable renewable sources.

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By Justina C. Ray and Dave Poulton

Over the summer, the Canadian government announced that it’s setting up a Major Projects Office to identify and fast-track projects deemed to be in the national interest. The projects under consideration are spread across Canada and focus on mining, power generation and port expansions.

But each update to the list throws a spotlight on a persistent gap in Canada’s planning processes. The federal government has signalled it wants to see these projects move quickly — but without a clear way to help ensure they proceed without sacrificing the climate resilience, biodiversity or community trust that Canadians also value.

For example, the government has signalled interest in expanding the Port of Churchill, Man., with new shipping, road, rail and energy infrastructure to support expanded Atlantic access for Prairie industries.

These facilities would introduce industrial activity into Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems that have seen little prior disturbance and are already stressed by rapid climate change. The siting and design choices will be critical — raising questions about how early ecological risks are being weighed.

What Canada needs alongside its list of major projects is a principled, transparent sequence of steps that governs how those projects are planned and assessed.

Without such a strategy, the focus centres on pushing the project through. And planners and policymakers fail to consider those early, fundamental questions about ecological risk, or whether the location and design make sense in the first place.

Adopting a well-established mitigation hierarchy, as outlined in our recent report, can help Canada avoid the tangled and dysfunctional outcomes we see again and again in current planning and assessment processes.

In this context, mitigation refers to the full set of tools available to deal with environmental impacts, applied in a clear sequence or hierarchy: first avoiding impacts where possible, then minimizing those that remain, then repairing damage on site, and only as a last resort compensating for residual losses elsewhere.

Step 1: Avoid harm with early-stage planning

Too often planners focus only on reducing impacts after basic design decisions are made. This leaves decision-makers boxed into weaker options than if they had first asked what could be avoided — and it can be far costlier as late-stage fixes mean redesigns, deeper ecological damage and heightened conflict.

Effective planning requires backing up and taking in the big picture. What comes into view is a sweep of globally important, largely intact ecosystems — places that anchor our climate, support communities and sustain wildlife and their movements.

That means the first step in any sensible hierarchy is to steer development away from places like sensitive peatlands, areas important for biodiversity, cultural keystone places and headwaters that sustain vital watersheds.

Early-stage planning enables the most important questions to be asked: Is the proposed option the best means of meeting the need, or do lower-cost or less damaging alternatives exist? Are projected ecological, climate and community impacts supported by evidence of commensurate economic and social outcomes?

Answering these questions well depends on strong baseline information about ecosystems and communities — something too often missing at the outset, causing delays while data is gathered.

Governments can begin closing this gap by strengthening the evidence base needed to inform projects before they advance. This includes support for sustained regional ecological monitoring, Indigenous and community knowledge programs and fuller use of strategic and regional impact assessments. All of these measures can identify cumulative effects and landscape-level priorities and provide shared information for planning across entire regions.

Delivering on the Liberal commitment to “map Canada’s carbon and biodiversity-rich ecological landscapes … to enable a more holistic ecosystem approach to conservation, carbon accounting, and project development” would substantially advance and improve early-stage planning. Integrating existing data held by public agencies, private proponents and consultants would further clarify environmental strengths and vulnerabilities.

Step 2: Minimize harm that cannot be avoided

Only after fully considering ways to avoid impacts should the focus shift to minimizing unavoidable damage. This is where design and operational choices matter: adjusting scale, routing, timing and methods to reduce a project’s footprint and its effects.

In ecologically intact regions — places where human pressures have not yet reached levels that compromise core ecological functions — minimization also means confronting growth-inducing impacts head-on by limiting new access, managing roads and corridors and regulating the pace and scale of development to prevent cascading cumulative effects.

Done properly, minimization protects ecological function and reduces long-term environmental, social, and financial liabilities for proponents.

Step 3: Remediate to make impacts temporary

Once all feasible steps for minimization have been taken, it becomes appropriate to move on to onsite remediation — rendering unavoidable impacts temporary through progressive reclamation, revegetation and decommissioning.

Prioritizing remediation in already stressed landscapes reduces cumulative effects, restores ecological function and builds trust by demonstrating recovery during the life of a project, not decades later.

Step 4: Offsetting is the last tool, not the first

The final step in the mitigation hierarchy is offsetting — the idea of restoring or protecting habitat elsewhere to compensate for what is lost to development. In theory, this promises no net loss, or even a net gain.

In reality, it’s the riskiest and least reliable form of mitigation, which is why it must be treated as a last resort. When offsetting is used in isolation, long after a project’s design is locked in, it becomes a poor substitute for the harder, but more valuable, work of avoiding and minimizing impacts at the outset.

As we stress in our report, that kind of sequencing failure matters. Once decisions are made and footprints fixed, ecological losses can no longer be undone, and offsets are expected to carry a burden they cannot realistically bear.

Offsetting should therefore function as a backstop — not a shortcut. Yet, it is frequently looked to as if it were the first tool in the box rather than the last.

A unified federal policy framework

Deploying the mitigation hierarchy is a technically simple approach to project planning, and it can make a substantial difference in getting projects built without unnecessary delays.

It requires a planning mindset open to alternatives and a willingness to invest early in understanding ecosystems and community needs. The hierarchy also aligns with Indigenous perspectives that view natural systems as interconnected, offering pathways for more meaningful engagement.

There is nothing new about this approach. The mitigation hierarchy has guided major-project planning and financing in other countries for decades and appears — albeit inconsistently — across several federal policies. But in this moment of renewed ambition for “nation-building” projects, Canada has an opportunity to bring coherence and discipline to the management of environmental and social impacts.

This is why we are calling for a unified federal policy framework, so that the mitigation hierarchy is applied consistently across federally supported projects. A clear hierarchy — applied early, consistently and transparently — would make decisions stronger, projects more credible and our commitments to biodiversity, climate, and Indigenous rights more than words on paper.

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by Bob Weber

The year 1539 was a good one to be King of England.

Henry VIII, the reigning monarch, had a free hand on royal marriages, state religion, church property, and such. But those pesky Parliamentarians didn’t always move as quickly or as agreeably as he would have liked.

So he had his fixer Thomas Cromwell come up with the Statute of Proclamations, which gave Henry the power, exercised through decree, to alter any law, with those decrees having the same force as if Parliament had voted for them.

It was not popular with the commoners. The Act was repealed in 1547 and history’s verdict has been harsh. One 18th-century jurist said it “was calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny,” and it is still considered the height of Henry’s will to power.

But legislation giving the whip hand to the executive branch of government, which scholars call King Henry the Eighth clauses, is still around. One such clause is prominent in the Carney government’s new Building Canada Act (BCA). It’s a major reason observers say the legislation marks a big shift in power to the prime minister and cabinet and away from the courts, Parliament—and the public.

“Cabinet, with cabinet secrecy, can pass a regulation that changes a law duly passed by Parliament,” Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary resource law professor who testified before a Senate committee on the bill, told The Energy Mix in an interview. “That’s really radical.”

The Building Canada Act was hustled through Parliament last summer in less than a month. It was presented as a response to the perceived need to speed up environmental approvals for large industrial developments, responding in turn to the undoubted threats to the Canadian economy posed by the current United States government. Here, briefly, is how it works.

Project proponents who feel their idea is “nation-building” can apply to the Major Projects Office, a new agency created by the legislation. That office measures the proposal against five goals, including “whether a project will contribute to clean growth and addressing climate change,” according to the recent federal budget.

The office is to ensure both First Nations and provincial governments have been adequately consulted. It then makes a recommendation to the minister of internal trade. After 30 days to ensure the provinces and territories are onside, the minister can then declare the proposal a Project of National Interest, (PONI). Dawn Farrell, CEO of the Major Projects Office, told a House committee she hopes a decision on designation will take four or five months. The discussion will then change from whether to proceed, to how.

Who Wouldn’t Want a PONI?

Supporters say the legislation eliminates the need for companies to answer questions twice, once at an environmental assessment and again when they request permits from federal departments for specific actions—say, building a stream crossing.

“Half the job is getting through environmental assessment, getting your capital together, and announcing the project,” said Dave Nikolejsin, an adviser at the McCarthy Tétrault law firm and the former provincial deputy minister who oversaw natural gas development in British Columbia. “The other half, and sometimes the tougher half, is actually getting it built.”

Speaking on a podcast by the ARC Energy Research Institute, Nikolejsin said “What drives proponents crazy is they will go through massive expense and time to do a baseline study as part of an environmental assessment. Then they have to do it again when they turn to get their permits.”

A blog from the law firm Bennett Jones, which often represents fossil energy companies, made a similar point: “By cutting red tape and coordinating project approvals more efficiently, the MPO represents a significant effort by the federal government toward ensuring that Canadian infrastructure can be advanced to attract investors and boost the competitiveness of Canada’s project execution timing.”

Stacking the Deck

Well and good. Environmental groups and concerned citizens aren’t any keener than businesses to spend time and money in court or endless regulatory hearings. But observers suggest the Building Canada Act has stacked the deck, dealing aces to those in power and jokers to everyone else.

“Parliament has given cabinet really unprecedented power to exempt projects from environmental laws, in effect giving cabinet what are effectively law-making powers,” Anna Johnston, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, told The Mix.

Pierre-Alain Bujold of the Privy Council Office disputed this characterization in an email to The Mix. “Designation under the Act does not exempt projects from federal laws listed,” he wrote. “It provides upfront clarity and coordination, allowing projects to advance while maintaining protections for the environment and Indigenous rights, with reviews occurring simultaneously rather than consecutively”

“Once reviews are complete, the Minister responsible for the Act (the Minister of One Canadian Economy) issues a single, binding set of public conditions for the project, including mitigation measures.”

Still, questions begin with how PONIs are designated. Most projects won’t be.

Only a small minority of resource projects in Canada trigger a federal assessment. For those that might, Ottawa’s five criteria to determine which ones go through the magic gate are extremely broad. They ask if the project will improve Canada’s autonomy and security, if it will bring economic “or other” benefits, the likelihood of success, impact on First Nations, and environmental and climate effects. Opponents say they are so woolly that—except on the issue of First Nations rights—it would be extremely hard to challenge a project designation in court.

“The act was designed to give huge discretion to federal cabinet,” said Johnston. “It has such broad discretionary powers that I think the possibility of successful legal challenge would be difficult.”

An Environmental Assessment. Sort Of.

A designated PONI would still be subject to an environmental assessment. Sort of.

Before the Act, proponents were required to go through a six-month planning period before beginning their assessment. “That was an avenue for public input,” Johnston said. “That was where we were going to figure out what questions we were going to ask.”

Now, that’s gone, she said. “If you’re a PONI, you have to go through an impact assessment, but you start at the assessment phase, you don’t start at the planning phase.”

The planning period did sometimes spawn the kind of litigation that created crazy-making delays, but Olszynski told The Mix that dropping it shifts power significantly. “Removing that six-month planning period puts the responsibility for setting the terms of reference exclusively in the hands of the proponent.”

Government documents don’t address how reviews will be designed. They only stipulate they will occur. “Projects will continue to be subject to all regulatory review processes that would ordinarily apply to the project.”

The BCA hobbles environmental assessment and public involvement in other ways. Project proponents have been required by law to evaluate their proposals through certain lenses—consideration of cumulative effects, for example. Whether those lenses have been donned are often at the heart of legal disputes.

But PONI projects are “deemed” to have already met such requirements—even if we don’t know whether they have or not. And once something is deemed, it’s done, immune from judicial review.

“If we have any semblance of environmental law in this country, it’s because the courts have pushed that,” Olszynski said. “The fact they are being squeezed out of this space is not good.”

And if regulations are violated, thanks to our old friend King Henry, cabinet can simply alter them. “Cabinet can make a regulation exempting a project from any of the environmental laws,” said Johnston. Hearings may still be held, but the outcome is predetermined.

“It’s just a question of how, not whether,” said Olszynski.

Still, King Henry has his supporters. Nikolejsin sees the mechanism of deemed approval as “something huge (the BCA) has going for it.” As he sees it, that’s the scrubber which will scour away duplication and delay: “If you get through enough gates, whatever that’s going to look like, everything else is supposed to become about expediting things like permits.”

There are still some checks. Safety regulations from the Canadian Energy Regulator and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission aren’t subject to alteration. The BCA requires provincial consent for projects that concern exclusive provincial jurisdiction. And cabinet can remove a project’s PONI designation if, say, it’s deemed to ask for too much deeming.

Is This Legal?

You may ask yourself: is any of this legal? Well, maybe. Neither the Constitution nor common law guarantees public input into regulatory matters.

Or maybe not. Johnston said health and safety issues could provide grounds for constitutional challenges. As well, previous court rulings have found the government must consider all relevant information in regulatory decisions, something the BCA may inhibit.

“Even if the government went in and changed the regulations, that wouldn’t change the court rulings,” she said. “We’re in a legal grey area.”

The Quebec Environmental Law Centre is challenging the BCA in Quebec Superior Court. “The Act allows an excessive encroachment on provincial powers and delegates too much power to the federal government such that the population and the courts lose their ability to effectively control government decisions,” lawyer Marc Bishai told The Mix.

He said that while the BCA requires Ottawa to consult with provinces, that doesn’t mean provincial concerns will be heeded. “Consultation is one thing, but it can be set aside.” The Act also allows provinces to delegate powers to the federal government, something the Constitution forbids, he added.

Finally, he argues King Henry VIII has no place in a modern democracy. “By removing the levers that usually exist to control government decisions, this Act puts at risk the ability of courts to effectively verify whether those government decisions are legal,” he said. “That power of judicial review is protected by the Constitution. The ability of Parliament to reduce or set aside that role of the courts is limited.”

Of course, it’s early days for the BCA. So far, the government has only referred proposals to the Major Projects Office for PONI consideration, 11 of them at last count. As yet, there are no actual PONIs in the stable and no one knows what the process will actually look like. Farrell told the House committee that she expects no more than one or two projects will become PONIs. Still, she added that her office has received 500 applications and the Globe and Mail reported there are 32 projects on the potential list—a reminder that, with a law that hands such open-ended power to cabinet, anything could happen.

“How it’s going to be implemented fundamentally depends on who’s in power,” said Olszynski. “You could do radical things with this bill, if a government wanted to.”

Somewhere, King Henry is smiling.

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The study, Building One Canadian Economy: Accelerating adoption of lower-carbon concrete in Ontario and Alberta, argues that aligning provincial and federal approaches to concrete standards and procurement would support Canadian innovation, protect existing jobs and position the country as a leader in clean construction.

“Canada can build better and smarter with lower-carbon concrete — helping create ‘One Canadian Economy’ that strengthens communities, supports high-quality jobs and secures a competitive, future-ready economy,” said Kari Hyde, Manager of Utility Integration and Demand-Side Management at the Pembina Institute. Hyde said modernising specifications, adopting Buy Clean-style procurement and investing in workforce readiness can “demonstrate national clean construction leadership.”

Concrete is the second most widely consumed material on earth after water, and its core ingredient, cement, is highly emissions-intensive. Global research cited by the International Energy Agency and others estimates cement and concrete account for roughly 7–8 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. An NPR climate series has described concrete as “emissions-intensive” even as demand continues to grow, highlighting Canadian firm CarbonCure among companies working to store CO₂ permanently in concrete.

In Canada, cement alone accounts for about 1.5 per cent of national greenhouse-gas emissions, and the federal government has adopted a Roadmap to Net-Zero Carbon Concrete by 2050 to guide industry and policy makers.

At the same time, the sector plays a significant economic role. According to the Pembina report, concrete production supports more than 166,000 jobs and contributes $76 billion annually to Canada’s economy. In Alberta, the cement and concrete industry generates $16 billion a year and supports 39,000 jobs; in Ontario, the sector contributes $26 billion and supports 62,000 jobs across mining, manufacturing, construction and engineering. Nearly one-third of all concrete in Canada is purchased by governments, underlining the importance of public procurement as a potential driver of market change.

The Pembina report recommends that provinces modernise concrete codes and standards by shifting from prescriptive requirements to performance-based specifications, and by improving alignment across provinces and municipalities. Under performance-based approaches, producers are required to meet defined strength, durability and safety outcomes, but have flexibility to use lower-carbon mixes, supplementary cementitious materials or new technologies to achieve those results.

The report argues that fragmented and prescriptive standards can slow adoption of new materials, raise costs for suppliers operating in multiple jurisdictions and discourage investment in lower-carbon options. Harmonising standards, Pembina says, would reduce regulatory friction and help build “one Canadian economy” in which producers can scale up cleaner products for a national market.

Eduard Cubi, Associate Principal at engineering firm Introba, said the current “nation-building moment” — marked by major infrastructure and housing needs — is the right time to align regulation and procurement with lower-carbon materials. “It is critical that we shape the Canadian regulatory landscape and procurement processes to enable and support the production and adoption of lower-carbon concrete,” he said.

The IEA’s 2024 Breakthrough Agenda work on cement similarly calls for governments and industry to revise standards and accounting rules by 2025 to support net-zero-compatible cement and concrete, underscoring the importance of consistent, interoperable methods for measuring embodied carbon.

With governments purchasing a large share of concrete used in Canada, Pembina identifies public procurement as a central tool for accelerating lower-carbon mixes. The report urges provinces to align with the federal Treasury Board’s Standard on Embodied Carbon in Construction, which requires a 10 per cent reduction in embodied carbon for ready-mix concrete used in federal projects.

Pembina says adopting this standard provincially and municipally would create predictable, technology-neutral demand signals and give producers confidence to invest in new production methods. It also recommends that provinces use carbon-pricing revenues and other fiscal tools to help offset early costs and support private-sector procurement of lower-carbon concrete.

Internationally, Reuters reporting shows that major building-materials companies are already repositioning for a low-carbon concrete market. In July, Ireland-based CRH announced a US$2.1 billion deal to acquire Eco Material Technologies, a U.S. producer of near-zero-carbon cement using supplementary cementitious materials, as part of its strategy to expand its North American low-carbon product portfolio. In June, Heidelberg Materials reported it had sold out its 2025 production of evoZero, a net-zero cement produced at a carbon-capture-equipped plant in Brevik, Norway.

These moves, according to the Reuters reports, reflect growing demand from developers and public clients looking to cut the climate impact of construction materials.

Beyond policy and procurement, Pembina stresses that workforce readiness is essential to ensure lower-carbon concrete is deployed correctly and at scale. The report calls for consolidating existing technical guidance, expanding training and developing a practical toolkit for designers, engineers and municipal decision-makers.

Such a toolkit, the authors say, should include design guidance, case studies, model specifications, and clear pathways for integrating lower-carbon concrete into public tenders and project approvals, particularly in Ontario and Alberta where infrastructure spending is significant.

Global market and policy signals suggest a rapidly changing landscape. The World Economic Forum’s 2024 Net-Zero Industry Tracker and related analysis estimate that low-emission clinker and cement still represent less than one per cent of global production, but note that investment and innovation are accelerating across the value chain.

Market research cited by financial outlets indicates that the global “green cement” market is expanding quickly, with valuations in the tens of billions of dollars and projected annual growth rates in the high single to low double digits to 2030.

For Pembina, this global context reinforces the case for coordinated Canadian action. The report argues that if Ontario and Alberta move early to harmonise standards and embed embodied-carbon targets in procurement, they can signal stable demand, support local manufacturing and ensure Canadian producers capture a larger share of the emerging low-carbon materials market.

Pembina’s report aligns its recommendations with existing federal initiatives, such as the net-zero cement and concrete roadmap and the embodied-carbon standard for federal projects.

As governments at all levels prepare for significant infrastructure spending over the next decade, the report concludes that integrating lower-carbon concrete into codes, contracts and training now could help Canada cut emissions while reinforcing the economic foundations of its construction and manufacturing sectors.

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