Energy

Canada passed a law to reduce emissions and waste from its operations late on Thursday, after rejecting a bid to link public servant pay to meeting environmental targets.

The premiers of two oil-producing provinces called on the Senate to force the Trudeau government’s new environmental assessment regime to take into account the economic benefits of fossil fuel projects.

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

Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is planning to award a multimillion dollar grant to a non-profit organization that will take on a watchdog role, holding the federal government to account for its climate change commitments and policies, says a spokeswoman from her office.

“Put bluntly, if we are to meet the emissions targets that are implied by the Paris agreement, then we know already that we have too many fossil fuel reserves out there that are recoverable,” said Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change in the U.K.

Quebec has edged closer to increased hydroelectric power exports to Massachusetts after Maine’s new governor signed onto a deal to get a transmission corridor built.

Indigenous leaders and environmental groups vowed the Trans Mountain pipeline would never be built after the National Energy Board issued a second go-ahead on Friday.

For a second time, the NEB has recommended that the federal government should approve the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

It is an election year and all of our organizations - the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Urban Public Health Network, the Canadian Public Health Association, and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment – agree that climate change is too important to health to be treated as a wedge issue in in the upcoming federal election.

Banking leaders from around the world were told if they want to slow climate change, they must imagine a bold new economic system that works with Indigenous communities, scales up and takes risks. 

Alberta's NDP government says that sharp reductions in pollution from electricity production over the past two years prove that carbon pricing is effective.

The National Energy Board has declined a request to consider all of the climate change impacts as part of its review of the Trans Mountain expansion project.

Alberta will spend billions of dollars and hopes to make billions more as it brings in 4,400 rail cars starting as early as July to move a crude backlog in the oil sands industry as pipeline projects face mounting troubles. 

'You would have to go out of your way to make it this bad'

Gerald Butts, a long-time friend and advisor of Justin Trudeau, has resigned his position in the prime minister's office due to the fallout from the SNC-Lavalin scandal.