Andrew McAllan receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Real Estate  •  Canada Green Building Council

The Canada Green Building Council has recognized Andrew McAllan for his dedication to the Council as an exceptional leader in green building and commercial real estate for over 30 years elevating CaGBC’s role in these industries with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dream Impact Trust: New name and sharper focus

Real Estate  •  RENX

Dream Hard Asset Alternatives Trust is narrowing its focus to investments that generate strong financial returns and provide positive social and environmental impacts that will include affordable housing, energy-efficient and reduced carbon footprint buildings, and inclusive communities.

CIB executive offers insights into $2B retrofit spend

Real Estate  •  Daily Commercial News

Panellists speaking at a recent green building webinar made a powerful case that building retrofits will not only become a major growth sector in the construction industry but will also play a significant role in Canada’s plans to create jobs post-pandemic and meet GHG reduction targets.

Global net zero housing is already possible: Study

Real Estate  •  Daily Commercial News

A study, published as part of a cross-sector partnership including senior members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, finds the technology and skills already exist to achieve net- or nearly-zero energy building in nearly every part of the world at costs in the range of those of traditional projects.

Tims, Burger King to offer reusable, returnable containers

Real Estate  •  CBC  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)  •  CTV

Tim Hortons and Burger King have signed a deal with TerraCycle’s Loop program to test an option that would allow customers to pay a deposit and receive their order in reusable, returnable cups and food packaging.

Bacardi to use biodegradable spirits bottle by 2023

Energy  •  Environmental Leader

Bacardi has unveiled plans to put the world’s most sustainable spirits bottle on the shelf by 2023. The new 100% biodegradable bottle will replace 80 million plastic bottles – or 3,000 tons of plastic – currently produced by Bacardi across its portfolio of brands every year.

Rethinking the role of sustainability reports

Real Estate  •  Greenbiz

Corporate sustainability has a reporting problem. Companies typically don’t enjoy creating them and investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders like reading them. This disconnect is addressed in thinkPARALLAX report The New Era of Reporting: How to Engage Investors on ESG.

Decoding the disinformation machine

Real Estate  •  GreenBiz

How did a person of seemingly reasonable intelligence totally buy the idea that the pandemic was some kind of political play? How were the messages and stories constructed and served up to him that caused him to believe that?

Edmonton approves zoning for contentious solar farm

Real Estate  •  CBC  •  Global News

Edmonton city council has approved a rezoning for a contentious 51-acre solar farm from Epcor located near the E.L. Smith Water Treatment Plant, which includes about 45,000 solar panels with a peak generating capacity of about 12 megawatts.

The green hydrogen revolution is now underway

Real Estate  •  Forbes  •  Business Day

While renewables are now the fastest growing energy industry, hydrogen is following closely behind in a massive gale. The 21^st century will likely witness the rise of a mega-billion hydrogen fuel industry. Countries are taking first steps – and it’s breathtaking.

Fossil fuels are rapidly losing favour with investors

Energy  •  Climate News Network  •  Environmental Leader  •  Environmental Leader

Everyone has heard of ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest companies but does the name NextEra Energy ring a bell, a Florida-based company that claims it is the largest producer of wind and solar energy has surpassed the size of ExxonMobil.

Feds contribute $100M to study how to reduce oil’s impact

Real Estate  •  Globe and Mail (Sub. required)

The federal government says it will provide $100 million from its strategic innovation fund over four years to accelerate the development and use of technologies to lower the oil and gas industry’s environmental impact.

CPP fund pursues a cleaner planet

Real Estate  •  Contributed to the Toronto Star  •  Toronto Star

Economic recovery has to focus on long-term well-being

Real Estate  •  Corporate Knights

Rather than continuing to rely on gross domestic product (GDP) growth as the central measure of success, Canada should make sure its COVID-19 recovery plan gives equal – if not more – weight to enhancing the country’s comprehensive wealth portfolio.

The fail to protect First Nations against food scarcity: report

Real Estate  •  Globe and Mail

A Human Rights Watch report details the myriad challenges First Nations people are confronting trying to acquire healthy food – from thin ice cover on traditional hunting routes to biodiversity loss, unpredictable winter roads, shorter hunting seasons and lower fish yields.

Critics say Powerex’s bonus structure at odds climate action plans

Energy  •  Globe and Mail

Clean Energy BC, which represents independent power producers (IPP) said in regulatory filings that executive bonuses at Powerex are an integral part of incentives for importing and exporting electricity, placing profit from trading ahead of whether electricity supplies are green.

Why we need energy sufficiency as well as efficiency

Energy  •  TreeHugger

Everybody talks about efficiency using less energy to do a given task. But it often seems like we are not really getting anywhere; as cars got more efficient, they got bigger. As windows and building materials got more efficient, we got Bjarke. That’s why we have been banging on about sufficiency.

Groundswell seeks microgrid resilience for communities

Real Estate  •  Microgrid Knowledge

The Obama administration’s former chief sustainability officer, Michelle Moore is CEO of non-profit project developer Groundswell, an organization that brings solar energy to low-income communities that is currently focused on microgrids with its first projects planned for Baltimore and Atlanta.

IKEA to build solar plus storage microgrid in Australia

Real Estate  •  Microgrid Knowledge

Retail giant IKEA is set to help power a microgrid initiative in South Australia where a store will be powered with a 1.2 MW roof-top solar PV installation and 3.4 MWh of electricity storage that will also support a wider microgrid network.

Tesla hits its ‘best quarter in history’ in Q3

Energy  •  Green Tech Media  •  Environmental Leader

Electric car leader Tesla showed investors Wednesday that it can make substantial quarterly profits when it reported a record number of cars in Q3, created a record $1.4 billion free cash flow, achieved record profitability, and is building three new factories.