Major Canadian institutional investors including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Bank of Montreal’s Global Asset Management group and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan have announced support for shareholders’ resolutions urging Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. to “stress test” their operations against a climate-adjusted future. While Exxon and Chevron both conduct their own analysis of climate […]
Tag: Climate Change
Climate Risk: Corporate Canada’s Blind Spot
Although the many risks and opportunities posed by climate change are increasingly understood and recognized, Canadian companies have only begun integrating this knowledge into their business models, strategic plans, policies, measurements and reporting systems. Recent weeks have seen numerous developments aimed at encouraging better disclosure of climate risks and enforcing transparency requirements. To help make sense […]
Enforcing Transparency on Climate Risk: Recent Developments
As climate-related concerns and disclosures continue to gain profile, recent weeks have seen numerous developments aimed at encouraging better disclosure of climate risks and enforcing transparency requirements. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that ExxonMobil’s (Exxon) shareholders are entitled to important climate change information. States across the U.S. are banding together to explore the […]
Prime Minister and First Ministers Will Work Towards Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change
Prime Minister Trudeau and provincial premiers emerged from the First Ministers meeting held in Vancouver last week announcing an agreement to work towards a national climate change plan. On March 3, 2016, Canada’s First Ministers issued a joint communiqué and released the Vancouver Declaration on Clean Growth and Climate Change (the Declaration), which outlines the consensus reached at the […]
3 Reasons Organizations and Investors Should Care About Climate Risk
Climate change is not just an environmental issue; it’s a core business issue. The transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy is underway, with increasing investor attention and rapid regulatory change driving a renewed interest to understand, plan for, and thrive in, a climate adjusted future. As Prime Minister Trudeau prepares to give a keynote address […]
The Paris Agreement is a Universal Call to Action and a Market Signal to Heed
Historic Global Climate Agreement is Reached COP 21 in Paris was historic. On December 12, 2015, after long days of negotiations and hours pouring over draft text, 195 nations who are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement to decarbonize the economy, work collectively to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and […]
Private Sector: The United Nations is calling…
I’ve been attending UN Climate Summits off and on since I was a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation that went to the Bali negotiations in 2007. At that point in time, I was an articling student and recent grad from law school, fresh from taking deep intellectual dives into the academic literature on international environmental law. Being […]
United Nations Climate Summit, Paris COP 21: Welcoming Pragmatic Action and A Conversation
Delegates are boarding planes, trains and other modes of transportation on their way to Paris to participate in the most anticipated United Nations Climate Summit since Copenhagen in 2009. This year’s conference has a different mood than past conferences. It’s been sobered by terrorist attacks, extreme weather challenges, economic crisis and austerity measures. It’s taking […]
Shareholders Sue U.S. Corporation for Improper Disclosure of Environmental Liabilities
Shareholders and investors are increasingly asking for more information on environmental risks and liabilities. Investors in the United States filed a securities class action lawsuit claiming that a Florida-based corporation misled them by providing inadequate information about the company’s environmental clean-up costs. The lawsuit names Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc. (RYAM), a company specializing in the production of […]
Paper: Canada Electricity Generation and Transmission Sectors’ Action and Awareness
This primer provides an overview of the concept of embodied carbon and describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to calculate and minimize life cycle GHG impacts from construction projects. It draws on the lessons learned from a recent case study that calculated the embodied carbon of a new commercial building in Toronto […]