The Government of Canada has announced a target to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) in federal government operations by 80% by 2050. As assistant deputy minister, real property services, Kevin Radford has his work cut out, with a remit that includes 7.1 million square metres of building space. But unlike much of the rest of the country, his department has already achieved a 54% reduction of GHGs from the 2005 baseline. “To hit the 80% target, we have to get into really deep green retrofits,” says Radford, “which requires a whole new way of looking at upgrades.”

The Republican-led U.S. Senate may have rejected the Green New Deal March 26th, but climate advocates aren't deterred.

Looking to own the anti-Trump vote in next year’s elections, the Democrats have been rallying around the Republicans’ greatest nightmare: the Green New Deal (GND). The ambitious, but non-binding, resolution submitted to Congress in February proposes to eliminate “pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible” over 10 years. It would also require the U.S. to shift away from fossil fuels in favour of “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources.”

For some people, creating a more perfect world will involve giving up meat or switching to an electric car. For big organizations, sustainability starts with a more daunting challenge: signing on to a maze of new paperwork and regulations. But 2019 may go down as the year that the pressure to comply hit critical mass.

Exhibit A: The London-based Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has just announced that, as of next year, it will require its 2,250 signatories to formally report how they have considered specific climate-change risks in their investment portfolios. These signatories represent global institutional investors with US$83 trillion in assets.

The latest report from the International Energy Agency warns that a rise in coal use is fueling a global increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The IEA called out Asia as the source of the majority of coal-fired generation. But while Beijing has garnered attention for attempting to crackdown on urban pollution from coal, China is aggressively exporting coal technology abroad.

As [miners] tunnel through the rocks,

They discover precious stones…

But where can wisdom be found?

—Job 28. (Good News Translation)

The grimy world of coal production brightened briefly in February, when Swiss mining giant Glencore announced it would cap its global production of thermal and coking coal at its current capacity of 150 million tonnes per year. Glencore promised to refocus on metals such as cobalt, nickel, vanadium and zinc, key battery components for a lower-carbon world.

Last month, the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority voted to close two aging coal-fired power plants. No tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump could save them.

Despite the White House’s efforts to prop up the coal industry, the U.S. was on track to shut down more coal plants in 2018 than in any other year. “The thing that has changed fundamentally the whole picture is that renewables have gotten so cheap,” says Jim Barry, global head of BlackRock's infrastructure investment group. BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager with US$6.29 trillion in assets under management.

As awareness dawns of the increasing risks of climate change, business and government have developed new tools and mechanisms to promote pro-social and environmentally friendly investment. But one U.K. analyst is pointing out that such high standards could backfire by restricting capital to many developing nations that need it most.

Charles Robertson is the London-based global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, an investment bank specializing in emerging markets. As the lead author of The Fastest Billion: The Story Behind Africa’s Economic Revolution (2012), Robertson has a genuine interest in helping developing countries succeed – and thinks they deserve a break from well-meaning financial engineering.