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.