2024 is coming to a close, but Generate Canada is just getting started
2024 has been a year of growth and ambition here at Generate Canada. In July, we launched our new brand and shared our evolved story with the world, providing us with a refreshed platform to connect with partners and fellow problem-solvers.
In collaboration with partners across our Solution Spaces, we faced wicked challenges with resolve and made progress on necessary solutions. The work of reshaping and reorienting markets and supply chains to achieve better outcomes for people, our economies, and nature cannot be done alone. Nor can it be done in the span of 12 months. So, our reflections about what we achieved in 2024 are matched only by our excitement about what we can do together in 2025.
We know that Canada needs to increase its investments in nature in order to reduce the impacts of climate change, support species and habitats at risk, improve health and well-being of communities and create a more resilient economy. That’s why in 2024, Generate Canada launched a new Solution Space, The Nature Investment Hub (NIH), with the ambition of setting Canada’s conservation finance agenda.
NIH is a meeting place for conservation organizations, Indigenous governments, organizations and communities, the private sector, and others, to advance a shared conservation finance agenda for Canada, and significantly increase investment in nature.
Aligned with this work, our partners, Smart Prosperity Institute and Nature United released a report demonstrating the business case for investing in natural climate solutions, including five investment-ready hotspots.
What’s ahead in 2025?: On the cusp of the new year, the Hub is celebrating its one-year anniversary, welcoming new leadership with Dr. Priya Bala-Miller, and announcing eight new partners from the conservation, investor, and philanthropy worlds. Stepping into this next year with new leadership and a broadened coalition of powerful players signals accelerated action ahead on mapping out a conservation finance agenda in Canada.
Keeping the right plastics in the economy and all plastics out of people, animals, and nature requires both upstream and downstream solutions, and a lot of collaboration too.
Looking to make an upstream change with tangible impact, Canada Plastics Pact (CPP) launched two Reuse Accelerators to scale reuse/refill solutions across Canada to tackle single-use plastic waste. Partially funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada, this initiative invested in EcoTank Canada and Canadian Tire Corporation, to expand bulk windshield washer dispensers across Ontario and Quebec, and Friendlier to scale reusable packaging at post secondary education campuses in Ontario and British Columbia.
Another way CPP convened players across the plastics value chain to develop solutions was through the exclusive knowledge series they co-hosted alongside the U.S. Plastics Pact. In bringing industry players together, they were able to identify innovative ways to address some of the technical challenges in transitioning to easier-to-recycle materials like mono-material flexibles and films. This downstream approach helped to push conversations into real solutions.
What’s ahead in 2025?: In 2025, the Canada Plastics Pact will release the next phase of its journey: the Roadmap to 2035. Building on the progress of the past four years, this roadmap charts Canada’s path to a circular economy for plastic packaging and outlines the critical role CPP will play in driving this transition.
It’s hard to know what impact your climate-smart farming practices are having (and get compensated for those positive changes) if you don’t have an accurate way to measure them. A Monitoring, Measuring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) system is a key component to accurately measure the benefits of climate-smart farming practices—whether that’s improving soil health, biodiversity, or water quality.
However, measuring soil carbon can be particularly time and cost-intensive. In an effort to alleviate these barriers for farmers, CANZA introduced a Framework for Building a Monitoring, Measuring, Reporting and Verification System (MRV) of Soil Organic Carbon, providing farmers with the tools to improve the accuracy and scalability of optimized sampling plans and in-field technology-based methods for soil carbon measurement.
This year, CANZA put this framework into action with two pilot projects where they tested three new carbon measurement technologies on farms in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The pilots resulted in a decrease of sampling costs for farmers in comparison to traditional laboratory methods as well as indicated the ability for the sampling plan to be implemented in diverse crop systems and geographical locations. These results highlight that CANZA is on the right path to creating an easy-to-implement and cost effective MRV system for soil carbon.
In partnership with BCG and the Canadian Biogas Association, CANZA also published a tool for farmers who are curious about reducing their emissions by tapping into Canada’s biogas opportunity (and published an episode of The Ag Podcast on the same subject).
What’s ahead in 2025?: CANZA is scaling up its pilot projects to continue refining and validating the cost efficiency and effectiveness of its innovative soil carbon sampling plan. The CANZA team will continue bringing stakeholders together to advance projects aimed at building an environmental outcomes marketplace that will unlock stackable benefits for both farmers and the environment.
This year, the Energy Futures Lab has been galvanizing support for emerging, net-zero industries with potential to transform and diversify Alberta’s economic and energy landscape. Underpinning this vision is the need for clean electricity generation as an enabler of these opportunities. The Lab released Leading the Charge: A Vision for Alberta’s Electricity Future—a beacon for Alberta’s electricity system developed with Alberta’s Electricity Future Coalition and other contributors.
The Lab also announced Alberta’s Electricity Future Leadership Council, which includes electricity leaders and experts representing diverse perspectives from within the system and regions within Alberta. This leadership council is providing strategic advice to project teams on the ground who are prototyping solutions that can be actioned and scaled within Alberta’s electricity landscape.
In addition to this work, the Lab conducted a comprehensive study in partnership with the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Transition Accelerator to analyze Alberta’s Future Energy Competitiveness within the energy system and identify the low-carbon industries that are poised to scale and have the strongest export market potential.
Guided by this analysis, they are now engaging communities across the province to further explore and validate these opportunities through on-the-ground convening. Local leadership is needed to bridge the economic potential with regional strengths to unlock potential and foster economic growth and resilience as global markets shift.
What’s ahead in 2025?: We look forward to celebrating the Energy Futures Lab’ s 10th anniversary with an ‘all-stars’ Fellowship cohort, testing high-potential pathways for sustainable economic diversification in Alberta with communities across the province, and helping highlight the Canadian energy players who are walking the talk on energy transition.
If government, business and industry all work from the same playbook, they are able to overcome common barriers and implement circular practices with greater efficiency.
Take the construction industry. The traditional linear ‘take-make-waste’ model is deeply embedded in industry supply chains, construction techniques, and mindsets so it takes a well-coordinated effort to make a significant shift toward circular practices.
This year, our Circular Economy Leadership Canada (CELC) Solution Space collaborated with their partner CSA to develop a strategic framework for the construction industry that builds awareness of circular construction methods, educates industry participants about the benefits they can gain by using them, and sharing and celebrating successful projects to encourage more folks to shift their practices towards circularity.
CELC also launched the Government-to-Government Circular Economy Policy Incubator. This initiative is providing a platform for delegates across all levels of government to collaborate and engage in dialogue around the status of current circular economy efforts. By carving out space for peer-to-peer dialogue, governments are able to explore opportunities for future collaboration and coordination to advance circularity-related policy in Canada.
What’s ahead in 2025?: We’re looking forward to furthering the collaboration happening across Canada and beyond by bringing together leaders from across sectors and industries during the Canadian Circular Economy Summit in Montréal. We are also excited to launch the Circular Construction Innovation Hub targeting the development of regional spokes in the greater Vancouver and Toronto regions and the launch of our first set of demonstration projects to help accelerate the uptake of circular practices in the construction and real estate industries.
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