Canada’s Clean 50 unveiled for 2023

The Clean50 award recognizes leaders from across Canada who have done the most to advance climate action and develop climate solutions. This year’s lists acknowledge the recent accomplishments of 50 senior leaders, 20 emerging leaders, 25 innovative sustainability projects and reveal five lifetime achievement awards, selected from over 1,000 nominations collected over the past few months.

Awardees are forward-looking leaders representing the most effective and progressive organizations taking on climate change from every sector. The Canada Post team, led by president and CEO Doug Ettinger, for instance, has made significant progress in implementing a plan that will see Canada’s largest crown corporation invest $1 billion to cut its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 50 percent over the next 8 years.

The City of Halifax is being recognized for work designed to get city operations to net-zero emissions by 2030 – and the whole city to net-zero by 2050. This is fresh evidence of widespread and wide-ranging actions taking place across Canada as responsible actors address the need for an urgent response at scale. 

Other winners are expanding networks of hydrogen refueling stations, building massive batteries, putting the largest university in Canada on track for net-zero by 2050 or sooner, driving thought- leadership around climate risk and ESG disclosures, conserving both the land and the nature across 1,500 square kilometres, inventing new technologies to turn CO2 into algae that can be used as food or put to medical use, and building an 1,800-km-long power transmission line that will permit 17 First Nations communities to finally connect to the grid – and stop relying upon polluting diesel generators for power.

“The range of ingenuity demonstrated by these 75 people and 25 projects is just extraordinary”, said award executive director Gavin Pitchford.

“Canada needs to eliminate 730 MT of carbon pollution from our annual output – Over the past year, Canada’s 2023 Clean50 have made a significant start on that target – with much more to come”. “If we have any hope of hitting our committed targets, it is people like these Canadians will need to thank”. 

The full list of Canada’s 2023 Clean50, Clean50 Emerging Leaders and Lifetime Achievement Honourees appears below, and more details behind all of the award winners can be found on the Clean50 website: https://www.clean50.com/