Alberta’s environmental leaders recognized

The Alberta Emerald Foundation (AEF) announced the shortlist for the 32nd Annual Emerald Awards this week. Since 1992, the Emerald Awards have showcased over 350 recipients and 850 finalists who are raising the bar in addressing environmental and climate change issues. These environmental awards celebrate excellence across all sectors, making them unique not only in Alberta but also in Canada.

This year’s shortlist was chosen by a third-party panel of volunteer judges, each bringing expertise from numerous sectors across Alberta. Judges selected the shortlist, consisting of 39 organizations, projects, and individuals from across the province, from 51 nominations. During their deliberations, the judges also determined who from the shortlist will take home an Emerald Award in each of the 15 award categories.

“Those represented in this year’s shortlist demonstrate the incredible dedication that Albertans have toward protecting our environment and taking action against climate change” says The AEF’s Executive Director, Marisa Orfei, “The diversity in the shortlist is also astounding, there’s small grassroots organizations, large corporations, and everything in between. We’re also incredibly proud to have 17 communities across Alberta represented in this year’s shortlist, including Drayton Valley, Grande Cache, Canmore, and many more.”

Here are the organizations, projects, and individuals recognized in The 32nd Annual Emerald Award shortlist:

Air Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that improve air quality.

Blindman Brewing First-in-Canada CO2 Capture and Utilization (Lacombe, AB)

Business Category – Showcasing an organization engaged in commercial, industrial or professional activities that have demonstrated a meaningful commitment to an environmentally sustainable future.

Reimagine Architects – 26 Years Building Sustainable Futures (Edmonton, AB)
Eco-Flex Recycled Rubber Solutions (Legal, AB)
Envirotech Geothermal – Alberta’s smartest way to Net Zero! (Sherwood Park, AB)

Community Group or Nonprofit Category – Recognizing associations dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a shared point of view that has demonstrated a significant commitment to the environment through their actions.

Alberta Bike Swap – supporting the circular economy before it was cool (Calgary, AB)
Project Forest: Rewilding Canada, One Forest at a time (Edmonton, AB)
Alberta businesses are building a better Business-as-usual with Green Economy Canada (Edmonton, AB & Calgary, AB)

Education Category – Acknowledging those that have raised the bar by showing leadership and creativity in educating students of all ages about environmental matters.

Eagle Point-Blue Rapids Parks Council Environmental & Outdoor Education Program (Drayton Valley, AB)
Future Energy Systems: Exploring Our Energy Future With The Community, Our Students, And More (Edmonton, AB)
Evergreen Theatre: A 32-Year Legacy of Inspiring Environmental Awareness & Action Through the Arts (Calgary, AB)

Energy Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that positively support the evolution of our province’s energy systems.

Calgary’s Residential Solar Calculator (Calgary, AB)
Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative, empowering community to transform Alberta’s energy (Canmore, AB)
Metis Nation of Alberta Climate Change Action Plan (Edmonton, AB)

Government Category – Recognizing all levels of government whose ongoing commitment sets the example of environmental leadership and advocates sustainability as a major consideration in governance.

Environmental Achievements of the City of St. Albert (St. Albert, AB)
Violet Grove’s Constructed Floating Wetlands System with Aeration (Drayton Valley, AB)
Nose Creek Watershed Partnership – Celebrating 25-Years of Watershed Planning, Policy and Action (Mossleigh, AB)

Infrastructure Category – Recognizing environmental advancements in the ways we design, build, and travel.

Solar Aquatic Systems Wastewater Treatment (Drayton Valley, AB)
SSRIA: Transforming the AEC Industry Towards a Net Zero Built Environment (Edmonton, AB)
Ecoplast Solutions: Building Houses from Recycled Plastic Bottles (Lloydminster, AB)

Land Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that demonstrate excellence in sustainable land use.

The City of Calgary’s Willow Plantation for Marginal Land Improvement and Carbon Capture (Calgary, AB)
Ledcor Highway Maintenance Yard Upgrades (Edmonton, AB)

Lifetime Achievement Award – Celebrating environmental leaders who, throughout their lifetime, have made contributions of outstanding environmental significance.

Dirk and Nanja of The Barrelman Inc.: 25 years of protecting land and water through local action that inspires (Calgary, AB)

Public Engagement & Outreach Category – Recognizing programs and initiatives that educate and empower the broader public by teaching the necessary skills to make informed environmental decisions and take responsible action.

GreenLearning’s Eco 360 program: Transitioning to a circular economy for plastic waste! (Drayton Valley, AB)
My Green Closet: Sustainable Lifestyle and Slow Fashion Platform (Edmonton, AB)
Calgary Climate Symposium: How The City of Calgary Engages and Educates Albertans on Climate Change (Calgary, AB)

Shared Footprints Award – Recognizing those who have exemplified land and water stewardship, built shared knowledge, improved air quality, reduced land disturbances, and encouraged ecotourism.

Edmonton River Valley Conservation Coalition: Working Together to Protect the North Saskatchewan River Valley (Edmonton, AB)
Highfield Regenerative Farm (Calgary, AB) Waste Management Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that innovate the repurposing, reduction, and disposal of waste in an environmentally-conscious way. Earth Warrior (Edmonton, AB)
Revolutionizing Recycling with [Re] Waste: Transforming Waste Management for a Sustainable Future (Edmonton, AB)
Microgreens Club – A Zero Waste Initiative (Calgary, AB)

Water Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that demonstrate excellence through the monitoring, management and/or stewardship of water and watersheds.

Forest industry collaboration cultivates sustainability around vital wetland ecosystems (Edmonton, AB)
LakeKeepers: Community-Based Monitoring of Alberta’s Lakes (Edmonton, AB)
Safe water and water sustainability in Alberta (Calgary, AB)

Wildlife & Biodiversity Category – Recognizing projects and initiatives that protect and conserve natural habitats and wild species.

Aseniwuche Winewak Nation’s Caribou Patrol Program: 11 years of saving Alberta’s caribou (Grande Cache, AB)
Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society – Sikome Beaver Coexistence Project. (Calgary, AB)
The Edmonton Urban Coyote Project: Collaborative Research and Education for Coexistence with Wildlife (Edmonton, AB)

Youth Category – Recognizing people, 25 years of age and under, who have made meaningful contributions and have taken positive action to improve the environmental health of their community.

Monica Figueroa: Edmonton youth climate activist (Edmonton, AB)
Strathmore High School Community Greenhouse (Strathmore, AB)
Energy & Environmental Sustainability Projects in Action at New Myrnam School (Myrnam, AB)

The recipients in each category will be named at the 32nd Annual Emerald Awards ceremony on June 7, 2023, at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta. Emerald Award Recipients receive:

A $2,000 grant to support their work or to donate to an environmental charity of their choice
A profile of their work through The AEF’s Sharing Stories program, which includes the Emerald Documentary Series, What On EARTH Can We Do? podcast, and Emerald Speakers Series
A certificate and Emerald Awards recipient digital logo to commemorate their achievement

The Awards will also be live-streamed through the AEF”s YouTube Chanel to allow people from across the province to attend. Tickets for the 32nd Annual Emerald Awards ceremony can be purchased here.

The Alberta Emerald Foundation (AEF) is a registered Canadian charity with the unique mission to tell Alberta’s environmental good news stories to uplift, educate, and inspire our province toward meeting environmental and climate change goals.

Research suggests that when we learn about what real environmental and climate change solutions look like and how they’re being implemented in our communities, it increases our ability and desire to take action in our own lives. By providing real-life examples of these solutions through our various storytelling programs, the AEF helps Albertans take the next step toward environmental protection and climate action. With every person that we reach through our programming, we’re helping Alberta reach its broader environmental and climate change goals.

Click to learn more about the Alberta Emerald Foundation.

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Premier Smith: Canadians support agreement between Alberta and Ottawa and the major economic opportunities it could unlock for the benefit of all

Published on December 6, 2025

Todayville

From Energy Now

By Premier Danielle Smith

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If Canada wants to lead global energy security efforts, build out sovereign AI infrastructure, increase funding to social programs and national defence and expand trade to new markets, we must unleash the full potential of our vast natural resources and embrace our role as a global energy superpower.

The Alberta-Ottawa Energy agreement is the first step in accomplishing all of these critical objectives.

Recent polling shows that a majority of Canadians are supportive of this agreement and the major economic opportunities it could unlock for the benefit of all Canadians.

As a nation we must embrace two important realities: First, global demand for oil is increasing and second, Canada needs to generate more revenue to address its fiscal challenges.

Nations around the world — including Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan and China in Asia as well as various European nations — continue to ask for Canadian energy. We are perfectly positioned to meet those needs and lead global energy security efforts.

Our heavy oil is not only abundant, it’s responsibly developed, geopolitically stable and backed by decades of proven supply.

If we want to pay down our debt, increase funding to social programs and meet our NATO defence spending commitments, then we need to generate more revenue. And the best way to do so is to leverage our vast natural resources.

At today’s prices, Alberta’s proven oil and gas reserves represent trillions in value.

It’s not just a number; it’s a generational opportunity for Alberta and Canada to secure prosperity and invest in the future of our communities. But to unlock the full potential of this resource, we need the infrastructure to match our ambition.

There is one nation-building project that stands above all others in its ability to deliver economic benefits to Canada — a new bitumen pipeline to Asian markets.

The energy agreement signed on Nov. 27 includes a clear path to the construction of a one-million-plus barrel-per-day bitumen pipeline, with Indigenous co-ownership, that can ensure our province and country are no longer dependent on just one customer to buy our most valuable resource.

Indigenous co-ownership also provide millions in revenue to communities along the route of the project to the northwest coast, contributing toward long-lasting prosperity for their people.

The agreement also recognizes that we can increase oil and gas production while reducing our emissions.

The removal of the oil and gas emissions cap will allow our energy producers to grow and thrive again and the suspension of the federal net-zero power regulations in Alberta will open to doors to major AI data-centre investment.

It also means that Alberta will be a world leader in the development and implementation of emissions-reduction infrastructure — particularly in carbon capture utilization and storage.

The agreement will see Alberta work together with our federal partners and the Pathways companies to commence and complete the world’s largest carbon capture, utilization and storage infrastructure project.

This would make Alberta heavy oil the lowest intensity barrel on the market and displace millions of barrels of heavier-emitting fuels around the globe.

We’re sending a clear message to investors across the world: Alberta and Canada are leaders, not just in oil and gas, but in the innovation and technologies that are cutting per barrel emissions even as we ramp up production.

Where we are going — and where we intend to go with more frequency — is east, west, north and south, across oceans and around the globe. We have the energy other countries need, and will continue to need, for decades to come.

However, this agreement is just the first step in this journey. There is much hard work ahead of us. Trust must be built and earned in this partnership as we move through the next steps of this process.

But it’s very encouraging that Prime Minister Mark Carney has made it clear he is willing to work with Alberta’s government to accomplish our shared goal of making Canada an energy superpower.

That is something we have not seen from a Canadian prime minister in more than a decade.

Together, in good faith, Alberta and Ottawa have taken the first step towards making Canada a global energy superpower for benefit of all Canadians.

Danielle Smith is the Premier of Alberta

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A Memorandum of Understanding that no Canadian can understand

Published on December 6, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Niels Veldhuis

The federal and Alberta governments recently released their much-anticipated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining what it will take to build a pipeline from Alberta, through British Columbia, to tidewater to get more of our oil to markets beyond the United States.

This was great news, according to most in the media: “Ottawa-Alberta deal clears hurdles for West Coast pipeline,” was the top headline on the Globe and Mail’s website, “Carney inks new energy deal with Alberta, paving way to new pipeline” according to the National Post.

And the reaction from the political class? Well, former federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault resigned from Prime Minister Carney’s cabinet, perhaps positively indicating that this agreement might actually produce a new pipeline. Jason Kenney, a former Alberta premier and Harper government cabinet minister, congratulated Prime Minister Carney and Premier Smith on an “historic agreement.” Even Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi called the MOU “a positive step for our energy future.”

Finally, as Prime Minister Carney promised, Canada might build critical infrastructure “at a speed and scale not seen in generations.”

Given this seemingly great news, I eagerly read the six-page Memorandum of Understanding. Then I read it again and again. Each time, my enthusiasm and understanding diminished rapidly. By the fourth reading, the only objective conclusion I could reach was not that a pipeline would finally be built, but rather that only governments could write an MOU that no Canadian could understand.

The MOU is utterly incoherent. Go ahead, read it for yourself online. It’s only six pages. Here are a few examples.

The agreement states that, “Canada and Alberta agree that the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline is a prerequisite to the Pathways project.” Then on the next line, “Canada and Alberta agree that the Pathways Project is also a prerequisite to the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline.”

Two things, of course, cannot logically be prerequisites for each other.

But worry not, under the MOU, Alberta and Ottawa will appoint an “Implementation Committee” to deliver “outcomes” (this is from a federal government that just created the “Major Project Office” to get major projects approved and constructed) including “Determining the means by which Alberta can submit its pipeline application to the Major Projects Office on or before July 1, 2026.”

What does “Determining the means” even mean?

What’s worse is that under the MOU, the application for this pipeline project must be “ready to submit to the Major Projects Office on or before July 1, 2026.” Then it could be another two years (or until 2028) before Ottawa approves the pipeline project. But the MOU states the Pathways Project is to be built in stages, starting in 2027. And that takes us back to the circular reasoning of the prerequisites noted above.

Other conditions needed to move forward include:

The private sector must construct and finance the pipeline. Serious question: which private-sector firm would take this risk? And does the Alberta government plan to indemnify the company against these risks?

Indigenous Peoples must co-own the pipeline project.

Alberta must collaborate with B.C. to ensure British Columbians get a cut or “share substantial economic and financial benefits of the proposed pipeline” in MOU speak.

None of this, of course, addresses the major issue in our country—that is, investors lack clarity on timelines and certainty about project approvals. The Carney government established the Major Project Office to fast-track project approvals and provide greater certainty. Of the 11 project “winners” the federal government has already picked, most either already had approvals or are already at an advanced stage in the process. And one of the most important nation-building projects—a pipeline to get our oil to tidewater—hasn’t even been referred to the Major Project Office.

What message does all this send to the investment community? Have we made it easier to get projects approved? No. Have we made things clearer? No. Business investment in Canada has fallen off a cliff and is down 25 per cent per worker since 2014. We’ve seen a massive outflow of capital from the country, more than $388 billion since 2014.

To change this, Canada needs clear rules and certain timelines for project approvals. Not an opaque Memorandum of Understanding.