Welcome to our weekly newsletter where we highlight environmental trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world.
Hi, it’s Emily. I think one of the cool things about EVs is the ability to “fill up” at home. Recently, I got some pitches about ways that EV chargers could also make their owners some money, and decided to take a closer look.
This week:
- Now your EV charger can earn some money for you
- The Big Picture: China and the rise of the electrostates
- Here’s what happens when compostable products become litter
Now your EV charger can earn some money for you
Toronto EV driver Urs Villiger thought he had a good deal on electricity for charging his family’s two Tesla Model 3s. He’s signed up for Toronto Hydro’s ultra-low overnight rate, aimed at EV drivers – costing him just 3.9 cents per kWh between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., or about $22 per month.
But recently, he found an even better deal: a customer program that pays him for each kilowatt hour he uses to charge his car.
Toronto-based company SWTCH pays Villiger and other EV owners three cents per kWh when they charge with the SWTCH Level 2 home charger (which they can get for free as part of the program). That covers three-quarters of the cost of each kilowatt under the ultra-low rate plan. “For us, we’re charging two cars, so it adds up,” said Villiger.
Toronto-based SWTCH Energy officially launched the program Thursday with Plug N’ Drive, an EV advocacy organization that also promotes a number of similar programs that launched earlier this year from Toronto-based Elocity and United Chargers Canada in Richmond Hill, Ont.
Villiger is among 30 EV drivers across the country who have already been using SWTCH’s program during the past couple of weeks, said Greg Overmonds, the company’s head of marketing. The launch allows another 190 people on the wait list to get their chargers. The company estimates the program will allow average drivers to earn $100 to $150 per year from EV charging.
But why would a company pay customers to charge their cars?
Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations allow credits to be generated for investments in low-carbon technologies and fuels. For example, charging network operators can create credits for residential and public electric vehicle charging, and charging site hosts can create credits for private or commercial charging.
SWTCH, Elocity and United Chargers can then sell the credits to producers and importers of gasoline and diesel to help them meet emissions targets that require them to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels they produce and sell for use in Canada. (That is, if fuel producers can’t reduce their emissions enough themselves, they have to pay other companies, like the EV charge providers, that are reducing emissions from fuel).
SWTCH had already been doing that since the regulations came into effect in July 2023, with credits earned from its chargers in multiresidential and commercial buildings, but wanted to extend the opportunity to people who charge at home, allowing them to share some of the revenue, Overmonds said.
Airbnb for EV chargers?
This isn’t the only new way EV drivers can make money from their EV chargers.
Montreal-based ShareCharge is offering charger owners the option to rent out their EV chargers by appointment.
“Basically what we want to do is a bit like the Airbnb/Uber experience,” said the company’s founder, François Boutin-Dufresne.
He was inspired by a visit to his mother in Lévis, Que., earlier this year. To his frustration, there were no public chargers within five kilometres of her house. Meanwhile, three doors down a neighbour’s home charger sat unused.
With 400,000 EV drivers in Quebec, Boutin-Dufresne reasoned that if just 10 per cent of them rented out their home chargers, that would make 40,000 new chargers available – more than the province’s entire fleet of 28,700 public chargers. And he sees similar opportunities across the country and North America.
ShareCharge recently launched a website where people can list their EV charger or sign up to use other people’s EV chargers. So far, about 600 users have signed up in Quebec, offering 150 chargers.
Charger owners can decide when to make their charger available, whether to accept any given charging appointment, and set their own rates, but the app recommends a rate for each region, depending on things like local electricity rates and the availability of other chargers nearby.
Boutin-Dufresne said the company hopes to open the network for charging within a few weeks or in early 2026.
His mother’s neighbour has already signed up, and Boutin-Dufresne says he will pay to use her charger when he visits at Christmas.
Boutin-Dufresne said governments have been pulling back support for electrification of transportation while there are still big gaps in charging infrastructure. He sees ShareCharge as “kind of a community-based, resilient way to increase and continue the road on electrification in North America.”
— Emily Chung
Old issues of What on Earth? are here. The CBC News climate page is here.
Check out our podcast and radio show. In one of our newest episodes: Steven Guilbeault made room for compromise when he switched from climate activist to government minister. He was okay with that. Until Prime Minister Mark Carney signed an agreement with Alberta that Guilbeault says went too far. In a frank interview, the now ex-minister defends his choices and voices his concerns about Canada’s climate future.
What On Earth25:21The last straw and a tequila shot for an ex-climate minister
What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Check the CBC News Climate Dashboard for live updates on temperature, rain and snow records across the country. Set your location for information on air quality and to find out how today’s temperatures compare to historical trends.
Reader feedback
Last week, Molly Segal looked at whether it’s possible to invest green and still make money.
Doug Charlton of Invermere, B.C., wrote: “I enjoyed your green investment article but feel it came up short. I feel there are lots of investors like myself, who need further guidance in finding the investments and/or finding reputable firms, websites or organizations that can guide us as we attempt to change directions while making a statement regarding our planet’s future. Any chance of some links to send us on our way?”
It turns out that Tim Nash, the financial planner interviewed for the story, has a website with some of that info to get people started.
Barbara Herring of Peterborough, Ont., wrote: “I realized many years ago that switching from a bank to a credit union was a green investment, partly because the money is first used locally, rather than traveling all over the globe looking for the highest return. I am retired and … realized that I have enough to live the lifestyle I want, and more. So I also invest in people, giving a set amount each month to organizations that service people in my community (unhoused or with precarious income). I may not get the financial returns from this investment but it gives me a great deal of life satisfaction.”
We also looked at some of the challenges faced by Christmas tree farmers and the pros and cons of real vs. artificial trees. Linda Karounos shared a photo and wrote: “A real tree isn’t practical for my family — and it’s a big yearly expense! There’s no way we want a “plastic” tree but an artist friend solved our problem with a unique tree made from wood scraps. We decorate it for Christmas and, reconfigured, it graces our living room all year round.”
Write us at [email protected] (and send photos there too!)
The Big Picture: China and the rise of the electrostates
(Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press)
This is one of China’s massive solar farms, in the western Qinghai province. Apart from adopting solar energy itself, China overwhelmingly dominates the manufacturing of solar panels. In fact, it has enough solar manufacturing capacity to supply enough panels for the world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The dizzying rise of cheap and efficient Chinese clean technology is scrambling the conventional wisdom that Western countries, marshalling their wealth and technological know-how, would lead the transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy.
The opposite is coming true: China is driving down the price of clean technologies like solar and electric vehicles and developing countries are embracing those products.
I explored all this in my analysis on China’s rise as an “electrostate,” and what that means for the energy transition globally.
— Inayat Singh
Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web
- It’s been nearly a year since New York City implemented congestion pricing. Did it actually reduce congestion? Researchers took a close look at the impacts, and here’s what they found.
Why Winnipeg is moving to scrap its bird-friendly window bylaw
Conservationists are raising concerns as the City of Winnipeg considers walking back a development bylaw designed to help save birds from fatal window strikes, less than a year after the rules came into effect.
The City of Winnipeg says it will hold a public hearing Dec. 18 to consider “deleting” the bird-friendly window requirements for a mix of builds along major corridors and near malls.
“I’m kind of … shocked,” said Kevin Fraser, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Manitoba who focuses on bird migration and ecology.
“[It’s] a backwards move for birds.”
A bird-safe window is one that is built or retrofitted with features like patterned films, decals, glazes or coatings to reduce strikes.
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates between 16 million and 42 million migratory birds die in Canada per year due to window collisions.
A 2013 Canadian study found houses account for most of those deaths in total, because there are more houses overall than other buildings.
But Fraser says while those findings suggest each average residential home may be responsible for about two bird deaths each per year, every low- to mid-rise structure accounts for about five, and each tall building may cause 10 bird deaths annually.
Last fall, Winnipeg city council voted unanimously in favour of a motion from public works chair Coun. Janice Lukes to adopt a bird-friendly window development for select mall sites and corridors, excluding the city’s downtown. The bird-safe requirements came into effect this January.
Lukes’s office declined to comment for this story.
The changes now being proposed come after feedback from industry suggesting “prescriptive” bird-friendly requirements presented barriers to development, “mainly due to challenges with sourcing compliant material and the costs,” according to the city.
A city spokesperson said construction measures like window glazing that “promote bird-friendly design” are encouraged, but the city supports amendments to provide “flexibility so that these measures do not overly constrain or halt development.”
The City of Winnipeg is considering ‘deleting’ its bird-friendly window requirements for a mix of new builds along major corridors and near malls based on industry feedback that suggested the rule was presenting a barrier to development. University of Manitoba biologist Kevin Fraser said he was shocked to learn the city is considering the change less than a year after the bylaw was introduced.
‘Very little benefit’ to coating: industry association
One industry voice providing feedback to the city is the Urban Development Institute of Manitoba, an association whose members include developers across commercial, industrial and residential sectors.
Executive director Lanny McInnes said some members with experience under Ottawa’s bird-friendly framework said coatings or treatments were “challenging to source” and claimed they didn’t “lead to the intended goal, which is obviously protecting birds.”
“But even more importantly, there’s other factors that impact the potential of bird strikes: window treatments, tree and foliage location around the building, use of internal and external lights, use of blinds, the paint colours of the interior of the unit, wind patterns, shadow, shade, time of day,” he said.
“All of those things have a … significant factor in terms of potential bird strikes above and beyond what coating is on an exterior window,” said McInnes, who is also president of the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association.
“There’s very little benefit, if any, and at the same time pretty significant additional costs and supply chain issues.”
But a former Canadian Wildlife Service biologist, two national conservation groups and the U of M’s Fraser all take a different view.
“Definitely they work to reduce mortality of birds striking windows,” said Ron Bazin, a retired species-at-risk biologist with the wildlife service.
There are “perils that [birds] have going to migrate,” he said, and “it seems a bit sad that we are impacting that.”
Autumn Jordan, the bird-friendly city organizer with Nature Canada, said window interventions are “one of the easiest ways that we can help to reverse the biodiversity crisis.”
Jordan pointed to a study from 2022 that demonstrated a decal product designed by Canadian company Feather Friendly may reduce collision risk by 95 per cent. It also found a patterned UV-reflective coating may reduce strikes by up to 71 per cent.
Nature Canada last week announced its latest slate of Canadian municipalities it has certified as bird-friendly, adding Calgary and more to a growing list that doesn’t contain any Manitoba communities.
“Grassland birds and aerial insectivores are the subgroups of birds that are declining most in Canada,” said Jordan.
“Winnipeg can really play a pivotal role in reducing one of those threats … being window collisions, by keeping their bird safe design standards.”
Industry needs education: FLAP Canada
FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program) Canada, a non-profit that works to raise awareness on the issue of bird-building collisions, pegs the average price of making a 40-storey multi-unit residential building bird-safe at one per cent of the construction costs.
Biologist Brendon Samuels, a research co-ordinator with FLAP, did his PhD work at Western University on bird window-strike solutions and related policy. He said bird-safe glazes utilize some of the same common manufacturing techniques as privacy window fittings and products applied to reduce heat gain through glass, and doesn’t delay construction or meaningfully increase the cost of building housing.
But he said there are “knowledge gaps” in the industry. “They also need education about what does it take to build to compliance with these standards.”
— Bryce Hoye
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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty
