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Canada’s Transition & Green Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance

Canada has just taken a major step towards enabling investment in climate change solutions. The Sustainable Finance Action Council (SFAC) has released its Taxonomy Roadmap Report. The Institute for Sustainable Finance (ISF) provided research support and is a core knowledge partner on this initiative.

The SFAC report outlines a framework to guide the development of a Canadian Green and Transition Finance Taxonomy. The Canadian Taxonomy will enable businesses and capital providers to credibly identify green and transition projects, and facilitate the further mobilization of capital to support the Canadian economy’s transition towards Net Zero. While many countries and jurisdictions are developing ‘green’ taxonomies, the addition of a transition taxonomy by SFAC is a significant and innovative contribution to the rapidly evolving global taxonomy landscape, and offers an opportunity for Canada to become a closely watched global leader in this space.

We have prepared a briefing note on sustainable finance taxonomies for finance practitioners, industry leaders, policy makers and the general public to learn more about these important issues: ISF’s Taxonomies Briefing Note (PDF 1.6MB).

Resources  

The ISF provided research resources to support the SFAC Taxonomy Technical Expert Group in the development of the Taxonomy Roadmap Report. These resources are available here, and include:

Financial Sector Prioritization Survey

Smart Prosperity Institute surveyed financial institutions about which industries have the greatest potential for allocating capital to green and transition activities, and where a taxonomy will have the biggest impact.

Financial Sector Prioritization Survey (PDF 1.6MB)

A Sustainable Finance Taxonomy for Canada

To learn more about SFAC’s approach, how taxonomies are defined and the importance to Canada of a Transition and Green Taxonomy, the ISF’s Executive Director, Sara Alvarado interviewed Barb Zvan, Chair of SFAC’s Taxonomy Technical Expert Group and Chief Executive Officer at University Pension Plan Ontario.

Data Inventory

A one-stop shop for government climate-related data for financial decision-makers

Timely data on climate change is a vital input for those tasked with making sustainable financial decisions. It will allow organizations to better assess climate-related risk, and opportunities for investments in climate solutions. A significant amount of this data is produced and disseminated by federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Still, it has been challenging to access and use these databases since they are spread across several levels of government and numerous government departments.

Now, most of these data sources are available in one place. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Statistics Canada and the Sustainable Finance Action Council’s Data Technical Expert Group have collaborated to develop an inventory of publicly available climate change-related data sources that are held by the Canadian public sector (federal, provincial, and territorial governments) and are potentially relevant to financial decision makers.

This work helped to inform the Sustainable Finance Action Council (SFAC) work by establishing a baseline understanding of the extent to which comprehensive, reliable, and helpful climate change-related data for sustainable finance exists in Canada. The inventory contains 557 datasets across 24 federal, provincial, and territorial departments. It reflects a wide breadth of historical, physical climate data, as well as some data helpful to inform transition risk.

Download Inventory (XLS 451KB)

Note: This document was last updated in December 2023 and is not being further maintained or updated. For questions about the data, please contact the organization responsible for the data source, as specified in the download.