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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, the environment and resources in Canada.

The days are longer, the weather is warmer. It’s road trip season, and we’re promoting Canadian destinations.

This year, get outside the big cities to find charm and adventure with small-town escapes. Here are some noteworthy, under-the-radar towns worthy of a detour on your next road trip.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

1. Finance: RBC drops sustainable finance targets, blames anti-greenwash law
2. Energy: Renewable energy touted as force for sovereignty in Canada’s North
3. Politics: With environmental issues relegated to the backburner, Green Party found it difficult to gain traction with voters
4. Technology: Alberta has a big vision to build massive AI data centres, but do they have the power to handle them?
5. Pitching in: Founding Rabbit Rescue and foster homes in Ontario and Quebec
6. Fusion Crossroad: General Fusion at financial crossroads in quest to build ‘break-even’ reactor
7. From The Narwhal: What Carney’s win means for the environment and climate issues in Canada

For this week’s deeper dive, we take a peek at a story from Report on Business Magazine

The marine industry has come a long way from its messy origins, but it’s still a dirty business. For Vancouver-based Robert Allan Ltd., the world’s foremost designer of electric tugboats, that’s a huge opportunity.

A few years ago, HaiSea Marine ordered three battery-electric harbour tugboats. It was a bold move. At the time, no one had yet built a fully electric working tug. HaiSea is a joint venture between the Haisla Nation and Vancouver’s Seaspan ULC, a marine conglomerate that operates tugs, barges, commercial ferries and a shipyard.

LNG Canada wanted the lowest-emission fleet possible to service its projects. The Haisla Nation, HaiSea’s majority owner, wanted the cleanest and quietest tugs available to protect the integrity of the Douglas Channel, a 140-kilometre-long corridor of dense coastal rainforest and waters rich with orca, humpbacks and other marine life.

Naval architect and marine engineering firm Robert Allan made it happen.

The first electric tug to ply the waters of the channel was the HaiSea Wamis. Now, along with its two sister tugs, the HaiSea Wee’git and HaiSea Brave, the three have been joined by a pair of Robert Allan–designed, dual-fuel LNG-diesel long-range escort tugs, the HaiSea Kermode and HaiSea Warrior.

Though hardly a household name, the 97-year-old, 100-employee company is “probably the foremost tug designer in the world,” said John Snyder, the New York–based managing editor at Riviera Maritime Media. Pick any major global port and you’re likely to find Robert Allan tugs – more than 1,000 are currently at work around the world.

In Vancouver, SAAM Towage, one of the Western hemisphere’s largest tugboat operators, headquartered in Chile, is running two smaller Robert Allan electric tugs.

Delivered last year, they’re used to assist bulk carriers taking coal from Neptune Terminals, co-owned by Elk Valley Resources, on the north shore and to service ships loaded with grain and crude oil.

The tugs’ battery maker, Corvus Energy, the world’s largest supplier of marine batteries, is also local. Although it is headquartered in Norway, Corvus was founded in Richmond, B.C., and still does its R&D, product development and some manufacturing there.

According to a 2024 Pacific Environment report, 50,000 large cargo ships emit roughly a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year – as much as 3 per cent of global CO2 emissions – along with “huge amounts of toxic particulate matter, acid gases and metals.” The five HaiSea and SAAM electric tugs eliminate about 7,500 tonnes of emissions annually – the equivalent of 1,500 combustion-engine cars.

Today, anyone with an interest in tugboats or marine decarbonization has their eyeballs on the low-emission maritime hub taking shape in Robert Allan’s own backyard.

Read the full magazine story today.