May 06, 2026


Open Letter to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions on the Changing/Challenging Global Energy Supply Shock and Green Taxonomy Committee


ATTN: Superintendent Peter Routledge

See the PDF file for the CC list

Dear Superintendent Routledge,


We note that you are an observer to the board of the Taxonomy and Transition Planning Council charged with establishing Canada’s “Green Taxonomy.” According to a statement on their website, you are an enthusiastic supporter of this initiative, and you cite last fall’s climate risk reports in support of the committee’s work.

Kotz et al (2024) retracted: RCP 8.5 scenario is officially dead

As we have pointed out in several open letters to you, it is our view that the results of the climate risk reporting, if based on the flawed climate damage function of the retracted climate economics paper, Kotz et al 2024, (which was adopted by the Network for Greening the Financial System), the outcomes reported were likely skewed.  Likewise, if reporting banks and insurance companies employed the scenario known as RCP 8.5 (van Vuuren et al 2011), the outcomes would not reflect reality, as RCP 8.5 is known to be an improbable scenario, intended for climate research, not intended to be used as a ‘pathway’ for climate policy.

As climate policy analyst, Roger Pielke, Jr., reports today, April 29, 2026, “RCP 8.5 is Officially Dead.”[1] Related implausible scenarios have reportedly been eliminated from the IPCC climate science framework. He writes:

In a paper released earlier this month, Van Vuuren et al. (VVetal26) introduced a new set of seven scenarios. The authors write of the obsolete high-end emissions scenarios (emphasis added):

“For the 21st century, this range will be smaller than assessed before: on the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends.”

Read that again — The high-end scenarios are Implausible.²

Pielke, Jr., goes on to note:

I disagree that the implausibility of the high-end scenarios resulted from the falling costs of renewables or the emergence of climate policy, but that is a debate for another day.

What matters today is that the group with official responsibility for developing climate scenarios for the IPCC and broader research community has now admitted that the scenarios that have dominated climate research, assessment, and policy during the past two cycles of the IPCC assessment process are implausible: They describe impossible futures.

Continue to read the letter in the PDF file.

Open-Letter-to-OSFI-on-RCP-8.5Download