Canada’s military faces a security conundrum. Climate change is a threat multiplier, altering the conditions under which the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) must defend the country: domestic disaster response deployments rose roughly fivefold from 2010-2016 to 2020-2025, and extreme weather is rapidly degrading naval installations and Arctic infrastructure. Yet military activities and procurement generate a non-trivial portion of the very emissions driving dangerous climate change. Reducing the military’s environmental bootprint is therefore not separate from defence readiness—it is a prerequisite for it.
The CAF therefore faces two problems at once: adapting to a more climate-stressed operating environment while concurrently reducing defense platform emissions. For planners, the question is how to improve readiness without locking the force into a more dangerous and less resilient future.
The answer is innovation. Canada should use its defence spending to create demand for the resilient, adaptive, and lower-carbon infrastructure and equipment the force will need anyway.
The moment to act is now. Canada’s commitment to invest 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 provides a checkbook and practical points of leverage. The Defence Climate and Sustainability Strategy 2023-2027 (DCSS), aiming to strengthen green procurement for the military fleet and implement high-priority measures for net-zero material acquisition and support by 2027, provides a deadline.
The opportunity is to use that spending differently: define operational climate and resilience requirements up front, then invite industry to compete to meet them.
Sustainable procurement and supply chains
Defence planners can draw from the performance indicators for sustainable design, particularly low-carbon, circular, and resilience in extreme weather environments. Existing civilian technology solutions can simply be adapted for defence. Where they do not, a well-designed Request for Proposal (RFP) creates a demand signal.
Decarbonization is already underway. Military fleets are responsible for about 70% of the federal government’s National Safety and Security (NSS) fleet emissions, and 80% of NSS fleet emissions are from aircraft. The Government has set targets of 20% low-carbon fuel (LCF) by 2030 and 100% by 2050. It is important that these targets provide the foundation, not the ceiling, for innovation.
A rigorous decarbonization policy would go further. It would require life cycle assessments (LCAs) to track environmental impacts from product formulation through use and final disposition, including, but not limited to fuel consumption. LCA data can identify excess emissions, water use, toxicity, and other impacts before they are finalized into design. That becomes the baseline for material selection, design optimization, maintenance, and end-of-life decisions.
A recent NATO LCA of a small-caliber ammunition extends scrutiny to a battlefield system normally exempted from sustainability analysis. These systems have historically carried a national security exemption, shielding them from public accountability and carbon accounting. Indeed, the current DCSS allows exemptions for availability, affordability, compatibility, and operational feasibility for NSS fleet targets.
Those exemptions may make operational sense in individual cases. But if they systematically exclude military systems from sustainable design, they may also compromise readiness.
The 2027 green procurement standards should therefore mandate full environmental analysis of all major systems, adopt innovations where they advance capability or resilience, and provide industry with a clear pathway to develop solutions where technologies do not yet exist.
Another powerful design strategy is circularity. For defence, the concept is rigorous practicality: design systems that last longer, consume fewer resources, and are easier to maintain, repair, upgrade, or repurpose. Circularity is already being translated into practice in areas such as recycling aircraft pods, reusing sonar components, and upgrading diesel Land Rovers into EVs. The goal is not to make the force “green”, but to make it more adaptable and less dependent on fragile supply chains and destructive, resource-intensive systems.
Climate readiness also requires resilience to projected weather patterns. A comprehensive Canadian defence adaptation plan would involve systematically assessing current and future equipment for extreme weather and adjusting procurement specs accordingly.
The same discipline should apply to physical infrastructure and supply chains. Critical supply chains should be assessed for climate vulnerability, and hardened or on-shored where needed.
While current DCSS targets include upgrading Northern airstrips and radar sites, the 2027 green procurement standards should go further, mandating an evaluate-and-invest approach across all major systems and platforms and the supply chains that support them.
Sustainable defence-industry partnerships
Innovating to equip a climate-ready force requires commitment from both defence and industry players.
Companies seeking defence contracts should demonstrate that they are actively integrating climate considerations into their operations, innovation, and market strategies. Global C-Suite executives recognize climate and sustainability as a top 3 priority, with 66% already reporting sustainability-driven revenue and 69% planning to increase investments substantially (6%-19%) this year. From a procurement perspective, the question is what those investments produce. Procurement decision-makers should favor companies that manage their carbon footprints, monitor their exposure to extreme weather, and secure their supply chains for climate impacts.
Decision-makers should also look for evidence of innovation advancing decarbonization and adaptation, with measurable impact on operational resilience, strategic agility, and OPTEMPO. That might be building materials designed to withstand fire and flooding; vehicles and equipment that can operate in extreme conditions and far from fossil fuel supplies; or domestic alternatives for imported computers, electrical equipment, battery materials, and vehicle parts.
There is a solid business case for this approach. Companies that invest effectively in sustainability gain advantages in areas directly relevant to defence: energy and operational efficiency, supply chain resilience, innovation, and financial performance. These capabilities solidify their value as potential partners in the complex task of upgrading Canadian defence infrastructure, assets, and equipment for a changing environment.
Climate change will continue to be a threat multiplier. But the CAF’s environmental bootprint can be lighter and more resilient.
Canada is poised to spend more on defence than it has in decades. The question is what that spending buys. If procurement creates demand for climate-ready technology, adaptable systems, and resilient supply chains, the CAF will be better prepared for the security environment it will face.
That is not a climate policy objective. It is a defence objective.
Rachel Fleishman is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, Washington, D.C. Her expertise spans climate security, national security,
and corporate sustainability.
The views expressed in this op-ed are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the Institute or its staff.
Photo: Senior Airman Joseph P. LeVeille, U.S. Air Force. Department of National Defence / Combat Camera / 2026. Crown Copyright. The use of this image does not imply or constitute endorsement by the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces.
