Renat Heuberger

Personal life

Renat Heuberger born 18 December 1976 in Zurich, Switzerland. Heuberger holds a master's degree in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and completed the Social Entrepreneur Programme, ISEP, at the INSEAD business school and the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

Professional career

After working for development organization Swisscontact in Indonesia, Heuberger co-founded the World Student Community on Sustainable Development, and the platform for interdisciplinary projects Seed Sustainability. In 2002, he founded the Swiss Myclimate foundation following a climate initiative for passengers to compensate greenhouse emissions of flights at the annual meeting of the Alliance for Global Sustainability in Costa Rica. The first climate project was to replace the diesel power generator with solar energy of a university in Costa Rica. Heuberger acted as Myclimate CEO until 2006.

Heuberger has been a climate policy advocate and supported the UNFCCC process since 2002, where he regularly chairs and presented the official Side-Events such as "Sustainable CDM - Best Practice" at CoP 11/MoP 1 of the UNFCCC in Montreal and "What has carbon trade taught us about ecological markets?" at CoP 16/MoP 6 of the UNFCCC Cancun Summit. Heuberger presented his Shifting Fortunes insight at the 2013 WEF in Davos.

As a founding partner and CEO of South Pole Group, he coordinated the set-up of South Pole Group’s global presence, winning the company the title of Best Project Developer by Environmental Finance magazine between 2011-2015, and enabling the first-ever issuance of Gold Standard certificates, the first issuance of Social Carbon offset certificates in Southeast Asia and, with his colleague Christian Dannecker, the first Voluntary Carbon Standard forestry project in South America. Heuberger has also initiated with colleague Maximilian Horster the first climate credit card in Switzerland and the first carbon screener application on the Bloomberg Terminal that allows investors and asset managers to calculate the carbon footprint of every investable company around the world. Heuberger has been central in helping South Pole Group grow into a thriving organisation of over 150+ employees that has expanded beyond emission reduction project development, wholesale and retail: the company's extended expertise now focuses around the key business lines of carbon credit solutions, renewable energy, sustainability advisory and green finance. South Pole Group has over time become one of the major global advisors for climate-related policies, sustainable supply chains and climate impact assessment for investments.

Heuberger is currently a board member of Climate-KIC, Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on climate change, a board member of Climate Friendly Pty Ltd, of Vietnamese climate and energy company VNEEC, of Perenia Pty Ltd, and of Respect Climate in Sweden. He also acts in the advisory board of the Hub Zurich a platform for social entrepreneurship and MyNewEnergy, a company launching the first-ever platform to compare power products in Switzerland.

Supporting a global network of connected communities, Heuberger is considered an authority on climate change, carbon markets and sustainable development and is regularly interviewed in the media.

Awards and positions of trust

He was elected Swiss Social Entrepreneur 2011 by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation, along with Christoph Sutter, and received the sustainability award 2013 by the Cantonal Bank of Zurich ZKB. In 2014, Heuberger was elected as Member of the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change of the World Economic Forum.