CEO of Swiss carbon offset firm South Pole resigns
swissinfo.ch
Renat Heuberger has stepped down as head of the Zurich-based carbon offset provider with immediate effect. The company was recently criticised for exaggerated claims.
This content was published on
2 minutes
AWP
Heuberger will be succeeded as CEO of the company on an interim basis by John Davis, who was previously Commercial Director for Asia and the Pacific at South Pole. According to the press release on Friday, the new task would be best performed by a new senior leadership. However, Heuberger will take on a non-executive and advisory role to support the new management.
At the end of October, the company announced that it was ending its collaboration with the controversial Kariba project in Zimbabwe. According to several media reports, the benefits of the Kariba carbon offset project were much lower than assumed. South Pole is nevertheless said to have knowingly continued to sell CO2 certificates from the project.
Green Party politician Bastien Girod also announced his departure from South Pole on the Linkedin portal. He was previously Head of Climate Solutions for the Switzerland, Germany and Austria region. The politician wrote that more scrutiny of climate projects is needed in order to bring more integrity to the evolving global carbon market. After “careful consideration of the information that has recently become public”, he has decided to end his employment at South Pole.
In addition to an interim CEO, the company intends to appoint a chief risk officer to review the entire portfolio of climate change projects.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Swiss Politics
Why cars still reign supreme in ‘rail-nation’ Switzerland
Swiss central banker wants to boost equity to head off risks
This content was published on
Equity levels at the Swiss National Bank (SNB) are much too low for the risks its large balance sheet poses, according to Martin Schlegel.
Beer sales in Switzerland watered down by bad weather
This content was published on
The past brewing year fell through in Switzerland, partly due to the bad weather. Beer sales shrank again. For the first time, per capita consumption fell below the 50 liter mark.
Compensation for Syrian after pregnant wife denied help on Swiss train
This content was published on
Switzerland’s Federal Court has partially upheld the appeal of a Syrian family being deported from Switzerland to Italy in 2014. The man now also receives compensation.
Swiss-EU negotiations: Cassis to meet Sefcovic in Bern
This content was published on
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis will meet the Vice-President of the EU Commission, Maros Sefcovic, in Bern on Wednesday.
Heavy snowfall in Switzerland causes traffic chaos and accidents
This content was published on
The heavy snowfall late on Thursday and during the night into Friday led to traffic chaos and many accidents in many regions of Switzerland.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.