TOP 10 Most-Read Thought Leaders in Carbon

Discover also our 2026 Rankings of the Most Read Thought Leaders in Business Impact, Circularity, Climate Change, Energy, Energy Transition, Environmental Sustainability, ESG, Ethical Governance, Green Tech, Nature, Renewables, Social Responsibility, Sustainable AI, Sustainable Business, Sustainable Finance, Sustainable Lifestyle, and Overall. Explore how this year's leaders compare to the most influential carbon voices of last year!

illuminem is proud to present the most-read Thought Leaders in Carbon globally, as recognised by illuminem’s ever growing community of 700,000+ readers.

After years of hype and a bruising credibility crisis, the voluntary carbon market spent 2025 in an integrity reset. Volumes fell, bad actors were flushed out, and the conversation shifted from how many credits to how good they are. 

Beneath that shift, a deeper fault line was opening, one this list's authors returned to independently and from very different directions. The question was whether carbon markets were fundamentally about reducing emissions or removing them, and whether an architecture that had long conflated the two could survive serious scrutiny. 

COP30 in Belém moved Article 6 forward – formally operationalising the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, allowing countries to trade UN-backed carbon credits through a centralised registry to help meet their climate targets – but left the toughest questions on permanence, transparency, and carbon reversals unresolved. 

What distinguished Margaret Kim in that conversation was that she was not simply mapping the problem. As CEO of Gold Standard, overseeing more than 3,000 projects across 100 countries, she is one of the people responsible for answering it.

Joining her on the list are Renat Heuberger, winner of illuminem’s inaugural Sustainability Book of the Year award with his seminal novel “The Carbon Paradox”, Luke Baldwin – CEO and Co-Founder of leading carbon credit intermediary Nature Broking – with his piece on the emerging financial relevance of carbon removal, and Andrea Maggiani – Founder of Carbonsink, Italy's premier climate consultancy and carbon project developer – on the increasing risk of carbon markets.

Drawn from over 2,500 thought leaders publishing on illuminem Voices, the ranking below reflects the voices that shaped how the carbon conversation evolved in 2025. 

1️⃣ Margaret Kim - CEO of Gold Standard
Country: Switzerland🇨🇭
Most-Read Thought Piece: A World First: Carbon finance can now fund the phase-out of fossil fuel generators
Profile: Margaret Kim is the CEO of Gold Standard, a leading standard that allows climate and development initiatives to quantify, certify and maximize their impact towards climate security and sustainable development. Margaret has over 15 years of experience in international management roles including at the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) where she held various posts including the Head of Green Climate Fund liaison and Head of Strategy and Integration. Prior to this role, she occupied leadership roles in the private sector in business development and corporate strategy at a leading biotechnology company.

2️⃣ Renat Heuberger - CEO of Terra Impact Ventures and co-founder of South Pole
Country: Switzerland🇨🇭
Most-Read Thought Piece: The integrity paradox
Profile:Renat Heuberger is the CEO and Co-Founder of Terra Impact Ventures and Co-Founder and Senior Adviser at South Pole. He has been engaged as a social entrepreneur in the fields of sustainability, climate change and renewable energies since 1999. Before founding South Pole, Renat co-founded and acted as the CEO of the myclimate foundation. He also contributes his expertise to the development of illuminem’s Data Hub™, helping shape its insights on sustainability, and he is a member of the illuminem Leaders Cohort.

3️⃣ Andrea Maggiani - Founder of Carbonsink
Country: Italy 🇮🇹
Most-Read Thought Piece: The rising risk in carbon markets: who's really carrying it
Profile: Andrea Maggiani is a climate tech investor and the founder of Carbonsink, a leading advisory firm specializing in corporate decarbonization and climate risk management. His expertise lies in climate strategy design, carbon finance mechanisms, and high-integrity carbon project development. He is a member of the illuminem Leaders Cohort.

4️⃣ Sebastian Manhart - Senior Policy Advisor of Carbonfuture
Country: Italy 🇮🇹
Most-Read Thought Piece: Carbon removal policy in Trump’s second term: what to expect
Profile: Sebastian Manhart is a senior policy advisor of Carbonfuture, founder of CDRjobs, chair of the Board at the Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen, and founding director of the US Biochar Coalition. Across these roles, he advocates for progressive policy to scale durable carbon dioxide removal across Europe, the US, and beyond.

5️⃣ Anton Root - Co-Founder and Head of Research at AlliedOffsets
Country: Russia 🇷🇺
Most-Read Thought Piece: CORSIA: Market developments and forecast scenarios
Profile: Anton Root is the Co-Founder and Head of Research at AlliedOffsets, a data and technology firm enhancing transparency in the voluntary carbon market and carbon dioxide removal. He previously worked as Senior Editor at Crowdsourcing.org and studied at New York University. Anton’s research focuses on economics, climate finance, carbon offsetting, alternative finance, MSME funding, technology, international politics, and new media.

6️⃣ Luke Baldwin - CEO and Co-Founder of Nature Broking
Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Most-Read Thought Piece: From expense to asset: why carbon removal finally makes financial sense
Profile: Luke Baldwin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Nature Broking, a natural capital portfolio manager supporting corporations with carbon and nature credit portfolios. Previously, he held roles at DA|X and Synpulse Management Consulting, focusing on market infrastructure and risk systems. Luke holds a Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering from Loughborough University.

7️⃣ Yuval Lavi - Founder of TERRRA
Country: Israel 🇮🇱
Most-Read Thought Piece: Carbon removal agriculture in the lens of Bill Gates' "Three Tough Truths About Climate"
Profile: Yuval Lavi is the founder of TERRRA, a biological carbon removal company focused on restoring wetlands and selling carbon credits, specialized in Black-Carbon and inland Blue-Carbon. Previously, Yuval led partnerships and strategic projects in aiOla, an advanced enterprise conversational AI platform that delivers accuracy in speech recognition.

8️⃣ Eve Tamme - Director of Climate Principles
Country: Estonia 🇪🇪
Most-Read Thought Piece: Breaking down the EU's 2040 climate target proposal: what's new and what's next
Profile: Eve Tamme is a Director of Climate Principles and senior advisor on climate policy. She is also a member of the Expert Group on Carbon Removals of the European Commission and chair of the Zero Emissions Platform. Her expertise covers the Paris Agreement, the EU Emissions Trading System, carbon markets, climate governance, and carbon removal.

9️⃣ Maria Eugenia Filmanovic - Co-Founder of Abatable
Country: Italy 🇮🇹
Most-Read Thought Piece: The land grid: why scope 3 is having its scope 2 moment
Profile: Maria Eugenia Filmanovic is Co-Founder of Abatable, a YC-backed startup building a carbon procurement platform for the voluntary carbon market. She previously worked as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs.

🔟 ex aequo Niall MacDowell - Professor at Imperial College London
Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Most-Read Thought Piece: The Green Claims Directive shouldn't micromanage carbon removal
Profile: Niall MacDowell is a Professor of Future Energy Systems at Imperial College London and a Consultant at Imperial Consultants (ICON). Previously, he served as the Non Executive Director at 7CO2: The Severnside Carbon Capture and Shipping Hub, as a Member of Scientific Committee on CCUS at TotalEnergies, as a Scientific Advisor on CCUS at NCCS: Norwegian CCS Research Centre, and as the Executive Board Secretary at the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Energy Centre. He holds a dual degree in Chemical Engineering from University College Dublin and UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London.

🔟 ex aequo Robert Höglund - Advisor in Carbon Dioxide Removal and Climate Impact at Marginal Carbon
Country: Sweden 🇸🇪
Most-Read Thought Piece: What needs to change in the SBTi Net Zero Standard 2.0 to scale carbon removal
Profile: Robert Höglund is an Advisor in carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and climate impact. He manages the charitable Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund, co-founded the CDR market overview CDR.fyi, works with the NGO Carbon Gap, and writes reports and articles on carbon removal and corporate climate contributions. He is also a member of the EU Expert Group on Carbon Removals and of the Science-based Target Initiative's Technical Advisory Group.

Congratulations to our most-read thought leaders of the last year. In a time when the sustainability conversation was pulled in every direction at once, the voices on this list helped move it forward with clarity and intellect. We are proud to amplify their voices, and look forward to what comes next.

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