South Pole Group

South Pole was founded in 2006 by graduates of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Patrick Bürgi, Thomas Camerata, Renat Heuberger, Ingo Puhl and Christoph Sutter, and joined by Christoph Grobbel as the sixth equal partner. The company originally started as a spin-off from the ETH Zurich as the non-profit, ‘myclimate’.

Following the success of myclimate, the founders decided to position climate change as business opportunity, and ‘South Pole Carbon’ was born.[2] The company rebranded to ‘South Pole Group’ in 2015, and then again to the current ‘South Pole’ in January 2018.[3]

The decision to re-brand was made to reflect the broader scope of services that South Pole currently provides since expanding its offering from pure emissions reduction project development under South Pole Carbon, to include additional services such as advisory on sustainability risks and opportunities and climate strategy.

In 2012, South Pole acquired a major stake in Australian carbon farming project developer and offset retailer, Sydney-based Climate Friendly.[4] In 2017, the company acquired Climate Friendly's domestic and international carbon and renewables division outright, which at that point was a majority-owned subsidiary of South Pole.[5] In 2019, South Pole sold its majority share in Climate Friendly back to the Australian subsidiary's management team.[6]

Some other recent milestones include selling its subsidiary “Climate Neutral Investments" to Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) in 2017, and becoming the Official Partner of the UNFCCC at the COP 23 Bonn climate conference.

By 2019, South Pole had saved over 170 million tonnes of CO2.[7]