TOP 10 Most-Read Sustainability and Energy Thought Leaders Globally

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

illuminem is proud to present the most-read Thought Leaders across all categories globally, as recognised by illuminem's ever growing community of 700,000+ readers.

And what a journey it has been. Across eighteen category rankings, we have celebrated the voices shaping every corner of the sustainability world – from carbon to circularity, from finance to governance. This year's rankings honour 198 thought leaders, the most-read voices drawn from illuminem's community of 2,500+ Thought Leaders. They span 47 countries across six continents, from Vatican City to Ecuador, Ghana to Japan, and 35% are women, a roster ranging from former heads of state and UN leaders to the scientists and founders building the tools of the transition.

The response to this year's rankings has already been extraordinary. Our articles have already drawn 60,000+ clicks and over 130,000 impressions on LinkedIn alone: see the reactions of United Nations Environment Programme’s fmr. Executive Director Erik Solheim, the World Energy Council's Jeremy Bentham, or UniCredit's Doris Honold. The rankings have been reposted by news outlets from Latin America to Africa, cited on Wikipedia, and picked up by global institutions from Columbia University to the Instituto Igarapé, to name just a couple.

This is the ranking of them all: the definitive list of the most-read sustainability thought leaders on illuminem.

All this in a year when sustainability was tested from every direction at once. The UN climate talks in Belém wrapped after negotiations pushed into overtime, securing real wins on finance and adaptation yet leaving the world divided on the one word it could not bring itself to write into the text: a roadmap away from fossil fuels.

Against a backdrop of geopolitical fracture and an ESG backlash rippling out from the US, the story of the year shifted from values to hard fundamentals. Electrification became the dominant theme, batteries and renewables hit prices never seen before, and energy supply shocks collided with demand booming on the back of AI. Even carbon credits staged their first, if modest, rebound, while biodiversity moved from the margins to the mainstream of the conversation. In a year like this, the case for sustainability had to be made not on principle but on economics, security, and integrity, and that is exactly the register in which this year's most-read voices wrote.

Leading the ranking of all rankings is Lamé Verre, Director of Net Zero at The Crown Estate, the vast property portfolio held in right of the British Crown, who distilled the mood of the entire year into a single line: net zero is not an ideology, it is economics. Her argument that decarbonisation drives competitiveness and energy security, rather than constraining them, struck a nerve with a readership hungry for exactly that reframing.

Joining her at the summit is a truly global cast. Georg Kell, the founding Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, asked the question on every boardroom's mind: what should companies do now that corporate sustainability is in crisis? Margaret Kim, CEO of carbon-standard giant Gold Standard, unveiled a world first in using carbon finance to phase out fossil fuel generators. Renat Heuberger, CEO of Terra Impact Ventures, co-founder of South Pole, and winner of illuminem's Sustainability Book of the Year, confronted the industry's biggest credibility test head-on with his piece on the integrity paradox. And Danish architect and activist Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov, founder of No Objectives, made the compelling case for doing first and believing later.

They are joined by a roll-call of the field's most influential figures: Italian scientist Nicola Armaroli, Research Director at the Italian National Research Council; green-finance leader Doris Honold, Chair of Unicredit; Elena Morettini, Chief Solutions Officer of Globant; Mercer's global ESG leader Cara Williams; and a distinguished four-way tie at tenth spanning Club of Rome's Sandrine Dixson-Declève, planetary-boundaries scientist Johan Rockström, and Igarapé Institute co-founders Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, whose shared warning that COP30 must protect the Amazon and the world's coral reefs became one of the year's defining reads.

Drawn from over 2,500 thought leaders publishing on illuminem Voices, the ranking below reflects the voices that shaped the global sustainability conversation in 2025. Please join us in congratulating the Thought Leaders of the Year, and every voice contributing to this vital global debate on illuminem.

1️⃣ Lamé Verre - Director of Net Zero of The Crown Estate
Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Most-Read Thought Piece: Net zero is not an ideology, it is economics
Profile: Lamé Verre is the Director of Net Zero at The Crown Estate, driving the decarbonisation agenda across the enterprise portfolio and contributing to the UK net zero and energy security agenda. She serves as a board trustee of Green Alliance, an independent think tank and charity focused on ambitious leadership for the environment, and sits on the Global Future Council on the Future of the Energy Transition at the World Economic Forum. She is a member of the illuminem Leaders Cohort.

2️⃣ Georg Kell - Founding Executive Director of the UN Global Compact
Country: Germany 🇩🇪
Most-Read Thought Piece: Corporate sustainability is in crisis – what should companies do now?
Profile: Georg Kell is a prominent figure in the field of sustainable business and corporate social responsibility. He is the former Executive Director of United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative. He currently serves as Chairman of Arabesque, a technology company that uses AI and big data to assess sustainability performance.

3️⃣ 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.

4️⃣ Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov - Founder of No Objectives
Country: Denmark 🇩🇰
Most-Read Thought Piece: Doing first, believing later
Profile: Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov is the founder of No Objectives, a non-profit research and design agency turning minority insights into majority actions. Also an architect, Kasper bridges strategy, activism, and design to transform complex challenges into actionable solutions, helping organisations drive collective action. Through branded activism, he integrates marketing with social and environmental causes to spark systemic change, shaping a future that prioritises sustainability, equity, and resilience.

5️⃣ Nicola Armaroli - Research Director at the Italian National Research Council
Country: Italy 🇮🇹
Most-Read Thought Piece: When rare earths become political fiction
Profile: Nicola Armaroli is Research Director at the Italian National Research Council and Member of the Italian National Academy of Sciences. He studies the conversion of light into electricity and fuels and the transition of the global energy system. Nicola has travelled as a visiting lecturer worldwide and published hundreds of scientific articles.

6️⃣ Renat Heuberger - 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.

7️⃣ Doris Honold - Chair of Unicredit
Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Most-Read Thought Piece: Exclusive case study – from mitigation to resilience: reframing green taxonomies for a climate-impacted world
Profile: Doris Honold is Chair of Unicredit. She has previously served as the chair of the Climate Bonds Initiative and serves on the Board of Directors at The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. She is also Vice Chair at SEFE Energy and a Non-Executive Director at Encompass Corporation. Previously, she held senior leadership roles including Chief Risk Officer and Chief Operating Officer at global banks. Doris brings over 25 years of experience in finance, risk, and change management across Germany, Japan, Singapore, the UK, and the US.

8️⃣ Elena Morettini - Chief Solutions Officer of Globant
Country: Argentina 🇦🇷
Most-Read Thought Piece: Building a better world, one molecule at a time
Profile: Elena Morettini is the Chief Solutions Officer of Globant, a native digital multinational company, and Co-Founder of BecauseEnergyMatters. She has previously held key managerial positions in renowned international companies such as Shell, Repsol YPF, Badley Ashton, and Fugro GeoConsulting. Elena founded the first Diversity and Inclusion Committee for Oil and Gas in the Latin America region.

9️⃣ Cara Williams - Senior Partner and Global Head of Climate and Sustainability at Mercer
Country: United States 🇺🇸
Most-Read Thought Piece: The blue economy: an emerging investment frontier hiding beneath the surface
Profile: Cara Williams is a Senior Partner and Global ESG and Sustainability Leader at Mercer, where she leads the firm's global sustainability positioning and ESG strategy for multinational and wealth management clients. She previously served as Global COO within Mercer's investment consulting business and began her finance career at Merrill Lynch. Cara holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA in Finance from the University of Hartford, and serves on the Board of The German School of London. She is a member of the illuminem Leaders Cohort.

🔟 ex aequo Sandrine Dixson-Declève - Fmr. President of the Club of Rome
Country: Belgium 🇧🇪
Most-Read Thought Piece: COP30 must protect the stability of Earth's two richest biomes: the Amazon rainforest and the coral reefs
Profile: Sandrine Dixson-Decleve is the fmr. President of the Club of Rome, chair of Earth4All, and founder of System Transformation Hub. She is also a Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Senior Associate and faculty member. She serves on multiple advisory and non-executive boards, including the Climate Governance Commission, BMW, and Imperial College London.

🔟 ex aequo Johan Rockström - Creator of the Planetary Boundaries framework
Country: Sweden 🇸🇪
Most-Read Thought Piece: COP30 must protect the stability of Earth's two richest biomes: the Amazon rainforest and the coral reefs
Profile: Johan Rockström is the Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. As a leading voice on global sustainability issues, he co-developed the Planetary Boundaries framework and advises governments, businesses, and international institutions on resilience and climate policy. His work bridges Earth system science and actionable pathways for a safe and just future.

🔟 ex aequo Robert Muggah - Co-Founder of the Igarapé Institute
Country: Brazil 🇧🇷
Most-Read Thought Piece: COP30 must protect the stability of Earth's two richest biomes: the Amazon rainforest and the coral reefs
Profile: Robert Muggah is the co-founder of the SecDev Group and Igarape Institute. An expert in geopolitics, international security, the future of cities, green technology and cybersecurity, he advises international organizations, companies, philanthropies and non-profits. He received a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

🔟 ex aequo Ilona Szabó de Carvalho - Co-Founder and President of the Igarapé Institute
Country: Brazil 🇧🇷
Most-Read Thought Piece: COP30 must protect the stability of Earth's two richest biomes: the Amazon rainforest and the coral reefs
Profile: Ilona Szabó de Carvalho is the Founder of the Green Bridge Facility, a key initiative supporting high-integrity green enterprises in Brazil and the Amazon Basin. She is also the co-founder and President of the Igarapé Institute, a think-and-do tank focused on security, nature, and climate. Ilona serves on several prestigious boards, including Re.green, the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Natural Capital, and the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits. She holds a Master's in International Studies from Uppsala University and has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Ilona is a recipient of the Bertha Lutz Diploma and was named one of the "World's Top 50 Thinkers" by Prospect magazine in 2020.

Congratulations to our most-read thought leaders of the last year. In a year when the sustainability conversation was pulled in every direction at once, the voices on this list held the line with clarity, rigour, and conviction. We are proud to amplify them, and look forward to what comes next.

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