Mike Mason

Mike founded Climate Care, one of the world’s first carbon trading companies, in 1997. Since then the company has become a market leader in the development of projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Projects were financed by selling credits to companies and consumers who adopted voluntary targets ‘above and beyond’ Kyoto commitments. In April 2008 Climate Care was acquired by JP Morgan – one of the world’s foremost investment banks. Mike also founded and continues to run Biojoule, a company developing renewable energy from biomass.

Mike qualified as a mining engineer initially, working primarily in Africa. He then gained an MBA and moved to business development in the oil industry. He left the oil industry to set up a computing consultancy and a number of healthcare ventures.

In 1994 Mike studied Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford, where he also taught environmental economics for several years. He continues to have strong interests in both environmental economics and renewable energy technologies.

Mike’s current focus is on developing a consensus around the need for a zero carbon future, and on moving the debate forward, from the ethical issues that dominated the environmental messages of the past, to the huge engineering and financial challenges that must be overcome to deliver zero carbon societies. In 2010 he was appointed Energy Advisor to the President of the Maldives to support the country’s ambition to be the world’s first carbon neutral country.