Benedikt von Butler

Benedikt von Butler is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at the Investment Manager.

He joins the firm from Enviva, a NYSE-listed producer of sustainable wood bioenergy, where he was the Managing Director for Germany. Mr. von Butler is a carbon markets veteran with over 20 years’ experience co-heading carbon desks at Evolution Markets, Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup, Mercuria Energy, and Hartree Partners.

In 2003, together with Andrew Ertel, he structured the first-ever transaction of European CO2 allowances and the first-ever trade of “Assigned Amount Units”, between the governments of Japan and Slovakia. Since then, Mr. von Butler has been instrumental in bringing liquidity to nascent carbon markets, helping many of the major banks and utilities enter the carbon market for the first time and transacting a wide variety of carbon credits.

At Cantor Fitzgerald, he structured and negotiated emissions reduction purchase agreements (“ERPAs”) to finance international projects developed by Cantor’s over 80 carbon development staff across the world. At Citigroup, he initiated and structured Citigroup’s first carbon-value based microfinance project, which generated 1.2 million Certified Emissions Reductions (“CERs”) out of Mongolia and benefitted hundreds of underprivileged families. He also helped develop carbon-based investor notes with a notional value of €500m. At Mercuria Energy, where he co-headed the emissions trading desk, he expanded the client base by offering innovative hedging structures and helped manage the firm’s own carbon offset portfolio of 50+ projects. At Hartee, Mr. von Butler helped develop the carbon desk from scratch, introducing in-depth analytical tools and marginal abatement cost curves.

In addition, Mr. von Butler has regularly advised financial institutions, investors, industry representatives, and governments on carbon pricing and regulations, including the EU Commission’s Global Carbon Markets Workshop, the South Korean government, and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGC). He is also advisor to a number of Berlin-based startups in the climate and carbon space, several of them developing blockchain based solutions. Mr. von Butler has also been quoted in the FT, WSJ, Bloomberg, and The Economist, and has guest lectured at LSE, Cass Business School, and his alma mater, Columbia University.  

Mr von Butler was born in Calcutta, India, and has lived in Germany, Spain, Russia, the US and the UK. He is an avid traveller and mountaineer and his trips have brought him to the Russian Tundra, the Himalayas in Bhutan, the deserts of Algeria and to the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador and he still enjoys yearly solo trips into remote mountain regions. Mr von Butler is married to an Ecuadorian-American wife, with whom he has three lovely children which are growing up speaking a potpourri of English, German and Spanish every day. He is absolutely passionate about family and nature.