Biography
John Hepburn is an activist and social entrepreneur with decades of experience running environmental campaigns. He is the executive director of The Sunrise Project, which he founded in 2012 to fight coal and gas development in Australia and advocate for a rapid scale-up of renewable energy.
Prior to founding The Sunrise Project, John worked for a decade at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, leading national, regional, and global campaigns. He also co-founded Friends of the Earth Brisbane and several nonprofit recycling businesses, including Reverse Garbage Co-op Ltd., which won numerous small business awards and led to him being awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2002.
John holds degrees in manufacturing systems engineering and business from the Queensland University of Technology. Before becoming an activist, he worked for several years as an engineer making components for the oil, gas, and coal industries.
John had been a successful environmental activist and social entrepreneur in Australia for two decades when he heard about the launch of the Climate Breakthrough Award program in 2016. “I remember seeing it and thinking, That’s a great idea; I’m excited to see who they find,” he says.
Breakthrough Program
John was selected for the Climate Breakthrough Award program in 2016.
Coal and other fossil fuel projects continue to expand, partly because insurance companies continue to provide the required underwriting. John envisions a disruptive innovation in the financial system: divorcing insurance from fossil fuels. He wants to target major insurers and reinsurers, who are significant investors and can render fossil fuel projects infeasible by refusing to underwrite them. If successful, this bold strategy has the potential to shift the global financial system away from fossil fuels.