Peter W. Heller

Peter W. Heller, born in 1957, studied economics (PhD 1988) and philosophy in St. Gallen (CH), Lausanne (CH) and Freiburg (D). 1990 – 1997 he served as Deputy Mayor for Environmental Protection, Energy Management and Forestry in the municipal administration of the City of Freiburg. 1993 – 1997 he was Chairman of the international Executive Committee of ICLEI, Cities for Sustainability. Heller is a co-founder of BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy), Chairman of the Board of HUMBOLDT VIADRINA Governance Platform gGmbH, Berlin, and a member of the Supervisory Council of Cusanus University, Bernkastel-Kues (D). Heller is the founder and sole shareholder of forseo GmbH, a holding company investing in early stage enterprises in the field of renewable energies and energy efficiency. The portfolio of forseo comprises wind and solar project development companies in France and Chile, and energy technology providers in the US and Germany. He serves as a member of the Board of Fahrenheit GmbH and as Chairman of the Board of Streb AG. In 1997 he co-founded the Canopus Foundation, a charitable family foundation under German jurisdiction. Since 1997 Canopus has provided seed capital and business development assistance to social enterprises and NPOs in Asia, South America and Africa, bringing renewable energy to low income communities without access to the grid. In 2014 Canopus has started to support research and education for a sustainable economy, and to promote initiatives for a pluralistic approach to economic science. Recent publications are: • Developing mutual success factors and their application to swarm electrification: microgrids with 100 % renewable energies in the Global South and Germany (with Kirchhoff/Kebir/Neumann/Strunz), Journal of Cleaner Production Vol. 128 (2016), 190-200 • The Philosophy of Theory U: A Critical Examination, Philosophy of Management (2018), 1-20 • The Lessons of Microcredit, in: Wendt, K. (ed.) Theories of Change (2020), ISBN 978- 3-030-52274-2, Berlin-Heidelberg (Springer Nature) – forthcoming –