Andy Ertel Named First Recipient of EMA’s Environmental Markets Pioneer Award
October 15, 2026
Restoration Climate is proud to share that our CEO, Andy Ertel, has received the Environmental Markets Association’s inaugural Environmental Markets Pioneer Award. The award was presented on October 6, 2026, at EMA’s 30th Annual Meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, and honors an individual whose vision and leadership have shaped the environmental markets industry.
“Andy has been part of this industry since before it had a name. As a founding member of EMA, he helped establish the association and the standards that practitioners rely on today. His work has influenced how environmental markets are designed, financed, and run. Many of us are building on what he started.”
– Jack Velasquez, Director of Environmental Markets North America at Marex and former EMA Chairman
Andy began his career in the oil and natural gas trading pits of NYMEX before moving into emerging environmental markets. At Natsource he built one of the first emissions and carbon brokerage teams, completing his first carbon transaction in 1997, the year EMA was founded. He went on to co-found both EMA and the Green Exchange.
As founder and CEO of Evolution Markets, Andy built one of the first brokerage firms dedicated to energy and environmental markets. Supporting the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, the firm helped finance hundreds of projects in more than 30 countries. He has advised EU regulators, U.S. lawmakers, and the White House on carbon market design, and helped create markets for weather derivatives, coal derivatives, uranium, and RECs. Andy was inducted into the Energy Risk Hall of Fame in 2003, led the sale of Evolution Markets to Xpansiv in 2023, and chairs the Xpansiv Markets Advisory Board.
“As one of EMA’s three founding members, I’m humbled to receive this award. When we started EMA, there were about 20 people in environmental markets worldwide. Today, hundreds of thousands of people work on issues from smog to climate change to biodiversity, proving what markets can do for the environment. I founded Restoration to carry that work forward and put the power of markets behind the defining challenge of our time: climate change. I accept this award on behalf of everyone building this industry.”
– Andy Ertel, CEO, Restoration Climate
Looking ahead, Andy sees the next decade as decisive for environmental markets:
“We don’t talk about acid rain anymore because this industry helped solve it, and smog is far less of an issue than it once was. Now it’s time to take on climate change. Capitalism helped create this problem, and I firmly believe market-based mechanisms are the only way to make meaningful progress over the next decade. That’s why I started Restoration. I hope that at EMA’s 50th anniversary, we’ll talk about climate change the way we talk about acid rain today: as a problem we solved.”
– Andy Ertel, CEO, Restoration Climate
We thank EMA for this recognition and look forward to working with the association and its members to build the next 30 years of environmental markets.