Founder Ruth von Heusinger in profile
“I want to make it simple for all people and organizations to get involved in effective climate protection”
Ruth von Heusinger founded ForTomorrow in 2019 in order to effectively stop man-made climate change. Global warming has been a concern of hers since her school days in Werne, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Ever since, the drive to do something about this issue has been the guiding principle in her decision-making. She studied physics at the Technical University Berlin, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris to better understand interrelationships. After her studies, instead of going into research, she joined a trainee program at Statkraft in Norway, the largest producer of renewable energy in Europe. There, she worked in European CO2 certificate trading, among other things. Statkraft is a for-profit company, and eventually Ruth decided she would rather work for an organization that devotes all its surpluses to climate protection. For this reason, Ruth switched to the non-profit climate protection organization atmosfair, which offers carbon footprint offsetting.
What atmosfair lacked was the opportunity to offset emissions with climate protection measures that have a direct impact in Europe rather than in the global South. Here in Europe we have very high CO2 emissions that need to be reduced. So Ruth eventually founded the non-profit company ForTomorrow in Berlin.
ForTomorrow was born of experience
Using knowledge built on her experience, with ForTomorrow Ruth has created safe offsetting opportunities in a convenient format: with a climate subscription, users can easily and automatically offset their individual CO2 balance every month, without taking any action. In return, ForTomorrow buys EU emission rights and sets them aside unused. The resulting tightening in the emissions market means that there are fewer emission rights available for large CO2 emitters such as energy companies, heavy industry and aviation to buy. Therefore, they are forced to emit fewer greenhouse gases. In addition, a portion of subscription fees are invested in the reforestation of climate-resilient mixed forests in Germany, which filter CO2 from the air and store it over the long term. ForTomorrow’s status as a non-profit limited liability company ensures that its funds are used for a specific purpose and that all profits are reinvested in climate protection.
An offer without a guilty conscience
Offsetting greenhouse gas emissions is not enough to stop global warming. Reducing everyone’s individual carbon footprint is therefore a top priority. This is also true for Ruth herself. For example, she does not drive a car, eats a predominantly plant-based diet with her family, avoids air travel and has photovoltaic and solar thermal systems on her roof. Nevertheless, it is not possible for anyone in Germany to live climate-neutrally on their own, simply because of the general infrastructure.
With ForTomorrow, Ruth has created a way to compensate for unavoidable emissions by reliably reducing them elsewhere. At the same time, ForTomorrow’s compensation measures ensure that our CO2 emissions decrease in areas we don’t have control over now, such as the emissions associated with the steel used to construct our buildings. In addition, “With climate subscriptions, we offer an easy first step for those who don’t know how to begin protecting the climate in their everyday lives. Because we will only be able to stop global warming if we all work together—whether you’re a committed activist or a late joiner. Every ton of CO2 counts.”
Please send requests for an individual interview or statement to info@fortomorrow.eu