Christian Berg
Sustainability commitments have outrun the operating systems built to deliver them. Boards face a widening gap between net zero pledges, capital allocation, and the actual incentives running through procurement, finance, and product. The question is no longer whether to act, but which barriers, inside the firm and outside it, must give way first.
Christian Berg helps boards and executive teams move sustainability from stated ambition to operating decisions, drawing on a Club of Rome report, the Merkel sustainable growth taskforce, and a decade inside SAP’s sustainability consulting practice.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Christian Berg
- A Club of Rome author whose report mapped the structural barriers blocking sustainability across economy, politics, law, and technology, giving boards a diagnostic rather than a slogan.
- Direct experience translating sustainability strategy into corporate practice as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, not commentary from outside the firm.
- Advisory standing at federal government level through the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Merkel’s Future Dialogue.
- Live exposure to capital-allocation decisions as an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank.
- Academic authority across two German universities and a transdisciplinary base in physics, philosophy, theology, and engineering, which lets him connect technical and ethical questions in the same conversation.
Biography highlights
- Author of Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers (Routledge), published as a report to the Club of Rome.
- Former Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, responsible for the sustainability consulting function.
- Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Clausthal University of Technology.
- Visiting Professor for Corporate Sustainability at Saarland University.
- Co-founder and board member of Think Tank 30 within the German Chapter of the Club of Rome.
- Investment committee member at GLS Bank.
Biography
The 2030 Agenda set the targets. It offered little guidance on which structural barriers stop organisations from meeting them. Christian Berg’s Club of Rome report, Sustainable Action: Overcoming the Barriers, was written to answer that question across economy, politics, law, and technology in a single integrated frame.
That frame is not theoretical. He spent more than a decade as Chief Sustainability Architect at SAP, leading the sustainability consulting function inside one of the largest enterprise software firms in the world. He has also led the Sustainable Economic Activity and Growth taskforce within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Future Dialogue, putting him in the room where federal sustainability policy was negotiated.
His academic base sits at Clausthal University of Technology and Saarland University, where he holds professorships in sustainability and corporate sustainability. The transdisciplinary training behind the work, in physics, philosophy, theology, and mechanical engineering, is what allows him to move between the technical, ethical, and economic registers a board conversation actually requires.
The capital allocation question is live for him too. As an investment committee member at GLS Bank, Germany’s first social and ecological bank, Berg sits inside the decisions that test whether sustainability claims survive contact with credit and risk.
Key speaking topics
- Corporate sustainability strategy
- Sustainable finance and capital allocation
- Barriers to sustainability transformation
- ESG operating substance
- Climate action and resilience
- Innovation under sustainability constraints
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams setting or reviewing ESG and net zero strategy
- Chief sustainability officers, CFOs, and treasury leads navigating capital allocation under transition
- Investor and banking audiences working at the intersection of finance and sustainability
- Innovation and strategy leaders translating sustainability commitments into product and operating decisions
Audience outcomes
- A clearer map of the structural barriers blocking their sustainability commitments, from incentives to regulation
- Sharper criteria for which sustainability investments are likely to compound and which will stall
- A working vocabulary for connecting net zero ambition to capital allocation decisions
- Reference points from corporate practice at SAP, federal policy, and the GLS Bank investment committee
Talks
A board-level read on what AI can help resolve and where it generates new categories of risk that demand decisions now.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI can shift the dial on hard problems, from climate protection to healthcare
- The specific risks that grow with capability: manipulation, loss of control, new forms of inequality
- Where policymakers, businesses, and civil society need to be acting now if the technology is going to be shaped rather than absorbed
A board-level read on where the sustainability transition is genuinely accelerating and where it is stuck.
Key takeaways:
- Where the structural barriers sit across economy, politics, law, and technology
- Which transition signals leaders should weight, and which to discount
- How to read sustainability claims for operating substance, not narrative
How sustainability constraints reshape product, process, and operating model decisions inside large firms.
Key takeaways:
- Where sustainability genuinely drives innovation rather than absorbing margin
- What operational redesign looks like when sustainability moves from CSR to core
- Lessons from inside SAP’s sustainability consulting practice
The point at which sustainability commitments meet credit, capital, and risk decisions.
Key takeaways:
- How investment committees actually weigh sustainability against return and risk
- Where sustainable finance instruments are working and where they remain narrative
- Implications for CFOs and treasurers under transition pressure
The thesis of the Club of Rome report, made operational for senior decision-makers.
Key takeaways:
- The action principles that translate across individuals, corporations, and governments
- Why progress on the 2030 Agenda has been slower than expected
- What changes most when leaders understand the barriers as a system, not a list