Harry Verhaar has over 20 years of experience in the lighting industry, and is Head of Global Public & Government Affairs for Philips Lighting. He is responsible for the strategy, outreach and stakeholder management on energy & climate change, resource efficiency and sustainable development, with a key focus on the role of the LED lighting revolution.
He has since the end of 2003 been the architect of the lighting strategy on energy and climate change, which has resulted in a global momentum on phasing out of old lighting technologies.
He is an active member of a number of partnership and stakeholder networks, among which The Climate Group; Regions20 and the World Green Building Council and is a member of the Advisory Boards of The Lisbon Council and the Global Cities Institute (and their World Council on City Data). He is responsible for Philips’ relationship management with the UN and the World Bank and is a founding member of UNEP’s en.lighten program and the SE4All’s Global Energy Efficiency Accelerator Platform. He is chairman of the European Alliance to Save Energy and is president of the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association.
Harry is a recipient of the 2011 UN Leader of Change Award, and has received the Carbon War Room’s Gigaton award on behalf of Philips at COP17 in Durban. In May 2015 he received the Energy Efficiency Visionary Award from the Alliance to Save Energy in Washington DC. He holds a MSc in Solid State Luminescence from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.