Fundamental innovations are needed in order to achieve sustainable development. The actors who implement sustainability innovations are called sustainability entrepreneurs. In the first part of this paper, a conceptual framework for sustainability entrepreneurship is developed. It is suggested to take a view of power and politics in order to identify crucial actors and barriers within sustainability innovation processes. In the second part, this conceptual framework is applied to the context of emissions trading. The findings suggest that organisations that want to gain advantage from innovative emissions reductions have to foster sustainability entrepreneurship.